Category: Interviews

CMT interview with Jimmy Buffett

Albums and Songs, Interviews 2 Comments

From CMT: Jimmy Buffett Gets the Band Back Together in “Down at the Lah De Dah”

Jimmy Buffett is bringing back the beach vibes with Life on the Flip Side, a sun-soaked album that debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s country album chart in June. A few days before a long-awaited fishing trip in Nantucket, Buffett called in to CMT.com to talk about his charming new video for “Down at the Lah De Dah,” premiering below.

In this first half of our two-part interview, the man behind “Margaritaville” reveals the inspiration for the video, how he “Buffettized” the song, and why he still sings in bars. Take a look at “Down at the Lah De Dah,” then enjoy our visit with Jimmy Buffett below the player.

So we took Paul Brady from Dublin, the girls in California, the band in Nashville, me in Malibu, and it looks really great! We used our video director, Stan Kallem, who does all of our roadwork – he’s a pretty talented guy but also knows us, and has been around us enough to know how to “do us” in particular. We took basically what we do at shows, which is try to treat people to a little more than just the songs. We take them on a bit of a vacation. I think he did a brilliant job. I tested it on people from 15 to 75 and it worked!

Listen to Buffett chatting with Coach Payton

Interviews, Special Appearances

Who Dat?? What this?? On Wednesday April 15th at 12 noon CT tune in at WWW.NEWORLEANSSAINTS.COM if you’d like to hear Jimmy Buffett and Coach Sean Payton talk football! this MIGHT appeal to Saints fans more than say….. well just about any other teams’ fans but aren’t you curious?

Payton and Buffett will touch on multiple topics during the interview. Among them, the two will talk about the beginning of their long friendship, the mutual respect and admiration for each other’s professions, the ties between football and music, the Saints’ prospects for the upcoming season, as well as catching up on Buffett’s latest entertainment projects. More details

Buffett talks about Escape to Margaritaville at the National Theatre

Interviews, Musicals 8 Comments

From WTOP: “Q&A: Jimmy Buffett brings ‘Escape to Margaritaville’ to National Theatre“

Attention, Parrotheads! Your captain just set sail toward the nation’s capital.

Jimmy Buffett brings the U.S. national tour of his stage musical “Escape to Margaritaville” to National Theatre for one week this Tuesday through Sunday.

“It started right here in Washington D.C.,” Buffett told WTOP. “A friend of mine, the great Jack Boyle, who ran the Cellar Door in Georgetown, believed in me long before anybody else years ago when I was a solo act. He brought me to the D.C. area. … He was a big fan of [‘The Caine Mutiny’ author] Herman Wouk and Jack Boyle said, ‘You ought to look at ‘Don’t Stop the Carnival’ as a musical.’”

So, Buffett left his sailboat in the Caribbean and set out to find Wouk, who had written the 1965 novel that inspired Buffet’s “Don’t Stop the Carnival” album.

Thus, “Escape to Margaritaville” was born, debuting in San Diego in 2017 before hitting New Orleans, Houston, Chicago and ultimately Broadway in 2018. This time, Buffett hired Emmy winner Greg Garcia (“My Name is Earl”) and Emmy nominee Mike O’Malley (“Shameless”) to weave a story around his greatest hits.

“When the writers came along, it was very important that they were part of that group of people who were basically Parrotheads,” Buffett said. “It was important that the music was a part of their lives and it wasn’t just a writing assignment. Authenticity was absolutely important. They knew the songs enough to stitch together a story. … It’s all just recognition and energy. You’ve got energy up, energy down. That’s the way you write any show, you got the highs and lows.”

“I did the same thing,” Buffett said. “There’s a scene where the girl that he’s interested in asks him questions that make him nervous about why did you come here? It’s a great little speech and at the end he goes, ‘The cold.’ That’s why I went to Key West — to get warm. … Then there’s two women on vacation who are best friends. One is very carefree, the other is a stick-in-the-mud … but eventually the margaritas and sun change her attitude — and her latitude!”

“Most of the songs that I write are autobiographical,” Buffett said. “Having that much material that’s affected people in a positive way with a little release from the tediousness of daily life, I was so lucky to just get that job and wound up in Key West, Florida, which accelerated the process writing about places I loved. Then I realized that was in everybody’s culture and everybody needs a couple days off, so I was lucky enough to kind of put my thumb on that pulse beat.”

“I love musical theater,” Buffett said. “My mother was a great local performer in Mobile, Alabama, so I would go to shows with her [like] ‘South Pacific.’ So it’s nice to come full circle. Plus, Jack was so good to me in the D.C. area, to give me a break and play the Cellar Door in those days. I still have a $300 check I never cashed for a week at Cellar Door. I still have it framed in my office!”

You might even see him at National Theatre, confirming he’ll attend Tuesday.

“I’m very excited,” Buffett said. “I’ve seen this cast. They’re very young and very invigorating. It’s like minor league ball. I love baseball. It’s just like seeing everybody at that level and it’s always part of the process. This is where you start if you want to go the distance. I was lucky enough to make it that way and my biggest thrill would be if kids who starred in this show had that same experience.”

Interview with Buffett on his role in ‘The Beach Bum’

Interviews, Television, Movies, & Radio 3 Comments

From Noisey: “Jimmy Buffett on the Role He Was Born to Play: Himself”

We talked to the king parrothead about his role in ‘The Beach Bum,’ working with Snoop Dogg, and why retirement is overrated.

As Jimmy Buffett tells it, he’s got it pretty good. When the musician-turned-business-mogul-turned-sometimes-actor is not touring the world with his band The Coral Reefers, he’s floating on his paddle board in St. Barths or Miami or Sag Harbor, a fishing rod in hand and a mile-wide grin stretched across his face. Buffett knows he’s lucky, but he’s not willing to chalk it all up to good fortune.

