Kinky Friedman, the singer, songwriter, humorist and sometime politician who with his band, the Texas Jewboys, developed an ardent following among alt-country music fans with songs like “They Ain’t Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore” — and whose biting cultural commentary earned him comparisons with Will Rogers and Mark Twain — died on Thursday at his ranch near Austin, Texas. He was 79.
The writer Larry Sloman, a close friend, said the cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease.
Mr. Friedman occupied a singular spot on the fringes of American popular culture, alongside acts like Jello Biafra, the Dead Milkmen and Mojo Nixon. He leered back at the mainstream with songs that blended vaudeville, outlaw country and hokum, a bawdy style of novelty music typified by tracks like “Asshole From El Paso” and “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You.”
He toured widely in the 1970s, with his band and solo, including on the second leg of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue in 1976. He performed on “Saturday Night Live” and at the Grand Ole Opry — Mr. Friedman claimed to be the first Jewish musician to do so (though in fact others, including the fiddler Gene Lowinger, had beat him to it).
Another performance, recorded for the TV show “Austin City Limits,” was reported to be so profane that it has never been aired.
In the 1980s, after the band broke up, Mr. Friedman turned to writing detective novels, using the same casual irreverence that he brought to the stage in books like “Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned” (2001) and “God Bless John Wayne” (1995)
Yet there was a surprising earnestness behind his weirdness. Mr. Friedman founded a ranch for rescue animals. He and his sister, Marcie, ran Echo Hill Camp, which they inherited from their parents and which they offered, free of charge, to children of parents killed while serving in the U.S. military.
He spent an increasing amount of time on his ranch. The Echo Hill camp closed in 2013, but three years ago, he and his sister revived it, this time with a focus on helping the children of fallen service members as well as the children of refugee families from Afghanistan.
“There was a volunteer who fixed a water heater who I went over to thank,” he told Texas Highways magazine in 2023. “He said, ‘You’re welcome. I’m doing it for Jesus.’ I told him, ‘I’m doing it for Moses.’”
Clay Risen
New York Times
Kinky Friedman, the singer, songwriter, humorist and sometime politician who with his band, the Texas Jewboys, developed an ardent following among alt-country music fans with songs like “They Ain’t Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore” — and whose biting cultural commentary earned him comparisons with Will Rogers and Mark Twain — died on Thursday at his ranch near Austin, Texas. He was 79.
The writer Larry Sloman, a close friend, said the cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease.
Mr. Friedman occupied a singular spot on the fringes of American popular culture, alongside acts like Jello Biafra, the Dead Milkmen and Mojo Nixon. He leered back at the mainstream with songs that blended vaudeville, outlaw country and hokum, a bawdy style of novelty music typified by tracks like “Asshole From El Paso” and “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You.”
He toured widely in the 1970s, with his band and solo, including on the second leg of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue in 1976. He performed on “Saturday Night Live” and at the Grand Ole Opry — Mr. Friedman claimed to be the first Jewish musician to do so (though in fact others, including the fiddler Gene Lowinger, had beat him to it).
Another performance, recorded for the TV show “Austin City Limits,” was reported to be so profane that it has never been aired.
In the 1980s, after the band broke up, Mr. Friedman turned to writing detective novels, using the same casual irreverence that he brought to the stage in books like “Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned” (2001) and “God Bless John Wayne” (1995)
Yet there was a surprising earnestness behind his weirdness. Mr. Friedman founded a ranch for rescue animals. He and his sister, Marcie, ran Echo Hill Camp, which they inherited from their parents and which they offered, free of charge, to children of parents killed while serving in the U.S. military.
He spent an increasing amount of time on his ranch. The Echo Hill camp closed in 2013, but three years ago, he and his sister revived it, this time with a focus on helping the children of fallen service members as well as the children of refugee families from Afghanistan.
“There was a volunteer who fixed a water heater who I went over to thank,” he told Texas Highways magazine in 2023. “He said, ‘You’re welcome. I’m doing it for Jesus.’ I told him, ‘I’m doing it for Moses.’”
Clay Risen
New York Times