Richard “Kinky” Friedman, a Texas icon who infused his songs, fiction, and campaign speeches with a unique and crass humor, died early Thursday, June 27. He was 79. Friedman “stepped on a rainbow” while surrounded by family and friends at his longtime home in the Hill Country’s Echo Hill Ranch, according to a statement released on his X account Thursday morning. He had, in recent years, lived with Parkinson’s disease.Friedman was many things: a musician, a novelist, a satirist, a Texas Monthly columnist, a gubernatorial candidate, a summer camp cofounder, a Peace Corps volunteer, and—of course—a Jewish cowboy. Born in Chicago in 1944 to a World War II airman, Friedman relocated to Houston with his family the following year. He earned the nickname “Kinky” because…
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