The last time Kinky Friedman released an album of new material, Gerald Ford was president.
That album was 1976’s Lasso From El Paso and it was only his third release as a recording artist. Still, Friedman was able to assemble an amazing group of musicians including T-Bone Burnett, Eric Clapton, Lowell George, Levon Helm, Mick Ronson, Ron Wood, Rick Danko, Dr. John, Richard Manuel and Ronnie Hawkins.
Since that time, there have been over ten compilations and live albums but no further studio releases. Instead, Friedman has kept busy in various causes, writing books, running for office on a number of occasions in Texas and various other antics.
On October 2, the long recording dry spell will end with the release of The Loneliest Man I Ever Met on Avenue A Records/Thirsty Tiger. Kinky takes on not only his own music but also those of Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard and his pal Willie Nelson, who produced and performs on his own Bloody Mary Morning. The album’s opening song, which also features Willie’s sister, Bobbie, on piano and Kevin Smith on standup bass, is rendered as a spare duet, their traded lines punctuated with Nelson’s Spanish guitar-picking. Conveying both immediacy and intimacy, it sets the tone for the other 11 tracks, all produced by Brian Molnar and featuring guitarist Joe Cirotti, with harmonica by Willie’s Family Band mate Mickey Raphael and piano contributions by Little Jewford, Kinky’s sidekick since his first post-Peace Corps job, bandleader of the Texas Jewboys.
Though songs such as Waits’ A Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis, Haggard’s Mama’s Hungry Eyes, Dylan’s Girl from the North Country and Friedman’s own Lady Yesterday, not to mention his 20-year-old, never-recorded co-write with Tim Hoover, I’m the Loneliest Man I Ever Met, seem filled with melancholy, despair and regret and certainly, loneliness, Friedman suggests they’re something else: Romantic.
He explains, “What I’ve tried to do is interpret some of these songs. But it’s not like Tony Bennett sings Willie Nelson; it’s more spiritually halfway between those people and me. So if you’re not a little bit melancholy, maybe you should be.
“A happy American creates nothing great. My definition of an artist is someone who’s ahead of his time and behind on his rent. If you can figure out how to stay that way, you can write the great shit that Kris [Kristofferson] and Willie were able to do. Look at what shape Willie was in when he was writing in Nashville, he had three little kids and was just broke, living in a trailer park. Willie wrote Night Life, Funny How Time Slips Away and Crazy all in one week, a terrible week in his life.”
Railing against such perceived evils, whether cultural, political, social or in any other realm of human experience, is one of Friedman’s favorite pastimes, which is why he calls Warren Zevon’s My Shit’s Fucked Up possibly the album’s most important song. The late Zevon wrote it as a commentary on his own failing health, but Friedman finds it a perfect allegory for the current state of world affairs. As a man who has traveled much of the planet, quotes Winston Churchill, calls two presidents pals and now labels himself “governor of the heart of Texas” (as chosen by voters everywhere but in his home state), he’s in a position to know.
But in most cases, the selections, which also include a lesser-known Cash song that was Friedman’s father’s favorite (Pickin’ Time) and two Great American Songbook tunes (Wand’rin’ Star and A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square), reflect more personal feelings.
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