The Lone Star State lost an iconic public figure on Thursday when musician, humorist and one-time gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman died at his Echo Hill ranch in Medina, Texas, after a years-long battle with Parkinson’s disease. The country and western satirist dandy was known for his unique brand of folksy-kitsch storytelling and living a glamorous raconteur lifestyle in the company of friends and collaborators including Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan and T-Bone Burnett.
Long-time friend Kent Perkins told the Associated Press of Friedman’s passing, “He died peacefully. He smoked a cigar, went to bed and never woke up.” It’s a quiet, gentle exit for a man who embodied such a grand and flamboyant persona in life.
Like many Texans, Richard Samet Friedman wasn’t born in the Lone Star State, but he got here as soon as he could. As a child, he was moved from his 1944 birthplace of Chicago to 400 acres of South Texas Hill Country by his first-generation Russian-American parents, who opened a youth summer camp at Echo Hill Ranch after settling there in 1953.
Growing up, Friedman was a wunderkind chess competitor and graduated in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. It was there that he first earned the nickname Kinky on account of his signature full head of tight black curls. After experimenting with surf rock in college, he formed the satirical country act Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys in 1973.
In 2003, the band the Dixie Chicks appeared bare on the cover of Entertainment Weekly in response to conservatives who slammed their politics. The Observer reached out to Friedman about doing a parody of the EW cover. Fearless as always, he didn’t hesitate to strip down.
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But Friedman was much more than a smooth talker, and he wasn’t afraid to walk the walk of his politics all the way up to the steps of the governor’s house. Friedman made four seemingly sincere attempts to run for office as a Republican, then as an Independent and finally as a Democrat. In 1986 he lost a race for a justice of the peace position in Kerrville, near his family’s Echo Hill ranch. And he unsuccessfully ran for Texas commissioner of agriculture twice, despite making it through the primary runoff in both elections.
Friedman the politician will be remembered most for the small but very notable pop in his polling and fundraising efforts during his 2006 wildcard run for Texas governor, when he attempted to unseat conservative Republican Gov. Rick Perry. For two years Friedman’s gubernatorial campaign billboards, signs, bumper stickers and lapel buttons flooded the state with the snarky slogans: “Why The Hell Not?” “My Governor is a Jewish Cowboy” and “He Ain’t Kinky, He’s My Governor.”
Friedman was a libertarian-leaning moderate whose platforms and positions included cannabis legalization, ending capital punishment, investing in Texas’ alternative energy resources, anti-racism, LGBTQIA+ rights, increasing Mexican border security and the immediate rollback of indoor smoking bans.
Friedman was a larger-than-life Texas treasure and folk hero, which means that he will live on as such within the cultural fabric of the Lone Star State. Strong in his convictions without taking himself too seriously, he lived loud and he spoke out during his time on earth.
Funeral arrangements for Kinky Friedman have not been made available to the public at this time.