Thank you, Jimmy Buffett

By: Garrett Mitchell, Staff Writer
garrett@thewoodrufftimes.com

On the last Sunday in September, my wife and I decided to take a day trip to Charleston, one of our favorite places. Something about the city has an intrinsic feel that draws you in and simultaneously does not want to let you go.

Finding ourselves crossing the Ben Sawyer Bridge onto Sullivan’s Island, turning left, and driving parallel to the ocean on our right, I pulled out my phone. On a whim, I cued up one of our favorite Jimmy Buffett songs. In that moment, it fit. Driving along the coast, across another span onto the Isle of Palms, watching the families splash in the water as the waves lapped on the sand, everything started rushing back. Who I was, why I was there in that moment, and why the lyrics had drawn me toward them in the first place.
Just like Charleston, they do not let go of me, either.

I could not tell you the precise day or moment I became a Jimmy Buffett fan. I do remember, though, my parents’ old Kenwood stereo system that sat in the back corner of our living room growing up. My mom owned a cedar chest that stood beside those big, wood-encased speakers that contained her impressive collection of vinyl albums. I used to rummage through them, nosy as a kid will be, and one day, one album cover caught my eye.

It was Jimmy Buffett’s 1974 album, A1A.

It was frowned upon for me to try and use such an expensive piece of technological marvel by myself, lest I scratch the vinyl, so I put the record back. I subconsciously filed that cover photo away for another day and time. Maybe it was inevitable that I would come back to it.

I was cruising the music section of Wal-Mart many years later as a teenager. Back when CDs were still a thing. I saw another album cover that jumped out to me that day. A middle-aged man, bald on top and grey on the sides, with a guitar in hand, a smile of pure joy on his face. It was Jimmy.

On impulse, I picked up the CD and headed to the check-out line. When I got back into my car, I popped the disc into the player. The live album Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays from that point became a staple of my rotation. My first Jimmy Buffett record, and from then, I was irrevocably hooked.

One week later, I went back to the store and bought another album. A1A, the same one that had caught my eye all those years ago. I began immersing myself in the lyrics and the melodies, and as I so often do with music I like, began working tirelessly to decipher any hidden meaning I could find.

I had no idea just how much meaning I would find in those words in the 20 years that would follow.
My parents thought it a novelty because I had become so obsessed with a singer. Within a year, I owned every studio album and the litany of live records Jimmy had recorded and released. I learned, rather quickly, that he loved his fans. I was one of them. When anyone asked who my favorite singer was, I proudly replied with “Jimmy Buffett!”

“So, you’re a Parrothead?” was always the return question.

“Absolutely!”

I saw Jimmy live for the first time in Charlotte, NC, in February 2005. An early birthday present and my parents took me. The costumed fans, massive tailgate set-ups, the never-ending river of libations flowing from every possible source, it really was like the world’s biggest beach party right there in the parking lot of the Charlotte Coliseum.

The show itself was a magic I still cannot explain. Every word of every song, something about them, spoke a motivational fire into me. I had always been a homebody, clinging stubbornly to the land of my raising. But now I wanted more. So much more.

That night, Jimmy made me realize that.

Four years later, in June 2009, I stepped into the terminal at Los Angeles International Airport to board a flight to Melbourne, Australia. There were plans to meet three people who would be part of my volunteer work group for the next month. My first time traveling overseas. As I crested the top of the escalator to the second-story food court where we had agreed to rendezvous and have dinner before the flight, I heard an exclamation transcendently fly through the ambient noise of passengers waiting for their own birds to fly.

“Buffett!”

It was Chris. Followed by Ian and Samantha. Unbeknownst to me, they had stalked my Facebook page in the weeks leading up to our departure and had seen a picture of me from the latest Buffett concert I had attended. I was standing beside my car, the words “Honk for Buffett” painted across the back window, holding up a Hawaiian shaka hand gesture.

They had decided that would be my new moniker. I conversely decided in that moment if they were going to name me after the man who had given me the courage to be there in the first place, I was going to vicariously introduce them to him.

Before we boarded the 747 that would deliver us to the other side of this big blue ball we live on, I played them, which is still my favorite song. The final verse says…

“There are jobs and chores and questions and plates I need to twirl, but tonight I’ll take my chances on the far side of the world.”

I have never looked back. I have never stopped taking chances to see the world as Jimmy did, with wonder and joy and an eye fixed on the horizon, wondering what is on the other side.

In the years since I have traveled extensively. I always post that same refrain from “Far Side of the World” every time I go. It reminds me why I go and why I seek new adventures.

It was 3 a.m. when I read that Jimmy had passed away on September 1, 2023. It was revealed in the days that followed he had been battling an aggressive form of skin cancer for four years, yet he continued touring and performing through the harsh treatments. He continued bringing joy and happiness to his fans, whom he loved so much, even while he suffered more than I care to think about.

But that is who Jimmy Buffett was. He wanted to make people happy. People like me who found meaning in the songs that he sang. I saw Jimmy in concert 18 times. It never once got old, and I enjoyed every second.

Yes, I cried the night Jimmy left this world. I cried in sadness, but I also cried tears of joy. I cried for the memories made through his music that are now only relics of a time gone by that only my imagination can see. I cried for the friends I have made along the way, connected by a bridge of lyrical and melodic fibers that bind us together.

I cried for a friend. A friend I never met, but one that talked to me all the time through my radio speakers. A friend who never let me down. Everyone who met the man said he was unflappably kind. I do not doubt that in the least. I wish I had the chance to tell him my nickname and why it was gifted to me. His name, and one I still use to this day.

In the wake of his passing, I was called back to many of the songs that made me love the man and his music. Reflections of a life well lived, and in the same vein as the one I journey through every day.

Jimmy died while looking at the ocean from his home in Sag Harbor, NY. Fitting because everyone knows he loved the ocean.

“I want to be there. I want to go back down and die beside the sea there. With a tin cup for a chalice, fill it up with good red wine, and I’ll be chewin’ on a honeysuckle vine.”

And that is exactly what he did.

Or, more trenchantly, there is “Last Mango in Paris.”

“Our lives change like the weather, but a legend never dies.”

His words will live forever as long as we still find happiness in them.

He wrote and recorded hundreds of songs in his career, most of them I still know the words to by heart. But J.B. may have summed it up best with one of his earliest tunes, “He Went to Paris,” when he unwittingly predicted his own future.

“Some of it’s magic, some of it tragic, but I’ve had a good life all the way”

I cannot say what my own future holds, but I know how I hope it will come to pass. I want to continue to travel to see the world, and everywhere I go, I want to keep alive the memory of the man who inspired me to go there. It may seem silly to some, mourning the loss of a world-famous musical artist, but to so many people like me, there was so much more to Jimmy than that.

His music inspires us, comforts us in times of sadness and despair, and it has bound us all in a spirit of love and friendship.

Jimmy’s last words, spoken to his sister Lulu moments before he sailed away, were simple, poignant, and a final bit of wisdom for everyone.

“Have fun.”

I intend to do just that because life is far too short to waste sitting around doing nothing.

As I turned left onto the Isle of Palms Causeway towards Mount Pleasant, and the ocean faded away into my rear-view mirror, I turned back to the song I had chosen. With my shades down, concealing another tear, I quietly sang along.

“From the bottom of my heart, off the coast of Carolina…”

Thank you, Jimmy Buffett. For everything.