Kinky Friedman has performed with Bob Dylan, traveled with Led Zeppelin on their private plane, and partied with John Belushi, Robin Williams, Don Imus, Lowell George, Levon Helm, Eric Clapton, Iggy Pop, Mike Bloomfield, and Dennis Hopper. When his cocaine habit nearly killed him, he returned to Texas and wrote 30 books, including 18 detective novels, as well as memoirs with Willie Nelson and Billy Bob Thornton. More than 547,000 Texans voted for him when he ran for governor in 2006, and friends Willie Nelson, Jimmy Buffet, and Lyle Lovett helped with fundraisers.
Kinky Friedman is a true Renaissance man, and in EVERYTHING’S BIGGER IN TEXAS: The Life and Times of Kinky Friedman (Backbeat Books Hardcover, November 2017, $29.99), biographer Mary Lou Sullivan provides an intimate look at Richard “Kinky” Friedman culled from hours of candid, in-depth interviews with the Kinkster, his friends, and his associates.
Kinky was a child chess prodigy, a camp counselor, and a Red Cross-certified swimming instructor. In the 60s, he picketed segregated businesses while in college and served in the Peace Corps in Borneo. A singer/songwriter/satirist who called his country band the Texas Jewboys, Kinky was the “first full-blooded Jew” to play the Grand Ole Opry and put on the only show in Austin City Limits’ history deemed too offensive to air.
He’s been a columnist, politician, entrepreneur (Kinkajou Records, Kinky Friedman’s Private Stock Politically Correct Salsa and Dip, Kinky Friedman Cigars, Man in Black Tequila), and animal activist who co-founded the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, a no-kill shelter in Texas. Never one to let age define him, at 70, Kinky released his first studio album in thirty-nine years and toured the country to promote it on his Resurrected Tour.
On November 15th, Kinky and his biographer, Mary Lou Sullivan, will go on the road for the “Everything’s Bigger in Texas” book and music tour.
Tour dates are as follows:
November 4th – Texas Book Festival - Austin
November 15th - The Townsend - Austin
November 16th - The Mucky Duck - Houston
November 17th - Poor David’s Pub - Dallas
November 18th - McCabe’s Guitar Store - Los Angeles