A U T H O R    I N T E R V I E W S K I N K Y    F R I E D M A N www.kinkyfriedman.com Interviewed by John Connolly A strange and undeniably noxious odour creeps into the lounge of Dublin's Shelbourne Hotel and proceeds to insinuate itself into the nostrils of the hotel's assorted patrons. Elderly tea-drinkers sniff their milk suspiciously, then speculate on possible problems with the drains until the source of the health-endangering fumes becomes worryingly apparent. A huge cigar swings into view, surrounded by clouds of greenish-tinged smoke. The cigar is firmly-clamped between the teeth of a medium-sized man dressed entirely in black, his face largely obscured by a combination of smoke, moustache and a feathered black cowboy hat. Richard "Kinky" Friedman, former Peace Corps volunteer, semi-retired country and western singer and cult detective novelist, is about to hold court. Friedman published his first book, Greenwich Killing Time, in 1986, and is now comfortably into double figures in the novel-writing stakes. Each boasts the same black humour, offbeat one-liners, and a cast of characters that includes friends, acquaintances, former political opponents, musical stars, girlfriends, and members of his family. Among the more regular members of his barely fictionalised troupe of players are Ratso, humourist and guitar-playing sidekick on Friedman's musical forays; Mike McGovern, a former columnist with the New York Daily News and author of the Kinky Friedman cookbook; and Steve Rambam, a private investigator still wanted "in every state beginning with an 'I'." "The interesting thing, re-reading the books, is that there's very little fiction involved here," says Friedman. "I've been accused of not beating myself to death creating any new characters, which is true, but it's hard to beat guys like McGovern and Ratso." At the centre of all the novels is the character of "The Kinkster" himself as the wiscracking, antiestablishment investigator of weird crimes. The odd, occasionally surreal qualities of his books are as much a reflection of his own life as they are of his world view. After completing the Plan II Liberal Arts Program in the University of Texas ("mainly distinguished by the fact that everyone of the program had some form or other of personal tic") the young Friedman headed for Borneo in 1966 with the Peace Corps, the US voluntary organisation founded to bring truth, justice and the American way to the backwaters of the world. "I felt like I was a giver in a taker's body," he explains. "I wanted to do some good. It was the same reason I ran for political office in 1986, which a lot of people viewed sceptically at the time." (Friedman ran unsuccessfully for the post of Justice of the Peace in Kerrville, Texas, against the eventual winner, Patricia Knox, and a local man who ruined his chances of success by killing his dog with an axe shortly before the election. The experience provided the inspiration for his seventh novel, Armadillos and Old Lace.) In Borneo, Friedman worked as an agricultural extension worker. "I was responsible for distributing seeds upriver, supposedly," he says. "But I didn't have any seeds, none at all, so I distributed my own seeds upriver. I was working with people who, for 2,000 years, had been having a very successful and happy time of things, and telling them how to fuck up their lives. That was the job." While in Borneo, he began writing country and western songs and decided to pursue a singing career upon his return to the US, releasing his first album, Sold American, in 1973 and eventually forming America's first Jewish country and western group, the eponymously titled Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. The Jewboys' finest moments included the touching They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore and the feminist-unfriendly Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed ("You'd better occupy the kitchen/ Liberate the sink"). At a performance in Buffalo, a rendition of the latter caused local feminists to storm the stage and commence destroying the group's equipment. A police escort was required to get the group out of town safely. "The Jewboys just irritated Americans from '73 to '75 - I mean every stripe, from the Jewish Defense League to women in New York," he says. "But we were simply a country band with a social conscience. I mean, I wrote the first pro-choice country and western song." In 1976 he went on tour as a solo artist with Bob Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue, but that was to be the beginning of the end for Kinky Friedman, country and western singer - although it proved to be a particularly long, drawn-out demise. "I was an over-the-hill country singer for about a decade," he confesses. "I did these crazy shows at the Lone Star in New York where they'd just about have to wheel me onto the stage on a gurney and I'd be flying on 11 different herbs and spices." Friedman turned to writing, although Greenwich Killing Time was rejected by 29 New York publishers