Kinky Friedman, proudly eccentric singer-songwriter from Texas, dies at the age of 79

Kinky Friedman, the eccentric country singer-songwriter whose musings, novels, one-liners and quirky campaign for governor made him a folk hero, died at his home in Texas at the age of 79.

“Kinky Friedman stepped onto a rainbow at his beloved Echo Hill surrounded by family and friends,” said a statement on X announcing his death. “Kinkster suffered tremendous pain and unimaginable loss over the past few years, but he never lost his fighting spirit and quick wit. Kinky will live on as his books are read and his songs are sung.”

Friedman’s eccentric appeal and his “fearless Texan chutzpah,” as his friend Taj Mahal once described it, both in his writings and in his campaign speeches, songs and interviews, made him a media darling and a songwriter’s man, befriending several presidents (George W. Bush, Bill Clinton) and counting Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson among his closest friends.

In 2006, Friedman ran a hopeless and humorous campaign for governor of Texas, receiving 12 percent of the vote. “I’ve written my will,” Friedman said in 2014 in one of his favorite sayings. “When I die, I’ll be cremated and the ashes will be sprinkled in Rick Perry’s hair.”

Friedman’s best known album, 1973 Sold American, established the Chicago-born Jewish country singer as a renegade willing to test boundaries, even among the outlaw country fans of Nelson and Waylon Jennings, who were his country music contemporaries.

After a series of cult albums failed commercially, Friedman changed course and started a successful career as a novelist and eventually as a columnist for Texas monthlywhere he introduced readers across the country to his black wit and slapstick pathos in his Texas column.

After his death, Friedman’s estate published an excerpt from one of his 1993 columns about his lifelong devotion to animals: “They say that when you die and go to heaven, all the dogs and cats you’ve ever had in your life come running to meet you.”

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