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Show Notes:
Recorded Wednesday, October 4 2006, (7:30 PM – 9:30 PM) at Casa de Schmoe in Dearborn MI
    “Thanks to Radio Margaritaville, Sirius 31, we got to hear Jimmy’s new album ahead of its October 10 release date. Here are our pizza-and-tequila-fueled thoughts on the new material, from our listening party at Casa de Schmoe.”

    Scott and I assembled at Schmoe’s house by six to listen to Radio Margaritaville’s preview of Take the Weather With You. Mike showed up about a half hour late, due to his long commute from work. Although scheduled for two hours, the preview lasted more like ninety minutes. We started recording almost immediately afterward, sitting around Schmoe’s kitchen table. Without wallyball or racquetball (or golf) preceding it, what we assumed would be a big night of podcasting actually ended earlier than our usual Wednesdays.
    The pizzas came from Benito’s. The Coronas, margaritas, and Twisted Teas were Schmoe’s.
    If you’ve forgotten, Hud’s cameo starts off Episode 7.
    Here’s some “Free Bird” history. And here’s some “Curtis Lowe” history.
    Scott pictures Heather Dee Perry.
    Scott’s Brush with Greatness: Shock coach and former Piston Bill Laimbeer and former Lion coach Steve Mariucci.
    Upon further reflection, “Cinqo de Mayo in Memphis” reminds me even more of “Clichés” than “Cuban Crime of Passion”. And I forgot to mention the presence of banjos in “Wheel Inside the Wheel”. Is this the first appearance of banjos in a JB album? [Update: once again Mickey has overlooked the License to Chill album, and its song “Piece of Work”.]
    The guys yelled at me for adding “Cha cha cha” intermittently to “Silver Wings”, during the Sirius show.
    Some of our research was helped by the fact the original versions of “Weather With You”, “Cinqo de Mayo in Memphis”, “Elvis Presley Blues”, “Wheel Inside the Wheel”, “Silver Wings” are available on iTunes.
    Have fun listening to the album when it comes out! See you in a couple weeks. And, finally, how ’bout our new theme song!
    P.S.: so, did you hear the news? Jimmy was arrested for injecting heroin in a Turkish airport. …Actually, French authorities insist they found Ecstasy during a baggage check. Jimmy has stated that the pills were actually a vitamin supplement called Foltx, and that customs was confused by a heart shape imprinted on the pills. Looks like Jimmy might be telling the truth.

      >  Download Episode 20

Show Notes:
Recorded Wednesday, September 27 2006, (9:30 PM – 11:30 PM) at Zodiac Racquet Club in Southgate MI
    “Scott, Mickey, Mike, and Schmoe review License to Chill, look back at the last concert, and look forward to the new album.”

    I know the title is presumptuous, but it was the best I could do this late at night. (Not that we’re losers — that you will play us [and then do so again].)
    This week’s episode kicks off with an immediate defection: Don, our resident Michael Bolton fan.
    I don’t remember when Emeril came to Michigan, but I guess it was some time in the late 90s.
    The only “occupational hazard” I found in 21 Jump Street is a chapter name of “The Narc” episode in the Season 3 DVD box set. And The Doctor, a 1991 film starring William Hurt, was mentioned as “Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Screw” plays a part in the story.
    My apologies for the audio dropouts during the JB interview. It was recorded off the Sirius downstream feed.
    Jimmy’s new album features several covers. We sought those out on iTunes and were planning to base the episode on our impressions of these songs — our attempt at a scoop. But this also meant we’d be reviewing the same songs twice, once the new album is released. It was Joe’s idea to review the most recent album instead, License to Chill. Although I like the songs, I have a hard time remembering that this is in the discography. I guess it’s because of all the guest stars; it feels more like a “various artists compilation” or tribute album more than a “Buffett album”. License to Chill was released July 13 2004, the nineteenth anniversary of Live Aid.
    I was confused in my discussion of “Quietly Making Noise”. We heard it July 4 1993, during the Chameleon Caravan tour. The Fruitcakes tour I mentioned obviously followed the Fruitcakes album, in 1994.
    The Sports Illustrated CD-ROM can be seen here (bottom right).
    This is the e-mail Scott sent out, the morning the CD was released.

From: Scott
Sent: Tuesday, July 13, 2004 2:09 AM
To: All
Subject: License to Chill Review

    Well, jumped out of bed at 11:30 to hit Meijer’s CD department. The kid working the aisle was moderately upset because he had chosen to start with the new Pistons DVD and did not really want to dig through the boxes of CD’s at that moment. However I convinced him I was not in a hurry and would help him stock the pistons DVD that he chose to start with. 10 minutes later we were done and he went to find my CD, after another 10 minutes he came back with my $15 CD — which I thought was outrageous, but Jimmy needs the money! At the register it rang up $9.98. I was pleasently surprised!
    So I walked hastily to my car tearing off the plastic and having a reserved yet good feeling. After all, this was supposed to be a Country album and my friends know Country scares me! But, for Jimmy I would ride the tide and remain open-minded!!

