Mary Lou Sullivan is an award-winning journalist, author, public relations professional and former radio show host. Her first authorized biography, Raisin’ Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (Backbeat Books, May 2010), earned popular and critical acclaim, as well as prestigious awards for the quality of her writing and her research.

The Blues Foundation in Memphis gave her the 2011 Keeping the Blues Alive Award in Literature, and the Association of Recorded Sound Collections gave the book its 2011 Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research.

BIOGRAPHY

Mary Lou Sullivan

Everything’s Bigger in Texas: The Life and Times of Kinky Friedman

Backbeat Books

Hardcover, 978-1495058967, 344 pages, $29.99 (also available as ebook)

October 2017

Reviewed by Si Dunn

Chicago-native Richard “Kinky” Friedman has lived a bigger life in Texas than most other Lone Star State inhabitants would dare. Indeed, Kinky’s name is now recognized across the nation and in many other parts of the the world. But what he is remembered for, besides being famous, can be harder to pin down.

He is perhaps best known as a Jewish country-western singer and songwriter who became a mystery novelist, a Texas Monthly columnist, a serious candidate for Texas governor, and a national TV political commentator, among other things. He also is an animal rights activist and friends with many musicians and pop-culture celebrities. And, now in his seventies, he again has been hitting the road to perform his songs — drawing inspiration from two other still-traveling troubadours: Willie Nelson, now in his eighties, and Bob Dylan, now in his mid-seventies.

“Kinky’s legacy is the ability to inspire, to make people laugh, to make them think, to skewer sacred cows and hypocrisy, to continue to move forward, and to be his own man,” Mary Lou Sullivan writes. “He inspired 600,000 Texans, including first-time voters, to believe in honesty and integrity, and stuck to his principles and beliefs when a life and taking campaigns donations from lobbyists would have helped him politically.”

Her entertaining biography of Friedman is based on “dozens” of interviews gathered over a period of years, and she was able to gain his trust and push him “well beyond [his] comfort zone” with questions.

Some of his early life is eye-opening. As a child, he was a chess prodigy. He grew up in Houston and Austin and joined a fraternity at the University of Texas at Austin. He and his first band, King Arthur and the Carrots, released a record spoofing the Beach Boys. It got some radio air play in Austin for a couple of weeks in the mid-1960s, then fell off the charts. Later, as the Vietnam War kept heating up, Kinky Friedman joined the Peace Corps and served in Borneo as an agricultural extension volunteer who didn’t have much to do except explore the countryside, cities, and culture.

The well-written biography also chronicles his efforts to find songwriting success and stardom in Los Angeles, Nashville, and New York. Kinky became friends with many notables, including comedian-actor John Belushi, and got to perform on “Saturday Night Live.” But his Big Apple days also were days of heavy drug use, and he returned to Austin in the early 1980s essentially “to save his life.” He kicked drugs and began a two-decade career writing mystery novels and other types of books. He also entered politics and returned to music.

Ultimately, Kinky Friedman remains difficult to label and sum up. But Mary Lou Sullivan provides a frequently enlightening portrait of a man with many talents, including self-promotion. You can open her book to almost any page and quickly get engrossed.

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