Everything's Bigger in Texas: The Life and Times of Kinky Friedman

by Mary Lou Sullivan

Overview

(Book). Kinky Friedman has always maintained his Kinkster persona and hidden Richard Friedman from the public eye. Using one-liners, humor, and occasional rudeness, he follows the advice of his friend Bob Dylan to keep an aura of mystery. Author Mary Lou Sullivan spent many contentious days and nights at Kinky's Texas Hill Country ranch before he trusted her enough to open up and speak candidly. Best known as an irreverent cigar-chomping Jewish country-and-western singer, turned author, turned politician, Kinky has dined on monkey brains in the jungles of Borneo, supped with presidents, and vacationed with Bob Dylan in the tiny fishing village of Yelapa, Mexico. A satirist who loves pushing the envelope, he's been attacked onstage, received bomb threats, and put on the only show in Austin City Limits' history deemed too offensive to air. From the 1970s music scene in L.A. with Tom Waits and the Band, to political platforms advocating legalized marijuana, to friendships with John Belushi, Joseph Heller, Don Imus, Willie Nelson, Dwight Yoakam, and Billy Bob Thornton, this is the candid account based on dozens and years of interviews of the larger-than-life Texan who is still writing books and songs, recording albums, and performing for enthusiastic audiences throughout the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781495058967
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/01/2017
Pages:	344
Sales rank:	752,462
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Mary Lou Sullivan is an award winning author and music journalist whose 30-plus year career began at a dinner with Bruce Springsteen. She has written for dozens of publications from Classic Rock to Blues Revue, the Hartford Advocate, Connecticut Magazine, and Blues Magazine. Her biography of Johnny Winter earned the prestigious Keeping the Blues Alive Award in Literature from The Blues Foundation in Memphis and the 2011 Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research. A Connecticut Yankee who fell in love with Texas, she lives outside of Austin.

Table of Contents

Foreword Kinky Friedman ix

Acknowledgments xi

1 Growing Up in the Lone Star State 1

2 Austin and the University of Texas 17

3 Peace Corps in Borneo 39

4 Jewish Cowboy in Nashville 61

5 On the Road with the Texas Jewboys 87

6 Banned at Austin City Limits 115

7 Bob Dylan and the L.A. Scene 137

8 Running Wild in the Big Apple 167

9 Back at the Ranch with a Smith-Corona 201

10 Friends in High Places 229

11 The Man in the Arena 255

12 The Lasting Legacy of Kinky Friedman 285

Discography 307

Books 309

Documentaries and Movies 311

Bibliography 313

Index 319

Editorial Reviews

2017-08-30
The life of the one-and-only Kinky Friedman (b. 1944).In this amiable biography, journalist Sullivan (Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter, 2010) follows the life and career of this larger-than-life figure. Best known to audiences either as a singer/songwriter or an offbeat mystery novelist, Friedman has been stirring the pot for more than 50 years, counting among his friends such legends as Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson. The author dutifully recounts the legend of the "Kinkster" but rarely manages to pierce the veil of the carefully constructed persona that the Chicago-born original "Texas Jewboy" has created. The book follows the phases of Friedman's life in chronological order, passing quickly over his Texas childhood to discover the songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee, circa 1970, trying to sell songs to Waylon Jennings. Unlike compatriots Dylan, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and even KISS members Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, Friedman was unapologetically Jewish. "He wears his Jewishness like a backstage pass," said a friend. According to his brother, Friedman was able to "blend Lenny Bruce with the Flying Burrito Brothers and Hank Williams" and created a brand that set him apart from the Nashville scene. Sullivan doesn't shy away from controversy—Friedman's satire "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore" offended a wide swath of Americans, and the anti-feminist "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns into Bed" does not age well—but she does gloss over her subject's hardcore drug habit. Political correctness aside, Friedman's heart seems to be in the right place, and his cigar-chomping bravado must be a comforting guise for some American men. As his singing career cooled, we find him becoming a popular mystery novelist. "Kinky's legacy is the ability to inspire," writes the author, "to make people laugh, to make them think, to skewer sacred cows and hypocrisy, to continue to move forward, and to be his own man." A solid if conventional biography that doesn't go deep enough into the man behind the brand.

Kirkus Reviews

Sullivan chronicles the branding of the Kinkster with vivid detail, while giving his music the serious consideration it deserves ... The author's greatest achievement remains peeling back the provocateur's veneer and revealing the exceptionally smart, intimately caring, and deeply committed man behind the often outrageous performer without sparing critique.”—Doug Freeman, The Austin Chronicle

From the Publisher