Pearls in the Snow: Kinky Friedman Tribute [CASSETTE] [Import]

Not bad for a tribute album (which is high praise); the only tracks that don't work (that either don't add to or else detract from the originals) are Willie Nelson's, Guy Clark's and Lyle Lovett's - with Kinky, as with few other country singers (Butch Hancock and Robbie Fulks spring to mind) one (ie the performer) MUST attend to the words (but Clark does get to tackle one of Kinky's most profound and heartbreaking songs). What is wrong with these versions? They cheapen, belittle, trivialise... Nuff said. The rest is all good to outstanding (including two or three tracks I swear I've not heard anywhere). Never in all my 30 years' acquaintance with Kinky's work would I have imagined myself writing these words, but the version of Ol' Ben Lucas (by Chuck E Weiss) is magisterial; to my relief Tom Waits also acquits himself commendably, on one of the new-to-me songs. Maybe Billy Swan is a touch too respectful with that absurd song When the Lord closes the door (he opens a little window) but hey, Kinky was (is) always a master at having it both ways.
Afterthought: maybe a female voice or two would have been a nice touch; any or all of the three 'failed' tracks above might have been reenergized in this way, either by a pared down voice-'n-guitar like Iris Dement or Gillian Welch or by something beefier; the point of a tribute, after all, is to bring something fresh that the original can't offer, and all those generic male country voices can get a mite samey - something one could never say of the Kinkster

Great songs which hadn't seen the light of day for twenty years (CD released 1998). Great singers who had. And a great producer, Kacey Jones, who had the great idea. On asking Kinky 'Whatever happened to all those great songs?' she got a highly 'agitated' answer:'Nothing!'. So out she went and found the best singers around to sing Kinky and strung this set of pearls. Pearls? Kinky's songs are perfectly formed. After a couple of listens if you get the first line, you got the whole song, and those amazing lines are forever. Snow? White sands of New Mexico, they say.
While Kinky Friedman went off to write detective stories and run for governor of Texas some of us just remembered those songs. And here they are again. Kacey has polished up those pearls, added a new lustre, chosen such right singers and produced it all in Hi-tone.
Her selection is book-ended with two of the finest songs in the Americana canon. Willie Nelson kicks it off and you are only half a minute in with his stunning guitar intro when you know this is special. This isn't Kinky Texas-Semite crack; this is deadly serious. 'Ride 'em Jewboy' just happens to be one of his most moving songs and as good a sing as I've ever heard Willie have - A mixed metaphor of the 'round-up' and the holocaust.

'Ride 'em all around the ol' corral
I'm with you boy
If I got to ride six million miles ..'

Kinky's songs can be simplicity itself - they sing themselves, which is probably why none of these versions depart radically from his originals, except for the Tom Waits which is the other book-end. His one solo song (without the Texas Jewboys) 'Marilyn and Joe' is one of these perfect miniatures. The Delbert McClinton one, 'Autograph' starts real gentle and wistful too but again more brilliant guitar playing (James Pennebaker) and it becomes huge.

There's Western Swing in there too. Asleep at the Wheel run through Kinky aphorisms
and still on the dancefloor the Geezinlaws pirouetting on-

'Just a small-town girl till you learn to twirl ..
Like a drive-in Cinderella in a Chevy named desire..'

But Nashville casualty songs are Kinky's hallmark, like the excellent Lee Roy Parnell track,this time Pennebaker on pedal steel or the Lyle Lovett version of 'Sold American'. When it comes to cowboys though the one to outgun them all is Dwight Yoakam and oh bliss! Kacey's got him doing the Kinky classic from 1974,
Rapid City South Dakota.

'Just a ragged kid in overalls
He thumbed a ride one day
Said, anywhere you're going's on my way ..'

You can hear hear the tune just by reading the words.

Kinky does humour too. And if I were high-minded enough I'd dock him a lone star for his vile humour. I've had 'Ol' Ben Lucas' mucus' somewhere north of my nostrils for over 30 years now. And you might just not need to hear Kinky and Little Jewford signing off a hundred times, more than once. But you ain't gonna miss Opry time -
'Hi folks Captain Midnight here. And now the first full-blooded Jew ever to appear on the Gran' Ol' Opry stage Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys' (They did too)
And here they all are, piling into 'They Ain't Making Jews Like Jesus Any More'

'A rednecked nerd in a bowlin' shirt
Was guzzlin' Lone Star beer ...'

which morphs into one of their most touching songs 'Western Union Wire'

The other bookend is delivered by Tom Waits in a great semi, at a truckstop off Route 64. The waitress waiting for the trucker that never turns up for his 'cornbeef and rye'. The Highway patrolmen come in and as 'the poor girl got 'em their coffee' she hears why -

'Hey Curly. You see that old diesel flattened out like your damn nose
up by the predica-ment tonight? Well he jack-knifed that sonofabitch ..'

The saddest song you ever heard, unravelling through spare snatches of Waits' banjo or Yudkin's violin. All the gentleness and meanness of life in one song.
Maybe these guys were the Texans Kinky was thinking about when he said:
The folks in Mississippi are saying 'Thank God for Texas'.

And if you gotta have more of those great lines Kinky's got a website of them. In fact he's got a whole damn screen full of websites. Kinky cigars. Kinky politics -
How can you look at the Texas legislature and still believe in intelligent design?

Final credits for Kacey Jones who found and polished these pearls in the snow.