Song One: “Hey Good Lookin'” (Clint Black, Kenny Chesney, Alan Jackson and some more country people): We all know the song and CMT has been playing the heck out of the video. It’s an ok song it will be fun in concert.
Song Two: “Boats to Build” with Alan Jackson: Solid Buffett. Easy to listen to. This song will grow on me! Well be fun to sing in concert!
Song Three: “License to Chill” with Kenny Chesney: Same as above
Song Four: “Coast of Carolina”: Stopped on this one and listened to it twice! Great Buffett!! This is an outstanding song both lyrically and musically! Thank you Jimmy — you still have got it!!
Song Five: “Piece of Work” with Toby Keith: This song is has interesting lyrics I’ll have to listen to it a couple of times to be sure but it seems good!
Song 6: “Anything Anytime Anywhere”: This song is going to have to grow on me. My initial reaction is to put it at the end of my iPod “License to Chill” playlist!
Song 7: “Trip around the Sun” with Martina McBride: I like the two of them together. I think they sound good! It is pretty twangy but I won’t skip to the next song!
Song 8: “Simply Complicated”: This song reminds me of “Math Suks”! It’s fun but nothing you are going to be humming. Put it at the end of your JB mix, next to “Math Suks”!
Song 9: “Coastal Confessions”: Once again Buffett reminds us of why we follow him! Solid song!!
Song 10: “Sea of Heartbreak” with George Strait: Very Country, but you can listen to it!
Song 11: “Conky Tonkin'” with Clint Black: (This was the original title of the Album according to my sources.) This is classic country and to be honest I don’t like Clint Black at all. It will be near the bottom of my playlist!
Song 12: “Playin’ the Loser Again” will Bill Withers: Once again, very country but I enjoyed this one a little better then the last! The song behind the country is a good song! Bill Withers sounds good. The second time around I enjoyed this song even more! God, I hope I am not becoming a redneck!
Song 13: “Window on the World”: I enjoyed this song first time out. Moved its way to #3 on the play list!
Song 14: “Someone I Used to Love” with Nancy Griffith: This does not sound like a Buffett song at all. Not knowing Country I have never heard of Nanci Griffith, but they sound good together. Damn, I think I am going to have to buy a beat-up pickup truck and a dog and start drinking beer!!
Song 15: “Scarlet Begonias”: This is a solid tune! Great concert song! This will move to #1 on the playlist!
Song 16: “Back to the Island”: Jimmy reminds us that he has not forgot his roots and will indeed return to the islands!

    All in all, a solid album and has this boy enjoying a short boat ride through the Country! As long as it is a short ride I am willing to expand my horizon and I give this album an enthusiastic thumbs up!!
    2:08 AM! That’s a wrap!!

    Incidentally, this is the first episode with our new logo artwork. It was designed by my niece Heather, who runs Asteriou Designs. As Joe said, it looks too professional for our little podcast, but we’ll use it anyway.

      >  Download Episode 19

Show Notes:
Recorded Wednesday, September 20 2006, (9:30 PM – 11:00 PM) at Zodiac Racquet Club in Southgate MI
    “Scott, Mike, Schmoe, and Mickey are at Zodiac, taking up Listener Ed’s suggestion to review A1A.”

