Amy Williams is pretty excited these days because she is going on vacation on Aug. 15. It will be a short trip and it won`t be her first choice of a two week cruise in the Caribbean.
But for more than two hours, Williams will be sailing on a Gulf Coast breeze as Jimmy Buffett takes her and everyone else at Poplar Creek Music Theater on a voyage to the islands.
”Sometimes you need a taste of the Caribbean, and a Jimmy Buffett concert is like a two-hour cruise,” said the 34-year-old Chicago management consultant. ”He brings sunshine.”
Gary Groh and his compatriots in the northwest suburban Skin and Scuba Club will be there, too, hoping to recapture good times they shared during an annual springtime diving trip to the West Indies.
”Anytime we get together Jimmy Buffett is there,” said Groh, 37, a forklift driver and part-time scuba instructor in Crystal Lake. ”Scuba divers are kind of like the characters in his songs, always looking for adventure.” ”His music adds a soundtrack to our diving trips,” said fellow diver Tom Sund, a 44-year-old salesman from Elgin. ”You work hard all year and you look forward to the trip and his concert.”
The divers, like Williams and the thousands of others flocking to Poplar Creek for back-to-back shows, share the distinction of being Parrot Heads, Buffett`s devout, if somewhat quirky, following.
Rivaling perhaps only the Grateful Dead`s tie-died disciples, Parrot Heads got their nickname about eight years ago when former Eagle Timothy Schmit, touring with Buffett, remarked that the crowd looked like Deadheads in Hawaiian shirts.
In these recessionary times, one thing summer concert promoters can bank on is a multitude of brightly dressed Buffett fans, some carrying inflatable sharks and others sporting foam rubber crab hats, faithfully turning out to sway with his warm tropical melodies and sing along with his lyrics.
”The first time I went to a Buffett concert I couldn`t keep my eyes off all the people dressed like they were there to have fun,” said Donna Harper, 35, of Schaumburg. ”Then they all started singing and I knew I was hooked.” Harper`s conversion to Parrot Headism was made even easier by the man who would eventually become her husband, Pat Harper. He started listening to Buffett in college.
”His songs are about real adventures he`s experienced, and in some way, we relate to that,” Pat Harper explained. ”There is a lot of humor in a Jimmy Buffett song. I find myself repeating lines from his songs.”
With fan loyalty like that, it is no wonder that the Mobile, Ala., native, who makes his home in Key West outdrew and outgrossed all other acts last summer except Guns N` Roses and the Grateful Dead.
”He`s a tremendous live performer. That`s where he gets his longevity,” said Shellie Erwin, of Buffett`s newly created Margaritaville Records label in Nashville. ”People go to see him because the concert is a two-hour-plus vacation.”
At age 45, Buffett no longer rules his world from a pay phone, as he once sang, but rather from atop a wave of accomplishme
The Margaritaville release of ”Boats, Beaches, Bars and Ballads,” a four-CD box set containing 72 songs, has sold more than 125,000 copies. Buffett has a new novel coming out this month: ”Where is Joe Merchant?”, about a seaplane pilot in search of a missing rock star.
Buffett`s fiction, including the 1990 New York Times bestselling collection of short stories,”Tales From Margaritaville,” shares one characteristic with his songs: both are somewhat autobiographical.
”I lived out a fantasy. It may be everybody`s fantasy, but I`m sure glad not everybody lives it out,” Buffett wrote in ”The Parrot Head Handbook,”
which accompanies the box set. ”I love being the guy who gets to tell people about it.”
That living life on his own terms is part of the Parrot Head attraction is not lost on Buffett, who founded his own label in part to give other artists a chance to succeed by being themselves.
”We survived on Bourbon Street until Jimmy found us,” said bassist Sharon Leger of New Orleans` country/Cajun band, Evangeline, whose self-titled debut was the first album released on Margaritaville. ”When he made an offer, we could tell he was interested in us just as we are.”
The decision to go with Margaritaville meant an instant audience for the all-female Evangeline. Interested Parrot Heads, seeing the band as Buffett`s opening act this summer, have helped push sales over the 50,000 mark.
”We used to play ballrooms in front of 1,000, maybe 2,000, people,”
Leger noted. ”Now we`re stepping out on stage in front of 20,000 enthusiastic fans. We`re very fortunate.”
”I`ve never seen a following like his,” said Marty Lehmann, who edits Buffett`s fan newsletter, The Coconut Telegraph, and manages the artist`s Caribbean Soul sportswear mail order business. ”It`s not just a song, it`s-and I hate to be cliche here-a lifestyle that people want to emulate.”
Buffett`s longevity on stage owes as much to a pair of long-time musician sidekicks as it does to his famed laid- back lifestyle.
As members of the original Coral Reefer Band, harmonica sideman Greg
”Fingers” Taylor and keyboardist Michael Utley, who produced or helped produce five of Buffett`s last six studio albums, have been with him since his first major label release, 1973`s ”A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean.”
His touring success seems to fly in the face of music industry logic. Too country-folksy to be hip, too hip to be country, Buffett`s art receives little attention from radio and video outlets.
His last Top 40 hit came in October 1979 when ”Fins,” from whence the infamous shark reference came, peaked at number 35. His 19 releases (21 if you count two lesser known country LPs Buffett recorded at the beginning of his 25-year career) have produced just three platinum records and two gold.
While those in the music industry have tried to figure out the Parrot Head phenomenon, Buffett, in true Margaritaville fashion, just goes with the flow. ”I choose not to tamper with it,” he wrote. ”In today`s world of FAX machines, cellular phones and call waiting, we need to spend a little time with the fun part of ourselves. That is what a Jimmy Buffett concert is all about.”
In fact, his lack of radio exposure can be refreshing to some of the Parrot Head flock.
”I was never really into heavy metal or real hard rock that all my friends listened to,” said Ann Murray, 22, of Countryside, whose boyfriend took her to a Buffett concert when she was 17.
”The music was so relaxing it really fit in with me trying to live my life easy-going.”
”There`s just a lot of joy in what he sings,” said Wheaton businesswoman Betsy Dickey, 45, another of the Skin and Scuba Club divers.
”Whenever I`m driving some place and I need to be up, listening to a Jimmy Buffett tape will do that for me.”
