JIMMY BUFFETT'S ROMANTIC MUSE RETURNS
By Barry Gilbert
St.
Louis Post-Dispatch
April 27, 2009
(Review of concert April 24 at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater)
In many ways,
Jimmy Buffett's show Thursday night was typical, from the costumed,
party-primed, Parrothead crowd to Buffett's spirited performance of
must-play favorites to the contributions of his magnificent, veteran
Coral Reefer Band.
But something has happened in the eight
years since the mayor of "Margaritaville" — now,
unbelievably, 61 years old — last played St. Louis: He seems to
have reconnected with the romantic core of his music.
Irony
and a kind of nudge-nudge-wink-wink edge has often hovered over
Buffett's music in concert. But this time, a straightforward,
emotional honesty had more than a toehold, especially during a
sequence that came late in his "Year of Still Here" show at
sold-out Verizon Wireless Amphitheater.
After a sing-along
romp through "Volcano," Buffett, a sailor and a pilot,
returned to accounts of his round-the-world travels, the show's
connective tissue.
He talked about being in Dubai during
shore leave for the USS Harry S. Truman ("Five thousand drunken
sailors — you don't think that's my crowd?"). And, as he
played one of his signature songs, "Son of a Son of a Sailor,"
he showed video of his visit with the crew and his performance aboard
the aircraft carrier, which is serving in the Persian Gulf.
In
fact, video served as almost another band member. Far from being
merely a way for folks on the lawn to see the stage, the video
complemented each song, such as footage of Buffett surfing at exotic
locales during "School Boy Heart" ("I got a school boy
heart/ a novelist eye/ Stout sailor's legs/ and a license to
fly").
And after a poignantly straightforward reading of
"A Pirate Looks at Forty," Buffett took the crowd "around
the world in 6½ minutes" in picture and song during "Far
Side of the World" ("From Paris to Tunisia/ Casablanca to
Dakar/ I was riding long before I flew/ Through the wind and sand and
stars").
Buffett's superb cover of Crosby, Stills and
Nash's "Southern Cross" followed, with a fully engaged
crowd dancing and singing along.
In all, the
singer-songwriter, whose career is pushing 40 years, delivered a
generous 27-song set over two hours and 40 minutes. It spanned his
major-label recording career, from 1973's comically randy "Why
Don't We Get Drunk" (featuring a cute bit with the sign-language
interpreter) and 1974's bittersweet "Come Monday" to the
new "We're Still Here" ("I didn't do it for the fame
or the fortune/ It was all about the girls").
It's also
about the music, thanks to the Coral Reefer Band, which is anchored
by former St. Louisans Peter Mayer on guitar, brother Jim Mayer on
bass and Roger Guth on drums. The band, 11 strong, brought Buffett's
music alive. Every player had a moment or two, from Peter Mayer's
stinging guitar solos and John Lovell's trumpet runs, to Nadirah
Shakoor's vocals and the entwined playing of pianist Michael Utley
and steel drummer Robert Greenidge.
But the best musical
moment was supplied by a guest, ukelele wizard Jake Shimabukuro.
Accompanied by Greenidge, Shimabukuro mesmerized the crowd with an
instrumental take on George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently
Weeps."
Buffett's must-plays made their usual
appearances, including "Cheeseburger in Paradise," "Fins,"
"Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes" (set to video
of Parrothead activity earlier in the Verizon parking lots), "One
Particular Harbor" and, of course, "Margaritaville."
His only misstep came during the first of two encores.
Buffett has a great track record of picking cover tunes and making
them his own, from Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" to John
Hiatt's "The Tiki Bar is Open." But his rewritten version
of Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 and 35" is not one of
them, its "everybody must get stoned" lyric
notwithstanding. It just felt wrong.
But Buffett got his mojo
back on his closing number, a gentle, solo acoustic reading of Jesse
Winchester's dreamlike "Defying Gravity" ("I live on a
big round ball...") from 1976.