    We got a late start, since some birthday party commandeered our room. The recording session began with me selling my video iPod to Schmoe (paving the way for me to order one of the new 80GB iPods).
    Here’s Billboard’s track list. Here’s Mailboat Records’.
    Our friends at COB,O.
    An unofficial Solid Gold fan site.
    Who is Alex Harvey?
    Buffett News says Jimmy performed “Dallas” in Austin at least. (And, to answer my own question, the last time Jimmy was in California, at the Irvine show on April 22, he sang: “California hasn’t worn me too thin / It’s so nice to be in Irvine again.”)
    Yes, the John Sebastian who wrote “Stories We Could Tell” did write the theme song for Welcome Back Kotter. [iTunes link]
    Steve Eng’s biography, The Man from Margaritaville Revealed, might not be the best authority, but at least it was handy as I write this. According to page 159, “Life is Just a Tire Swing” is more autobiographical than I thought. “‘Are you ready for this amazing story?’ [Jimmy] asked a call-in listener during a 1989 interview on station WLUP-FM in Chicago. He told how, on his way to a college concert in western Illinois with Steve Goodman, he passed a tire swing — and began working on the song. Then, on their way to Peoria, he did fall asleep…and woke up in the field next to the tire swing!” (No word on what kind of crash was the antecedent for his waking up, though.) The book also suggests Buffett arrived in Key West in November 1971, before writing and recording Pink Crustacean; and it was during his stay in Montana, while he worked on the Rancho Deluxe movie, that he had so much time to craft the A1A songs. By the way, here’s an example of Grant Wood faces.
    The “Pencil Thin Mustache” / “Grapefruit – Juicy Fruit” Ruling came up after the Detroit concert last week. It was decided upon before we started recording, but we agreed Jimmy can do one of those songs during a show, but not both.
    Everyone probably has their own misheard or misinterpreted lyric; my biggest gaffe comes from “Migration”. I heard Jimmy singing “And mobile homes, those Mother McKees — I hate those bastards so much.” I have no idea where I got ‘Mother McKee’; I just assumed it was Southern slang for a mobile home. And it wasn’t till years later, either paging through the songbooks or checking the lyric sites, that I finally got corrected.
    A few years ago, David Lee Roth sang an acoustic “Tin Cup Chalice” on WRIF-FM Detroit. If interested, you can download my MP3 copy of this performance.
    Detroit country DJ Deano Day has his own website (i.e., page).
    And a different Deano provides our coda.
    See you next week for our pre-new-album show. Plans are to discuss what we know about the album and, time permitting, possibly review License to Chill.
    P.S.: I almost forgot. Here’s a funny thing I discovered in the iTunes Store. If you click on Jimmy’s bio [iTunes link], you get a list of his Influences, including James Taylor. And here’s a screen grab of Taylor’s bio.

      >  Download Episode 18

Show Notes:
Recorded Wednesday, August 23 2006, (9:30 PM – 11:30 PM) at Big Al’s in Browstown MI
    “Mike, Schmoe, Greg, and Mickey discuss the new single, the Hoot bonus DVD, yet more from Caseville, and reviews of Coconut Telegraph. With Dan and Laury as the noisy and mutinous studio audience.”

    I freely admit it: we talk too damn much.
    I fully expected this to be one of our shorter shows. We had little to talk about — not much in the news and just an album review to discuss — yet we ended up with one of our longer shows. Heaven help you if we ever decide to review Boats Beaches Bars & Ballads.
    Dan, mentioned in last week’s episode, showed up in a cameo; and Laury, who first appeared on Episode 11, also stuck around. Together, they threatened to conduct their own simultaneous podcast, as can be heard in the audio file’s left channel. And who can forget the horseshoe game in the right channel.
    Latest news on “Bama Breeze” is that the promo CD single is being sent out to radio stations and that the album whence it comes is changing titles every day. (By the way, I knew there had to be a reason I had trouble saying “Bama Breeze” last week, and I think it stems from getting it confused with the Bahama Breeze restaurant in Livonia.) According to Buffett News, the song was written by Chris Tompkins, Josh Kear, and Mark Irwin. And in a Buffett World message board thread, you can download Josh Kear’s demo of the song as well as view the cover for Jimmy’s CD single.
    Link for Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (not to be confused with the Songwriters Hall of Fame).
    It’s great to get more live Buffett on DVD, but I found watching the From the Big Apple to the Big Easy video very frustrating. Not only does the director keep returning to the same six audience members, he has a knack for singling out the performer next to whomever is soloing. (I was also disappointed the video is not 16×9.)
    Walmart hardly needs us to advertise for them, but here’s the link to their Hoot exclusive. Mike’s quote about forgetting batteries was a direct shot at me, in reference to our recording of Episode 12 (though technically, I had batteries. I simply wanted to go home for fresh batteries). Another inside joke refers to when Mike and Joe were in deep discussion at some very noisy bar. (I was not there so hopefully they can fill in the details.) Mike brought up the subject of Pistons tickets and Joe, obviously mishearing him, looked suddenly shocked and offended if not a little hurt, and asked “Did you just call me a dick?” Mike has since made sure this will be a long-running running gag.
    Re: Caseville. Greg gave me a CDR of his photos, so I should be uploading them soon — barring all the ones where I look too fat.
    Sing along to our newly minted Album of the Week theme song.
    Want to see the album package we’re talking about?
    I swear Deborah McColl had a website, back when her first solo album came out in 2000; but at least here’s a link to the album. [Could I have confused it with Claudia Cummings’s website?] Update: Deborah McColl’s website is located at — where else? — Deborah McColl.com.
    “Stars Fell on Alabama”, music by Frank Perkins and lyrics by Marshall Parish, was written in 1934.  The title has been on the Alabama license plate since 2002.  Perkins also wrote the music for the 1964 Don Knotts movie The Incredible Mr Limpet.
    We thought it funny that the big dance club in Caseville was named Herschel’s…but it turns out all our jokes were based on a misreading of the sign! Then again, even they get their name wrong (take a close look at the URL).
    The selection again did not make the final cut, but our next album review will be for Somewhere Over China.