before it was eventually accepted. "I like mysteries because they offer some kind of resolution and life doesn't seem to do that very often, but I prefer ones that are notable not for plot, but for flavour. I have a feeling that if F. Scott Fitzgerald and those guys were alive today they'd be writing in the field of mystery." He cites Conan-Doyle's The White Company as a particular favourite, althought he also namechecks Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie, as well as American detective novelists such as John D. MacDonald. "Of course, he stepped on a rainbow," notes Friedman, using his favourite euphemism for death. Now in his fifties, Friedman appears to want some stability in his life. (At the time of writing, in 1995, he was dating a former Miss Texas who had progressed to a new career teaching line dancing.) But he admits that the deaths of friends, his mother and at least one former lover may have affected him in ways that he has not yet recognised. "The girl in Vancouver went to Jesus about 15 years ago and she did kiss a windshield in a Ferrari at 95 miles an hour. As my friends have pointed out, having a dead sweetheart hasn't hurt me as a writer but it has coloured my attitude to women and relationships more than I know. I wonder why I'm not married and don't have kids. I don't know. At a certain time in your life or in a relationship, if you lose somebody then you've got another angel on your shoulder. "The fact that I've been writing so prolifically is a direct index of the emptiness and unhappiness in my life, but I'm convinced that a happy American never created anything great and my best work is when I'm unhappy. I've been miserable for about 48 years and things are only starting to look up now..." POSTSCRIPT - August, 1997 The lonesome tones of Willie Nelson rise on the Texas air and roll off into the darkness, making the odd deer feel unaccountably maudlin and causing lone jackrabbits to be overcome by a sudden desire to sink an whiskey and cry into the empty glass. "Ride, ride, ride,/ Ride 'em Jewboy," sings Willie, with his unique air of world-weary resignation combined with a romantic's undying optimism. "I'm with you, I'm with you, boy,/ If I have to ride six million miles," he continues, as if he can already hear the sound of the IRS hammering, once again, on his back door yet, frankly, doesn't give a damn. A small muscular black dog named Mr. Magoo, wearing a red collar decorated with white bones, sits close by, listening to Willie and regarding its owner with adoring eyes. His owner, who sits beside me in the darkness of the pick-up truck while Willie sings, is one Richard Kinky "Big Dick" Friedman, author of many detective novels and an untold number of country and western songs, among them Ride 'Em Jewboy, the song currently receiving the Willie Nelson treatment. The song is, quite probably, the only country and western song ever written about the Holocaust, thus making it unique in the annals of country music. It can be set alongside Rapid City, South Dakota, the first pro-choice country and western song, and another Friedman composition. These songs and others like them - Wildman of Borneo, Asshole From El Paso (which implied that the citizens of that Texas town amused themselves by deflowering virgins) - have not been heard by more than a select few for a number of years. That situation may be about to change with the release of Pearls in the Snow, an album of cover versions of Friedman's songs tackled by such luminaries as Nelson, Dwight Yoakam, Delbert McClinton, Asleep at the Wheel, and, with a stunning version of Wildman, Guy Clark. It is because of this album that Kinky Friedman sits in the Texas darkness, smoking a cigar as he listens to some of the biggest names in country music shining new light on his work. "It's something that's outside your control," he says. "The public never gets it right and they never pick up on true greatness. That's only determined by Japanese insurance companies after the artist has died. I'm just glad that it's coming out. Usually you have to go to Jesus before you get a tribute album." Friedman has cleverly avoided this turn of events by organising his own tribute album while he is still healthy enough to enjoy the results. Around him, the wind whispers in the trees on the ranch where he lives. It operates as a camp for children in the summer but the children have now all gone back to school, leaving the ranch to Kinky, Mr. Magoo, two cats, an armadillo named Dilly, some horses and an assortment of wildlife. Occasionally, Friedman's father Tom comes to stay, bringing with him his wife Edith and a mixture of pride and bemusement at his son's activities. He seems both older yet happier than when we first met in Dublin two years earlier. The rediscovery and reinterpretation of his songs for the tribute album appears to have given him a burst of genuine, if cautious, optimism. "It could be a power year for the Kinkster," he concludes, with a final puff of cigar smoke into the Texas night.