Oh Jimmy. What a night. You breezed into Birmingham with the Coral Reefer Band and took an entire group of people away to paradise, if only for a few hours.

Can you tell I enjoyed myself? I most certainly did. I started off the evening with the Magic City Parrot Head club’s fundraiser/auction for tornado relief, meeting new and old friends and HOLY PEOPLE everywhere Batman. Men and women in grass skirts, coconut bras, shark heads, basically typical concert wear…..

Pardon the fuzzy photos, I was saving my other camera for the concert and using the iPhone camera, which turned out to be the second shittiest camera I would use that day, instead of the first. Anyway, the crowd was HUGE, the event was inside, and I wanted OUT. I happened upon a guy I know from Budweiser who hooked me up with a lanyard to gain admission to the “LandShark Fin Zone” that promised music, prizes, food and BEER. Obviously I went there right away. It was a pretty nice shindig, I met some nice folks, drank a butt load of Land Shark and managed to score a fabulous flag and hat. After a few hours of free beer it was time to head on into the show, where I discovered that “frozen” margaritas weren’t actually totally frozen, there was no salt and they wanted FOURTEEN DOLLARS for them. So I used my giant financial brain and decided to instead get two cold beers for the price of one saltless sloppy margarita. And then, I let a pregnant woman jump ahead of me in the pee-pee line. I IS KIND, I IS SMART, I IS IMPORTANT.

Anyway, I had fabulous seating and some fairly interesting people around me, including first-timers, drunken frat boys and one woman who kept trying to deflate the various beach balls bouncing around. Uhm, hell naw. Drunken frat boy said the three words every woman wants to hear, “Hey, wanna beer?”, followed by three more, “Hey, let’s dance!” How could I say no to those sweet nothings?  I posted a picture of him on The Twitters and someone asked me if I knew his name. As far as I know it was Bud. Bud Light. I was trying to take some pictures, but thanks to a camera even shittier than the one on my iPhone, I didn’t really get any worth a toot. I couldn’t take my Nikon in, so I had to sneak in a point and shoot. And not my good one either, it’s magically disappeared. We’ll just say that no wonder the company that made this one filed for bankruptcy, because it’s technologically underwhelming. I don’t want to reset every setting each time I turn it off and on, and hey, a battery should last more than an hour and a half when taking limited pics. Grrr.

Despite the fact that I didn’t get good pictures, I had a FINTASTIC time! (see what I did there?)

Jimmy was right at home, he was funny and made quite a few references to Alabama , Mississippi and the Gulf South in general, which always makes me happy and homesick. He played some classics, and to my delight a few you don’t hear at every show like ” The Pascagoula Run” and Nadirah’s version of “Creola” was a fitting tribute to the late Ralph McDonald who passed a few months ago. Quite possibly the evening’s highlight for me though was Mac Mcanally singing one of the best songs he’s ever written, “Back Where I Come From.” Oh I know everyone think’s thats Kenny Chesney’s song, but nope. Mac recorded that and released it in the summer of 1990, when I, oh gentle reader was but a lass, tooling around the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Louisiana with my friends, nary a care in the world. That song defined us then, and it still defines me today. To be singing it at the top of my lungs now, after everything, with 14,000 of my closest Parrot Head friends, is truly only the sort of therapy that you can only get by being with old friends like Jimmy, Mac, Mr. Utley and company.

Stars did indeed fall on Alabama Saturday night Jimmy, and thank you for being one of my favorite ones. Until next time my friend, laissez les bon temps roulez.

Set list courtesy of Buffett World. 

Set: Birmingham 01 Piece of Work 02 License to Chill 03 It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere (w/Mac) 04 Jamaica Mistaica 05 Grapefruit-Juicy Fruit 06 Son of a Son of a Sailor 07 Volcano 08 Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes 09 Come Monday 10 The Pascagoula Run 11 Trip Around the Sun (w/Tina Gullickson) 12 Cheeseburger in Paradise 13 One Particular Harbour 14 Creola (Nadirah Sings, for Ralph MacDonald) 15 Dear Jimmy Buffett (Matt Hoggatt) 16 Hey Matt Hoggatt 17 Birmingham (Randy Newman Cover) 18 Sweet Home Alabama (Lynyrd Skynyrd Cover) 19 Bama Breeze 20 Knee Deep 21 Last Mango in Paris 22 Margaritaville 23 A Pirate Looks at Forty (Acoustic w/Jimmy and Mac) 24 Back Where I Come From 25 Southern Cross First Encore: 26 Brown Eyed Girl 27 Fins 28 Stars Fell on Alabama Second Encore: 29 Dreamsicle (Solo Acoustic)

See you in a few hours my friend !!

Atlanta 2009 by KDT

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Jimmy Buffett.

I love the man, I love the music, I love the lifestyle.

I went to one of his concerts with one of my very best friends just a few weeks after Gregory died. I call that day the Great Duct Tape Road trip.

My very first blog ever? Back in the 90′s? It was called a Parrothead in Poplarville.

There are pictures of my old pal James Hal and Jimmy that I took on there, because Jimmy lived with his family when he went to college in my old hometown. Somewhere there are pictures of me, JB and JH’s practice wife, the evil Tammy.

And the ticket stub ?  I thought the price in 1999 was high. I beg for those prices now.

 

The damn page is still out there somewhere, and I can’t delete it and the mentions of my practice husband, because I have long since forgotten the password. Thanks for embarrassing me, Angelfire.

Anyway.

I not only embrace the Margaritaville lifestyle, I slobber all over it. I’m back in college to be a marine biologist, for god’s sake.

I may have ranted about high ticket prices last year. And then after my rant, I bought those expensive ass tickets anyway.

Then the tornadoes came. So I sold my expensive ass Jimmy Buffett tickets and used the money for the #GatoradeBrigade and for local animal shelters affected by the storms. And I listened to a concert I should have been at on radio Margaritaville. And that was ok. It was for a damn good reason.

A few days ago I may have simultaneously almost peed myself, went into convulsions and screamed louder than a pageant mom on TLC when I saw this ……

I’d like to thank my beautiful friend Becky for alerting me to this wonder of the parrothead universe and also B, make sure I’ve peed before big news next time, k ?

I will be at that damn concert if I have to sell a kidney.

Anyone have an ice machine?