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Kinky Friedman on Danny Finley: ‘He added soul to a white Jewish band’

Bill DeYoung

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Danny "Panama Red" Finley, left, and Richard "Kinky" Friedman, circa 1973.

Long before the phrase existed in the popular vernacular, Kinky Friedman was the definition of outlaw county.

“Outlier” might be a better word for Richard Friedman and his music – although it stayed squarely within the three-chord parameters of classic country, and used simple melodies and arrangements, it was anything but traditional.

Satirical humor was the common thread – about society, about women, and mostly about Jews and their place in the world. Friedman never rose above cult artist status because AM radio was simply not ready to accept “Ride ‘em  Jewboy,” “They Don’t Make Jews Like Jesus Any More,” “High on Jesus,” “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone,” “The Ballad of Charles Whitman” or the deeply misogynistic “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed.”

Programmers missed the point. Friedman was – and is – a brilliant, witty satirist. Like Shel Silverstein, his poetry was so dense that people often couldn’t get past the shock value, the nonsense or the posing.

This was the age of Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, Leon Redbone, early Jimmy Buffett and other off-center, literate musical acts. But Kinky – despite ringing endorsements from Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan – didn’t fly.

Friedman later re-branded himself as a successful mystery novelist, cigar raconteur and – he got 12 percent of the vote – candidate for Governor of Texas.

At his side in the early, legend-making days, was a band he referred to as the Texas Jewboys (according to said legend, an entire Austin City Limits episode was taped, but deemed offensive and never aired).

From 1971 to ’74 – for Friedman’s first two groundbreaking, never-bettered albums Sold American) and Kinky Friedman (co-produced by Willie Nelson), the Texas Jewboys’ lead guitarist was Danny “Panama Red” Finley, longtime fixture on the St. Petersburg music scene and co-founder of the early ‘70s hippie/country/psych band Bethlehem Asylum.

Finley, who died in late April, will be remembered by his friends (and otherwise) at a Celebration of Life, Saturday at 4 p.m. at Craftsman House Gallery.

RELATED STORY: St. Pete music legend Danny ‘Panama Red’ Finley dies

We got Kinky Friedman, 76, on the phone from his Texas home to discuss his old running buddy. “Danny, he said, “was a Jew by inspiration, very funny, a very bright one.”

Kinky Friedman: How far back did Danny and me go? Well, having forgotten the first half of my life, that’s a little difficult to answer. I can do it by song – there’s a little cluster of really good songs, headed by ‘Something’s Wrong with the Beaver.’ That might have been one of the best songs we wrote together. We also did ‘Autograph,’ a nice and sad song. There’s a couple others there too. Oh – “Mama Baby Mama Let Me Jump in Your Pajamas.”

Eds. Note: The others are “Homo Erectus” and “Popeye the Sailor Man.”

On what Danny brought to the table:

Musically, he added a very soulful element to the band. A very intelligent guy. And a troublemaker. And he was more familiar with the road than I was. Danny was meticulous about getting it right – on the very beginning of my song ‘Sold American,’ Danny is playing a guitar lick that took him about eight hours to get exactly the way he wanted it to in the studio. But it was the right lick.

I think Danny was the first guy to turn me on to Peruvian Marching Powder. But I think I made up for that, turning most of the free world on to it myself.

Part of what was special about Danny was he really walked his own road. And it’s very hard to be in a band for any length of time if you’re doing that. To use an overworked word, he added soul to a white Jewish band.

On why Danny left the Texas Jewboys:

Well, it’s very hard to know what’s I anybody’s mind, particularly Danny Finley’s. But it’s a very fertile mind. Yeah, if we could do it, we would write all the time. And should. We tended to let a lot of other things get in the way. Some of them not very important. And then of course when you’re on the road together … why would the Everly Brothers not get along? Or Sam and Dave? Or Flatt and Scruggs, or the Glaser Brothers? I think part of what the road does to you … after a while, you become part of the road. So you see, Bob Dylan may come home for a bar mitzvah or something, of his grandson, but he’s not really there. He’s on the road.

Finley checked out of Camp Jewboy in 1975 to start his own band (piano player “Little Jewford,” says Friedman, was the first to leave the original band, although he and Friedman sometimes perform together today). Musicians come and go – that’s just the way it is:

I was shocked to be told that the Jewboys lasted precisely as long as the successful part of Hank Williams’ career. That’s hard to believe – but maybe so, maybe it was that short an experience. The band was not that successful that it needed any help breaking up. It broke up of its own volition. And we did not have to break up onstage at Knott’s Berry Farm, like the Everly Brothers.

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