Kinky Friedman Likes to Talk About Kinky Friedman, to Imus and Anybody with Ears

Having Kinky Friedman in studio this morning while he was in New York seemed like a great idea—a treat, in fact—until Kinky stood up and started doing shtick, telling a joke about an old man and a rake that barely worked for television and didn’t work for radio at all.
 
Leading Imus to tell his friend of more than 40 years, “That is just the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”
 
Kinky is in the midst of his Springtime for Kinky tour, in which he travels from city to city performing sets interlaced with music, prose, and random commentary. He was forced back out on the road because Imus prohibited him from making millions convincing people that calf-roping prodigy Wyatt Imus was, in fact, a midget.
 
“We could have played a rodeos, and minstrel shows, and bar mitzvahs and stuff throughout the South, and been very successful,” Kinky lamented.
 
After New York, Kinky takes his act down to Maryland and Virginia before heading back north to play at Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble this Saturday. “I’m one step away from death, and I’m starting to sing well again,” he promised Imus. 
 
Also brewing for the Kinkster, as he is fond of calling himself: audiobooks of his earliest works, read by him, and available at Apple and Amazon. He’s also assembled some of his Texas Monthly columns for a book entitled, “Drinker with a Writing Problem.” Though he devoted large portions of the last five years running for one public office or another, Kinky admitted today that he’s on vacation from politics.
 
“I think the Lord has bigger things in store for the Kinkster,” he said, and pointed to his book project with Billy Bob Thornton as an example. “We’re doing this book together, and he’s written this song, the title of which I love: ‘Hey Me, I’m Talking to You.’”
 
Such introspective phrasing is a bit deep for the I-Man, who blamed all of his previous problems in life on, well, his current guest. “I never did cocaine until I met you in the 70s,” he told Kinky. “You said, ‘Hey, kid, you want to try this?’ It was your fault! And then you handed me a bottle of vodka.”
 
Hoping to salvage whatever time was left this morning, Kinky suggested Imus “plug” his old friend “the Kinkster,” which sounded icky. But before Imus could do anything, Kinky happily plugged himself, announcing that he’ll be at the Highline Ballroom in Manhattan tonight, and then touring Australia in June.
 
It’s probably good that Kinky is doing so much traveling on his own, considering, as Imus put it, “This interview has pretty much gone nowhere.”
 
-Julie Kanfer