By Jim Young
Chronicle correspondent
CROSSVILLE —
Back in the mid 1970's there was a musician who put out a few records, no number ones, but he had a unique take on life.
Almost 40 years later that same musician has an annual top ten grossing tour, a chain of restaurants, his own beer brand, food and drink brands based on one of his songs and a horde of followers who are known as parottheads. We are talking about Jimmy Buffett, of course.
In addition to Buffett's own business interests, there is an entire community of people who follow Buffett, many with a religious fervor. A genre of music known as “Trop Rock,” or tropical rock and roll, continues to grow in popularity for those who can't get enough of the lifestyle experience.
With the expansion of the Internet, those who follow Buffett and Trop Rock can keep in contact with each other on social media, compare notes of concert experiences and there are even several online radio stations with names like “Beach Front” and “Jimmy Dreamz” that started with Buffett's own online station, Radio Margaritaville, now mainstream on satellite radio.
Only one other person is credited with essentially starting their own music genre and that is Bill Monroe and bluegrass music. Back when Buffett first started out, his music was sometimes classified as country, sometimes rock. One of the biggest problems Jimmy always had getting his songs on the radio back then was what kind of music was it? But Buffett always played his own brand of music because that was who he was. After all these years it has definitely paid off.
One of his bitter sweet autobiographical songs early in his career was about the loss of his grandfather called “The Captain and the Kid,” but one music “expert” at the time suggested it might get better radio play if the grandfather didn't die at the end.
I first discovered Jimmy Buffett through a college roommate and began to learn several of his songs on the guitar. While living in Knoxville and attending UT, Buffett often toured the college circuits and I saw him in concert twice during those days. I have continued to be a Buffett music fan and, as our young family would travel to Myrtle Beach for summer vacation, we listened to Buffett tapes during much of the car trip to the coast.
Those trips turned my children into parakeets, or young parrottheads, and second generation Buffett fans. Last year, my son and daughter went on their own to see Jimmy when he came to Atlanta. My son is even a member of the Parrotthead club in Knoxville. Parrotthead clubs are all across the country and their motto is “party with a purpose” and do public service and raise money for worthy causes with their activities.
With my son and daughter in Atlanta, I could listen in on Radio Margaritaville via the Internet and hear the concert live while it happened. Now there is a lot more to the Buffett concert experience then just the concert. Fans show up hours before the show to tailgate and party all afternoon getting prepared for the show. Portable Tiki bars and pirate ships are set up or vehicles are decorated in a contest of fun and showing off.
After hearing of the experiences, I decided that the next year I would go to the concert since it had been 30 years since I'd seen Buffett live in concert. Low and behold, when the tour dates were announced, Nashville turned out to be one of the early stops on the tour and we were able to get pretty nice seats through online ticket sales. The concert sold out in 10 minutes as most of them do.
While Buffett usually plays outside venues, Nashville's concert would be indoors, not a bad option as it turned out. While there was not really anyplace to “tailgate” in downtown Nashville, the local parrotthead club put together a pre-concert party with some “trop-rock” music and we signed up for the party upstairs at a Broadway Ave. restaurant.
The fellow who runs Beach Front Radio emceed the afternoon's events that included live music by a band featuring a steel drum singing original music as well as Buffett covers. Parrottheads cannot hear too much Buffett music. Even as the rain came down most of the afternoon and the tornado sirens went off a couple times, none of it phased the Parrottheads from 16 different clubs from Nashville to Memphis to Indianapolis to Calgary, Canada! The band quipped they would tune to the sirens.
And the ultimate event at the pre-concert party was an appearance by three members of Jimmy Buffett's Band known as the Coral Reefers. Greeting fans and signing autographs was guitar player Peter Mayer, bass player Jim Mayer and long time steel guitar player Doyle Grisham.
After all this, there was still the concert to attend. Buffett's organization is nothing if not master marketers. While you could buy T-shirts and hats at all concerts, there were people handing out coupons for Margartiaville foods and local VIP cards for the Margaritaville restaurant set to open later this year in Nashville on lower Broadway.
The concert started and the entire audience was on its feet for the whole show. There was some sitting during the intermission, but once the show resumed everyone was back on their feet, most singing all the words with their hands or “fins” in the air.
On the latest tour, Buffett has a new way to reach out to fans. For many years Radio Margaritaville has broadcast all of Buffett's concerts live. Now Buffett has been experimenting with live streaming video of the concerts on the internet. As I write this, I have been watching the Buffett concert at Indianapolis live on the Net.
Unlike most musicians, Buffett gives a lot of content away. It is a unique business model but it certainly seems to be working for Jimmy and his fans.
The only down side to our fantastic Nashville Buffett concert experience was the horrible news we woke up to the next morning that Nashville, including many of the places we had been on Saturday, had flooded along with homes, businesses and even the Grand Ole Opry.
I hope the weather is better next year.
