Pictured left: Me, age 13, at Riverbend Music Center in Cincinnati Ohio, enjoying what appears to be a burger, wearing my very own Margaritaville shirt.
It’s 5:30 p.m. on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend 2023. I’m sitting in my university's library, getting ahead on some schoolwork while I have the time. My college radio station hasn’t started back up yet, so I’m tuned into Virginia Tech's station when the indie song I don’t know ends and the hosts get back on the mic.
And they talk about the now late, great Jimmy Buffett.
They didn’t grow up with him the way I did. But they commend him for the community he’s built, and the philosophy of enjoying life that his fans, the Parrotheads, embraced like no other fandom, musical or not.
As Jimmy’s signature song among his many classics, "Margaritaville," played, I knew it was time to start what I had been thinking about since I learned of his death yesterday: my tribute to him.
A discalimer: It was always more my dad who listened to Jimmy rather than me seeking his music out. But his songs were a part of my life before I even hit double digits. I’ve seen this man live in concert more than any artist in my two decades of life!
Admittedly, it was only thrice. But every time was a bonafide event. The fanbase he attracted managed to make every single one of his concerts a spectacle, for decades on end. People decked out in costumes, the elaborately decorated tents for parking lot tailgates. I didn’t get it when I was 12 or 13 years old, probably both because I wasn’t naturally drawn to the escapist beach bum fan culture myself, and because alcoholic drinks were literally the furthest thing from my mind (wasting away in Yoo-hooville?)
Eventually, my Parrothead dad left it up to me to vye for a ticket to the yearly August concerts on Long Island, or bow out as he attended with his actual margarita drinking friends and business clients. I stopped going. But now, if I had a chance to go see Jimmy a fourth time? In. A. Heartbeat.
Not in this life, though.
Yesterday, I did something I’ve never done before: willingly shuffled Jimmy’s music on Spotify. Just to clarify, that’s not a roast. It’s just, when you’re brought up listening to these songs in the car, by the pool, extremely often: Wouldn’t you also give yourself space to explore your own musical tastes, with the secretly comforting knowledge that you’d hear Jimmy’s classic tunes somewhere soon enough?
What happened yesterday was nothing short of touching and healing and poignant: I found songs that were once background noise, that I’d heard way too often courtesy of my zealous Parrothead parent, in a new light. I’ve even rediscovered some "old new favorites," like the song "Nautical Wheelers." The waltzing tune followed his 1974 album “Living and Dying in ¾ Time,” and contains the album’s title in its lyrics. I also found myself enjoying “Pencil Thin Mustache,” a Western swing song that provides a rare musical and lyrical departure from Jimmy’s beach bum antics.
I think of another rediscovered-old-new-classic, as I’ll be coining familiar songs I’m finding newfound fondness of in these days of mourning: “One Particular Harbour.” The song is so openly sentimental and starry-eyed for something as common as a place to dock your boat. But it’s the conviction in Jimmy’s voice as he sings about it, yearns for it, “so far and yet so near.” And then the ends of the choruses, when he sings about days fading away and hair turning gray, and all his years finally coming to an end. Something I never thought too much about until this year, when Jimmy was hospitalized and my dad was left wondering, for the first time, why Jimmy’s website was devoid of dates for his annual summer tour.
A note: There’s something about Jimmy’s music you wouldn’t get if you’re not entrenched in Parrothead culture, which is the live versions of the songs are unofficially the official versions. Even if you've never made it to a single show, if you listen to Radio Margaritaville, you'd hear countless re-broadcasts of live performances from over the years mixed in with the studio recordings of songs off the albums, featuring shouted chants from fans and ad-libs from Jimmy himself. After all these years of listening to those versions, of course I remembered what Jimmy would shout after the uncharacteristically morbid lines of anticipating his own eventual death: “But not yet!”
The bridge, after the first of these choruses, immediately switches up the mood to be fun and danceable as ever as Jimmy sings: “But then I think about the good times / Down in the Caribbean sunshine.” At 21 years old, I’ve felt a fear of aging in the past year that I never felt in my childhood or teen years. It’s all much more real to me now, the finite amount of time we all have. Jimmy’s cry of “Not yet!” and this bridge melt those worries away as I listen and jam out, and remind myself it’s all about making the days count with good people and good times, and doing it despite knowing it will end. Those two words. Not. Yet.
Looking back, I have a growing sense of pride and happiness that I grew up surrounded by Jimmy’s music and the eclectic Parrothead culture. Who cares if it wasn’t as “edgy” or “cool” as growing up listening to the likes of Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin or The Beatles? What I got was being instilled with the idea that it’s cool to be a grown up and have fun and like what you like, even if some people don’t get it. When I grow up, I want to be as cool, confident, hardworking and joyful as James Buffett himself was during his time on this planet. I will forever be grateful for the memories.
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