      >  Download Episode 14

Show Notes:
Recorded Wednesday, August 16 2006, (9:30 PM – 11:00 PM) at Big Al’s in Browstown MI; and location recording from Caseville MI on Saturday, August 12.
    “Mike, Mickey, Schmoe, and Greg discuss their pilgrimage to the Cheeseburger Festival, and Scott joins in to opine on Banana Wind. Special guest stars: Meredith and Laura.”

    Note: I’m still trying to find time to edit the Caseville video. The first interview was recorded Saturday afternoon outside the Official Cheeseburger Store (6912 Main Street, Caseville MI 4872). The second interview was conducted Saturday night near the park amphitheater, with Air Margaritaville performing in the background. The “thirty to forty, between sets” refers to a cheeseburger eating contest held during the Air Margaritaville intermission.
    In regards to the release date for Banana Wind: it was released on June 4 1996. As with Barometer Soup, I got a chance to listen to it the night before it came out, at the now defunct Blockbuster Music on Michigan Ave in Dearborn. I consulted my journal to back this up, and I am reminded that we’d seen these same songs performed in concert at Pine Knob the previous Thursday (May 30).

…I took Middlebelt to Michigan and headed to Blockbuster Music. I needed to pre-order the Buffett disc today if I wanted to get in on that sticker deal. So I sat at their “bar” and listened to the CD. The copy they had was still in its plastic holder, so I asked if they had one open. The guy took that one and unlocked it for me. I listened to bits of each song. I got more than halfway through before I lost track and had to skip around, losing my place. Some of the songs were familiar from the concert. These seemed to be the ones I like best. I couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed though. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was rushed — because I wasn’t really in the mood, seeing as Mike wasn’t here to make an event out of it [like last year] — but a lot of the album did not grab me as Barometer Soup had done. And I did not care for the overall acoustic sound. The constant strumming got rather monotonous and the some of the songs sounded the same. I noted how the sign behind the “bar” advertised a “collection of stickers” if I pre-ordered. I also liked how the CD was only $12.99 and I would only have to put down five dollars. I was willing to pay for it now, and I was also planning on buying Mike’s copy too. That way I could either pick up both copies Tuesday or he could just swing in and pick his up without having to bother much. I figured I owed it to him; not only was he going through hell [with his dad in the hospital], but he had also provided both the food and booze last Thursday.

    The following day, after giving blood at the Red Cross in Southgate, I returned to Blockbuster Music in Dearborn.

I went over to Blockbuster and picked up my two CDs. The kid recognized me and went off to get my CDs from the back. He rang me up but didn’t mention any stickers, so I brought the subject up. He didn’t seem to know anything about it, but the second kid went to the back and came out with a long thin strip in clear plastic. I thought the collection of stickers must be on some wide ribbon, but what he handed over was a simple, single bumper sticker. It was white with “PARROTHEAD” in pink. It was terribly lame, but it was apparently legit since it had MCA and Blockbuster logos on it. The guy remembered to give me two. [After work I swung by Mike’s house to leave the CD with his wife.]

    The “Oh? oh? oh? — ooooh!” reaction is from 1987, when Mike sneaked down to the stagefront for the encores. I’ve got the audio but it really isn’t clear enough to include here.
    The “Aeolian chords” line is from a famous quote by William Mann, music critic of the London Times, where he described the “Aeolian cadence at the end of “Not a Second Time” (the chord progression which ends Mahler’s ‘Song of the Earth’)” when reviewing With the Beatles. Is that Don’t Stop the Carnival song “Just an Old Truth Teller”?
    I coudn’t resist monkeying with Scott’s reviews, turning them into a kind of Poetry Corner-type segment. The music in the background is Mozart’s Piano Concerto In D minor, K. 466: 1st Movement.
    Meredith and Laura manage to make a special appearance just before the end. Laura used to be the cook at Big Al’s and, by remarkable coincidence, also had a porch crashed into. The “Dan” mentioned, now in Nicaragua, is the same Dan heard at the very beginning of our Show 0.
    The selection did not make the final cut, again, but our next album review will be for Coconut Telegraph.
    My favorite show quote is a tie this week: “OK. Jimmy flies. We get it.” and “You’re Chicken Taco Guy!”

      >  Download Episode 13