Kinky Friedman LIVE Next Month at Daryl's House

Governor of the Heart of Texas Kinky Friedman has been resurrected. And he's hitting the road to prove it. The legendary outlaw country singer/songwriter, novelist and self-styled Texas Jewboy's latest album, The Loneliest Man I Ever Met (Avenue A Records/Thirty Tigers), mixing originals with interpretations of the music of his greatest contemporaries, has been a hit since its 2015 release. It received rave reviews across the board, making it Kinky's best and most popular effort ever. Yes, the Kinkster has been resurrected.

The Resurrected Tour starts in mid-April and will continue to the middle of May. Kinky will be performing with his uber sideman, New Jersey's own Joe Cirotti. Kinky's CD producer, Brian Molnar, will open the show as a duet with Joe. Longtime pal Kinkster pal Brian Kanof will auction off bottles (first half of the tour only) of Kinky's personal brand of "Mexican mouthwash," Man in Black Tequila, to benefit Kinky's award-winning animal rescue group Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch.

Nobody could invent a character quite like Kinky Friedman, the stogie-waving, black-hat-wearing Texas Jewboy singer, storyteller, tequila purveyor, animal rescuer and full-time iconoclast. The Loneliest Man I Ever Met, featuring his first newly written songs in four decades, has to have been one of the longest-awaited follow-ups in recent memory. Not that fans have complained; the continued popularity of tunes such as "Sold American," "Nashville Casualty and Life" and "Ride 'Em Jewboy" (the Holocaust-referencing song that soothed Nelson Mandela in prison) prove Kinky is that rare talent whose work withstands the test of time. He still delivers those songs - interspersed with his inimitable blend of politically incorrect quips, jokes and tales both tall and true - to appreciative audiences around the world.

Coming soon from Backbeat Books will be Mary Lou Sullivan's comprehensive Kinky bio (holy cow: 450+ pages!), titled Everything's Bigger in Texas - The Life and Times of Kinky Friedman.' Sullivan penned the acclaimed Johnny Winter biography Raisin' Cain -The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter. Originally scheduled for an early 2018 release, the publication date has been moved up to November, due to buzz around the book.

Kinky himself is finishing up a book about another artist; he's co-author, with Louie Kemp, of Kemp's memoir The Boys From the North Country: My Life With Robert Zimmerman and Bob Dylan. Kemp, a lifelong friend of Dylan, details a series of amazing stories about the men from Minnesota, beginning at childhood. It is also scheduled for a holiday release, making Kinky the best holiday gift of 2017.

And there are simply more sentiments he needs to express - his own and those of what country music was all about, according to Kinky, before it came "homogenized and trivialized and sanitized."

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" his recent 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, and calls two presidents pals, he's in a position to know.

Over the years, Kinky and Willie Nelson have developed a very special (and also quite unusual) relationship. It was Willie's inspiration that led to the recording of The Loneliest Man I Ever Met. Now calling Willie his "personal shrink," Kinky credits him with his return to full-time songwriting. Willie - who told Kinky after the latter's failed 2006 Texas gubernatorial race "fortunately, we are not in control" - called Kinky about a year ago just to say howdy. When asked what he was doing at that moment, Kinky replied, "watching Matlock." Willie told him that was a sure sign of depression and that he should start writing songs again. His exact words: "Start writing, Kinky - start writing." Kinky did in fact, start writing that night and has now written a dozen more new songs, all of which will be on his next CD, which he will start recording this summer with Cirotti and Molnar.

Several of these new tunes will be available during the tour on a special EP Kinky recorded at Echo Hill, Resurrected - A Limited Collector's Edition, though all of these are solo recordings (without Joe Cirotti's acclaimed accompaniment). Kinky is essentially bootlegging his own product, before the bootleggers get it.

And there is more on the horizon. Currently, Kinky is finishing editing on his first detective novel in several years, The Return of Kinky Friedman by Kinky Friedman, which will hit in early 2018, and his popular earlier book Road Kill is being developed as a pilot for a limited series on network television.

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