Just as millions of Americans headed to the lake for Labor Day weekend, we woke up in a world without Jimmy Buffett in it. Buffett, the patron saint of leathery lime-fingered lake people everywhere, would have probably broken into that famous grin at the timing of it. It’s the most Jimmy Buffett of all the holidays — built for soaking up every last bit of fun and sun you can. His classic “Come Monday” was even set around “the Labor Day weekend show.”
The night he died, I woke after feeling a disturbance in universal latitudes and attitudes, like I’d slept on a pop-top, and I rolled over to find texts full of weeping parrot emojis. I sprang to my feet and blew out a flip-flop racing to the store for margarita mix. It was going to be a record-setting weekend.
“Just like Santa, I come around once a year,” Jimmy once sang, a reminder that Parrotheads have been able to count on their summer lovin’ every year since 1984, a remarkable run by any standard. Hipsters always snickered — but that’s just because Buffett fans were having more fun than they were. Every summer, Parrotheads wait all year to build parking lot tiki bars, put balloon animals on their heads, throw fins left and right, and waste away again singing along to the songs they know by heart. There are worse ways of finding joy.
Jimmy cornered a market as stable as the turning of the earth — the laidback, sun-chasing, rum-loving, sun-worshiping, free-living beach bum life, growing old but not up, always flying to St. somewhere, one step ahead of the jailer. Buffett was the only guy who could make a volcano disaster sound like a hedonistic party.
St. Louisans have a special connection to Jimmy Buffett, as three current members of Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band have St. Louis roots. Brother Peter Mayer, lead guitar, and John Mayer, bass, are both graduates of Lutheran High School South. Peter studied and later taught guitar at Webster University. Drummer Roger Guth was born and raised in St. Louis and has, like the Mayers, been with Buffett’s band since 1989. So Buffett’s St. Louis shows — the last was in 2017 at Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre — were always a Parrothead reunion in the crowd and something of a homecoming on the stage.
The last time I saw Buffett was at the Willie Nelson tribute concert in Nashville in 2019. “I’m in Willie’s band tonight! I wore shoes!” Buffett said. The two played Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come” as Buffett sang, “And I keep on fighting for the things I want/Though I know that when you're dead you can't/But I'd rather be a free man in my grave/Than living as a puppet or a slave.”
Jimmy Buffett stuck to that philosophy and by doing so both inspired and sold a fantasy lifestyle that connected millions, fueled trillions of pool parties, and made him a bazillionaire philanthropist. It’s sad that the pirate never looked at 80. But it has been a lovely cruise.
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