Appreciation: Kinky Friedman, dead at 79. 'You have to be miserable to write a good song' he told us.

Kinky Friedman explains how Willie Nelson and misery inspired his new album

By George Varga, The San Diego Union-Tribune

April 14, 2018

Never tell author, singer-songwriter and former Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman you’re sorry for being late. Not even if you’re calling him a full day after a scheduled phone interview.

“Don’t apologize! That’s for Catholics and Democrats!” quipped Friedman, whose several dozen books include “Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola” and “Kill Two Birds & Get Stoned: A Novel.”

A longtime friend of Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, San Diego’s Mojo Nixon and former San Diegan Tom Waits, Friedman is near-legendary for being brash and unapologetic.

Just how brash and unapologetic is evident in the titles of some of his memorably skewed country songs from the 1970s.

They include “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore” and “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed” and (Friedman and his former band, The Texas Jewboys, infamously filmed an episode of the TV music series “Austin City Limits” that was deemed too offensive to air and was shelved.)

More examples of his brashness — and his remarkably colorful life — are highlighted in the new book “Everything’s Bigger in Texas: The Life and Times of Kinky Friedman” by Mary Lou Sullivan.

The 332-page biography includes a two-page foreword by Friedman, who writes: “I have no regrets about what I told Mary Lou or what she may have written. Like I say, there’s a fine line between fiction and nonfiction and I believe Jimmy Buffet and I snorted it in 1976.”

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