Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Kinky Friedman

Kinky Friedman, Toronto, Oct. 2015

TEXAS WRITER AND COUNTRY SINGER KINKY  FRIEDMAN PUT OUT HIS FIRST NEW RECORD in 32 years over a year and a half ago. I interviewed Kinky over the phone for a friend's online magazine, mostly as a way of getting a portrait session with Kinky when he came through Toronto not long after that. The interview never ran since my friend stopped publishing, but I still got my portrait - a big deal for me, since I've had Kinky on my "must have" portrait list for years, and because this session was effectively my return to serious portrait work after many years away.

I've been sitting on these photos - and the interview - for too long, so here's some selections from my chat with Kinky before he set out on tour behind The Loneliest Man I Ever Met, which is a really fine record, and a sad one at that.

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ME: This is a really very melancholy record, and not just because of the inclusion of songs like (the late Warren Zevon's) "My Shit's Fucked Up."

KINKY: It's a Miley Cyrus world. It's very difficult to break through all the white noise. It's a more serious record, yeah, for a more serious world.

"My Shit's Fucked Up" is interesting because you can't really promote it in most magazines, newspapers, TV or radio. You have to say "My Bleep's Bleeped Up," which gets a little tedious after a while. It's not just a song about Warren Zevon, who was a friend of mine. It's not just about Warren dying of cancer - it pretty aptly describes the country and the world. Our shit's fucked up and it may not be fixable this time.

Tell you the truth, Rick, the audience was not in mind when I recorded this record. I was not concerned with what the critics would think or what the people would think. It's not an educational tool for millenials. It's none of those things. It really was performed for a silent witness, for people who aren't here any more.

Kinky Friedman, Toronto, Oct. 2015

ME: The opening track, your duet with Willie Nelson on his "Bloody Mary Morning," is kind of an off-kilter way to open a record. The meter is, to put it mildly, a little challenging.

KINKY: I've had a couple of musicians, one of them very close to Willie - we'll keep him anonymous - and he says it's out of sync and out of rhythm. Which is fairly obvious - it's something Willie's been doing for 65 years, and it might be part of the secret of Willie's success. You're right that the spirit that's kindled there, that jazz cowboy feel, is what makes the song very infectious, very catchy, and a perfect leg opener, as we used to say, for the rest of the record. 

Part of it was, I was stoned out of my mind, because I don't smoke dope. I mean, I do with Willie only - kind of a form of Texas etiquette. But Willie just jumped right into it, and there was Bobbie, his sister, on keyboards, and Kevin Smith, his bass player. Willie provided the talent, the song, the studio, the pickers, his time and for that he got an Air Force One Zippo lighter that Bill Clinton personally gave me, and I've never used. And I know Willie is a Bill Clinton fan. At least I can say that he's a good little Democrat, which is more than I can say for myself. 

He really conveyed some kind of a - I don't know how to describe it, but it sounds like a bar room, it sounds like a spontaneous event, and it's kind of got a fun feel to what's basically a sad song, which is always good if you can make that work. I'm not looking too deeply into this, but I'd say there's a linkage to every song or I wouldn't have done 'em. I didn't do anything because I thought people would like 'em.

ME: You also did "Pickin' Time," which is a Johnny Cash song a lot of people don't know so much these days.

KINKY: "Pickin' Time" is virtually unknown - people just don't know Johnny Cash for that song. Maybe they've got ADD, maybe they've forgotten it, who knows? And as we recorded it, I thought that song isn't just about some farmer in overalls waiting for the cotton crop to come in - layin' by till pickin' time. I think we all are, Rick. I think we're all laying by till picking time. 

ME: You could almost call it a series of haikus.

KINKY: You're right. I love the rhyme "a jug of coal oil costs a dime/stay up late past pickin' time." You're right. Exactly right. That song is one of Cash's very best.

Kinky Friedman, Hugh's Room, Toronto, Oct. 2015

ME: It's another melancholy sentiment.

KINKY: I really think that melancholy is a word I'd use. Romantic has been used, romantic in the true sense in that true romance usually results in tragedy, and Romeo and Juliet are very good literary examples, of course, because if they'd lived happily every after we wouldn't know their names. I would just say that true love usually results in a hostage situation, but we know that. The great material was produced and created by melancholy people, or by tragic circumstances. 

That's why the songs coming out of Nashville right now sound like the background music for a frat party. They're written by a committee, they've got a click track going so it wouldn't sound like Willie, and the result is a very derivative sound and if they're well connected in the industry they sell a lot of records, like Miley Cyrus or Toby Keith. Toby Keith is approaching a billion dollars, Rick. That's more than Hank Williams and Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and Bob Dylan rolled together.

Kinky Friedman, Toronto, Oct. 2015

ME: Do you think country music is savable?

KINKY: I don't. I think it'll swing back. I think it's complex. My theory is that the gene pool appears to have dried up. When you talk about talent, I'm sure you and I could to through Toronto and go to some clubs and find some talent that looks like Levon Helm when he first got there. You'll see a young act that was pretty hot. What we won't see is anything that inspires us. So we could see a guy who could play the guitar just like Stevie Ray Vaughan - there's one of those around. There's somebody who wants to be the next Townes Van Zandt - he's around. So you've got a lot of people whose hearts are in the right place and who have a lot of talent in terms of playing an instrument, but as far as writing a song - maybe the culture can't absorb it any more. 

I can see why success will distance you from your art, so in Willie's case or in Bob Dylan's case you'll say 'How come they can't write a song as good as what they did before?' Well, we wouldn't understand it anyway, we wouldn't know it, and they're so good at what they do that they can write a mediocre song and it sounds great. So you can't really distinguish anymore, you can just say that great songs aren't pouring out of Nashville the way they did when Kristofferson and Shel Silverstein and Roger Miller were writing them. And Tompall Glaser - don't forget who wrote "The Streets of Baltimore." 

You're getting songs about trucks and whatever they're writing about, and there might be a line in there that somebody likes. "The Loneliest Man I Ever Met" was written by Tim Hoover and myself in Nashville maybe thirty years ago, about our friend Tompall Glaser who we felt was a forgotten, unsung hero of the Outlaw movement, because he was the only one who had anything to lose. (laughs) He was already the king of the hill on Music Row, and he burned a lot of bridges to throw in with the Outlaws, so it was kind of about him, but of course it's also about everybody. And I've had countless people tell me that they're the loneliest man I ever met. I'm not the loneliest man I ever met, but I'm working on it.


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