Kinky Friedman performed at Strange Brew in Austin Thursday night, and, after the show, said he preferred Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton for president.
Friedman, who was an independent candidate for governor of Texas in 2006, said Clinton won’t change anything in Washington and, “Who’s to say that maybe this guy has some real guts, maybe he makes the right call.”
“Jesus rode into town on a jackass,” Friedman said.
Friedman didn’t mention Trump during his set but he did say that “that Gary Johnson slot would have been a good one for the Kinkster,” referring to Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson. But, he said, he was too bitter and burned out for that.
Friedman ran for Texas agriculture commissioner in 2014 on a platform of legalizing marijuana and cultivating hemp but lost in the Democratic primary to Jim Hogan, who did not campaign for the job. Johnson said he stopped smoking marijuana to run for president.
Friedman’s solo acoustic performance before an appreciate crowd included five new songs, part of his first original songwriting in 30 years. He said he owed the output to Willie Nelson who told Friedman that he was depressed and the cure was to quit watching reruns of “Matlock” and write music.
“I’m 71-years-old, but I read at the 73-year-old level,” said Friedman. He said one of the advantages of getting older and going deaf is that you can imagine people saying more interesting things than they are actually saying. He recalled being on a recent Southwest Airlines flight out of Dallas and the young man sitting next to him telling him that his father was a couple of years older than Friedman and was “wearing a bikini.”
Turns out, Friedman said, that what the man actually said was that his father was “moving to McKinney.”
The new songs are on an EP and will be on a new recording along with some other recent originals later this year, Friedman said.
Friedman also performed some classics, including “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore,” “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns it the Bed,” and “Ride ‘Em Jewboy.”
Friedman said a recording of the last was on a cassette that was smuggled into Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment on Robben Island and was, for a stretch, the last thing Mandela listened to each night. Friedman described that as an immeasurable honor.
Friedman also read aloud a moving chapter about his father from his book, “Heroes of a Texas Childhood,” which includes essays on Barbara Jordan, Willie Nelson and Davy Crockett. Friedman’s father, Tom, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas, fought in World War II, for many years ran a summer camp for children, and continued to play tennis and eat lunch at The Frisco on Burnet Road until late in his life.
Friedman said he had not seen his one-time gubernatorial rival, Rick Perry, on “Dancing with the Stars,” but said he had shown an admirable capacity for reinvention.
Friedman said he would have preferred that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders would have been elected president this year because then “there would be Jeeewwww in the White House,” but that he just didn’t see things getting any better under Clinton and that maybe Trump would prove a throwback to the man of privilege who helps the common man, like FDR.
As Friedman spoke, the man from Strange Brew came to hand him his check for the performance, and told Friedman how much he enjoyed the show but, of his talking Trump up and Clinton down, “I have to call BS on that.”
One of the new songs Friedman performed Thursday night was “Jesus in Pajamas.”
