Country Outlaw Kinky Friedman To Play Cafe Nine, Bridge Street Live

Kinky Friedman is a Texas institution, a cigar-smoking, Jewish, country joker spoofster with a cowboy hat and political ambitions. Friedman is part country outlaw, part Western swinger, part ribald raconteur.

The singing cowboy shtick has always been shtick even from back when Tin Pan Alley characters like the Sons of the Pioneers put on chaps and spurs. Friedman updates the routine a little, mixing up different strains of country music to riff on identity, racism, the counter-culture, patriotism, sex, evangelical fervor and musical history. Friedman started his group, the Texas Jewboys, in 1971, and they had elements in common with the Holy Modal Rounders and Frank Zappa, expertly tipping the hat to a variety of styles, always goofing, but always showing a keen mastery of the genre and aesthetic as well.

Friedman has lived more than most. He was a childhood chess prodigy. He was in the Peace Corps. He wrote as a columnist and as a mystery novelist. He’s toured with fellow Lone Star figures like Billy Joe Shaver. And legends like Willie Nelson and Dwight Yoakam have covered his tunes. Friedman toured briefly with Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue in the ’70s. He’s an equal-opportunity offender, having poked fun at deserving topics like racists and gun-toting homicidal psychos while also wielding his lacerating wit against anyone else he feels like mocking and ridiculing, which is pretty much everyone. He’ll be in Connecticut for three nights running.

Kinky Friedman performs at Cafe Nine, 250 State St., New Haven, Thursday, April 13, at 9 p.m. Tickets are $25. cafenine.com. He also performs at Bridge Street Live, 41 Bridge St., Collinsville, Friday and Saturday, April 14 and 15, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $35. 860-693-9762, 41bridgestreet.com.