With his latest campaign to become Governor of Texas just kicking into gear, Kinky Friedman should probably be at home in the US, rather than on the south coast of Britain. The man himself says that he's been "sent out of state so I wouldn't screw up". In 2006 he took 13 per cent of the vote as an independent candidate but next year he has the backing of the Democratic Party so it's more than just the eccentric whim of a Jewish country singer.
Friedman is also here to promote his new book Heroes of a Texas Childhood. The book's subject matter is a change from his usual Chandler-esque detective fare, but then Friedman is a man of many talents. He even has his own line of cigars, although he doesn't tell us whether the one he clutches unlit throughout his performance is one of these.
The concert begins when Friedman's trusty sidekick Little Jewford (Jeff Shelby) sits down at a keyboard perched on a chair and plays "The Yellow Rose Of Texas", then his boss appears in full cowboy regalia and strums through "Before All Hell Breaks Loose" on his acoustic guitar. It's a typically wry number, part honest sentiment, part country & western send-up, with cheeky lines such as, "What kind of rubber did Joseph use before all Hell broke loose?"
The nature of the audience, all seated at tables, many with bottles of wine on ice, lends the occasion a sense of cabaret, something Little Jewford does little to shatter when he hams it up on the keyboard, playing "When the Saints go Marching in" in multiple styles, from country to "Wolfgang Amadeus Jewford", and even backwards. Jewford then plays three kazoos on Friedman's preposterous satire on feminism "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed" prior to a Q&A with the audience. Friedman says this is to get him in practice for his run at governership but the questions forthcoming are about his novels, his clothes and even his pets, so to pep things up I ask him about his prospective policy on gun ownership, always a thorny issue in his home state. Showing that he has the makings of a true politician, he quickly swerves away from the subject and talks passionately about judiciary reform, resulting in a outbreak of approving applause.
Before returning to his acoustic guitar he reads a passage about the singer Willie Nelson from his new book. He portrays Nelson as a zen outlaw on the run from the IRS and attributes a joke to him that causes much laughter: "If you're going to have sex with an animal, make it a horse, that way if it doesn't work out, at least you've got a ride home."
Changing the mood, the next song "Sold American" is the poignant tale of a "faded jaded falling cowboy star" but such pathos doesn't last long as he follows it with "one I wrote when I was eleven" which opens with the line, "Ol' man Lucas had a lot of mucus coming right out of his nose". Friedman then disappears briefly before returning for an encore of two American folk classics, "The Ballad Of Ira Hayes", made famous by Johnny Cash, and Woody Guthrie's ode to the depression era outlaw "Pretty Boy Floyd", both delivered with a requisite sense of melancholy. With that the possible future Governor of Texas retreats to a table by the venue's entrance to autograph copies of his book.