“I had enough work ethic instilled in me by my parents,” he explains to Noisey over the phone a few days after the South By Southwest (SXSW) premiere of Harmony Korine’s The Beach Bum, where he plays himself. “I also had a slight bit of talent and a little bit of luck. That’s what it takes. It’s mostly perspiration.” 72 years young and 50 years into his career, Buffett is reaping the rewards of a whole lot of sweat. With 27 studio albums under his belt, 17 of which have charted; a Margaritaville empire that includes restaurants, hotels, and margarita machines; and yet another world tour planned for summer 2019, Jimmy Buffett knows what hard work is, though he knows some luck is required too.

And The Beach Bum a happy-go-lucky movie, a symbolic reflection of Buffett’s persona as everyone’s best friend, of a life where chill vibes and good times are paramount. Korine hasn’t explicitly named Buffett as the film’s North Star, but Jimmy is so emblematic of the Florida cool that pervades the film that the two become knottily tangled and inseparable.

Noisey: You’ve done film cameos in the past. How do you decide when you want to hop onto a movie?
Jimmy Buffett: I have friends that make movies. They occasionally ask me. The first one I ever did was a film called Repo Man.

Noisey: The Beach Bum looked like an absolute blast to be around.

Buffett: With Beach Bum, Harmony [Korine] was a good friend of my wife and daughter. He approached me about doing it, mentioning that I’d be doing most of the background music for the thing. I asked him what the role was, and he said, “It’ll be three weeks of shooting,” and I said, “Nope, not me!” I was supposed to have been Snoop’s character, [Lingerie]. That was the original role for me, as the guy that Moondog looks up to. When that didn’t happen, they wrote me into a little scene, and then they got Snoop Dogg. Obviously that worked out better than me [laughs].

Read the full interview at Noisey

Jimmy Buffett talks about the Margaritaville Brand and Footwear

Interviews, Margaritaville Products

From Footwear News: “How to Build a Multibillion-Dollar Brand, According to Jimmy Buffett”

You won’t find Margaritaville on any map, but it is taking over the globe.

A little over 40 years ago, singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett released his hit album “Changes in Attitudes, Changes in Latitudes,” featuring a catchy tune about wasting away in a tropical locale. In the ensuing decades, the pop song has been transformed into a roughly $2.5 billion licensing and hospitality operation.

Margaritaville Holdings encompasses everything from restaurants and hotels to apparel and shoes. Here in New York, it debuted a Broadway musical in January — “Escape to Margaritaville” — and a Times Square hotel is in the works for 2020.

Buffett is deeply invested in all these endeavors. When FN visited him in the green room at the show in April, Buffett was peering out the window watching the lines outside. And he made a point of mentioning that the cast wears his Margaritaville footwear onstage.

For fall ’18, the company is further boosting its shoe selection with a new label called Island Reserve. It will be a higher-end complement to the Margaritaville collection, which is stocked at major chains such as Famous Footwear and DSW, and sells for under $60.

How would you describe the Jimmy Buffett brand?
“It’s authentic because I lived this way for a long time. I went where it was cold to work when I had
to, but I would prefer to stay where it’s warm. And when I found Key West, I had a job singing in bars and working on fishing boats. And at that time, I thought it was pretty cool to do that.”

Have you enjoyed being in the theater business?
“It’s been a wonderful experience with a joyous cast. When I first started my band, we wanted to take people to a place where they could forget about stuff, and it’s the same thing with ‘Escape to Margaritaville.’ But there are some fun-police in New York that think we don’t belong there, but we’re doing just fine. People love the show. They go there and have a great time, and so to hell with The New York Times.”

What do you hope your legacy will be?
“I like to think I’ve made the world a little happier than it was before I got here. I’m not looking for awards and personal gain more than what I’ve already got. There’s an old French saying, ‘noblesse oblige,’ which means if you’re lucky enough to have this, then you help other people get there. I want to teach and I want to help kids who need financial aid getting into school – education is the thing that gets you places.

Buffett’s Support Helps St. Barts

Interviews, Tour Dates 3 Comments

From the New York Times: “Jimmy Buffett’s Support Helps St. Barts Move Forward”

It has been 40 years since Jimmy Buffett traveled on a whim to the French island often known as St. Barts.

He liked what he saw then from the deck of his sailboat, and he has continued to return: surfing off its beaches, writing books and songs and celebrating many a holiday, including Christmas, which is his birthday.

He is 71 now, as much business mogul as entertainer, branding Margaritaville to sell everything from pool floats to retirement homes.

But he has also used his clout and voice to support St. Barts after Hurricane Irma, sending private planes to help ferry supplies in the early days after the storm and giving a benefit concert in the port of Gustavia in December. He is one of the ambassadors for Les Voiles de Saint Barth, the annual sailing regatta that will take place this month despite the challenges posed by the island’s recovery efforts.

He is in the process of building his latest home on the island and plans to race aboard a friend’s yacht during the regatta. He did this interview from his boat in the Bahamas. It has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Why was it important to you to be involved in this race?

I think anything we can do to make it known that St. Barts is on the way back is good, and as my friend said, “I guess your house will be ready just in time for the next storm.”

And I was going, “Please God, don’t let it be a big one.”

I think there’s a little bit of that apprehension in everybody there who went through Irma but you’ve got to keep moving on forward, breathe in and breathe out and move on. That’s kind of the way I think about it.

Read the full article

Les Voiles de Saint Barth – April 8th – 14th, 2018