Kinky Freidman — Still The Kinkster

Lately, I’ve been listening to Kinky Freidman’s newest CD in about, oh, say, 40-ish years. It’s called Circus of Life and is due out in about three weeks, or July 3 to be more specific. And, believe or trust me, it’s well worth the money. The Texas Jewboy has not lost his touch, not at all. Not quite as much satire as his 1970s and 80s stuff. More romantic and spiritual, believe it or not!

He had laid down his songwriting pen for quite a while, and, he said in a press release, the CD project started with a call to him from Willie (Nelson, of course). Willie asked Kinky what he was doing at that moment, and Kinky said he answered, “Watching Matlock.” Willie replied, “That’s a sure sign of depression, Kinky. Turn Matlock off and start writing.”

He did. Kinky did. And thus this new CD.

But, for the purposes of this blog, (and people ask me to write down my tales of my early days in the music industry, which happened in Kerrville, through the grace of Rod Kennedy, then the producer of the Kerrville Music Festivals in 1980. More about that here in Scene In Town in my “about” section), I wanna tell you my favorite Kinky story. And there are a few others, shorter… For instance, a shorter one is when he played a Mexican food restaurant there in Kerrville. He was playing one of his undoubtably questionable lyric songs, “Help me with this bugger,” he said in introduction. The short version of “Old Ben Lucas” ends with “Old Ben Lucas had a lot of mucus, coming right out of his nose. He’d pick and pick til it made you sick and back again it’d grows.” And it made someone not that used to Kinky and his sense of humor sick, really sick, if you know what I mean.

Kinky lived only a few miles away from Quiet Valley Ranch, and so he was often seen around the area.

It was in 1986 when cigar-smoking Kinky ran for the office of Kerr County Justice of the Peace, as an independent. He didn’t place well in the polls, but he sure had a lot of fun.

One day, I was coming out of the Kerrville U.S. Post Office, which was up a high flight of stairs, and on the way down saw a TV crew interviewing Kinky right in front of the P.O. I decided to just stand back and watch and listen. Stopped about 2/3 of the way down those steps, or 1/3 way to the sidewalk. Didn’t realize I was in the view of the cameras, in fact I was trying to avoid being in them.

The interview was fun, as Kinky’s music and lifestyle was, and done. Afterward, I said hello to him, we talked a minute or four, and I walked back to my Jeep. Just as I was getting in, I realized my jeans were unzipped — wide open — they had been that whole time. And the resulting news program definitely showed me behind Kinky. Now, it was a little harder to see the zipper, especially in those days of no-rewind, no-pause, no-record television. I never asked Kinky if he noticed that, if he knew! But, of course, I knew! It’s OK to laugh, I can laugh at myself!, and Kinky probably would have laughed himself! I’ll ask him someday. I’m getting an interview with The Kinkster about the CD and his tour ongoing. Oh, and he’ll be stopping by Poor David’s Pub in Dallas July 30 on this tour. See you there?

‘nuf said.