Bama Breeze
A song that was brought to me by Renee Bell, who is and old friend who has done this for a long time and is very good at it. It's one of those that I wished that I had written, and the kids that wrote this song hit the nail on the head. Bama Breeze, is obviously about the Floribama, which is a coming of age bar that people on the Gulf Coast know as well as I do. I have a friend up in Nantucket , who has a couple of restaurants and it's staffed by twenty year old college students. They were having a party one time and I dropped in and I said "What do all think about this?", and I mean these are northeastern college kids and this is supposed to be my version of a country song. They just went "Oh man". Everybody's got a Bama Breeze in their life, I figure. | Back To Top

Party At The End Of The World
It was inspired by a trip to Argentina . I took Roger and Pete and Will Kimbrough who was a writer on a lot of this stuff down to St. Barth’s because I always like to write in comfortable places. We rented a little house on the beach put our little garage band and our Apple on there and wrote songs for a couple of weeks. We didn’t work that hard, we worked a couple and in true French style we took lunch off.
So there’s a little wine and fashion shows and there were these lovely French models running around and you get inspiration where you can these days. I love the line “who cares about the rapture when there’s native girls to capture.” | Back To Top

Weather With You
I’d met the Finn Brothers in New Zealand , when I first went down there to tour and I loved their work when they were in Crowded House and I still do. They’re great writers and I’ve always liked this song and I thought we could do it justice. We had played it in shows a couple times before and it was always good, and it was actually the first thing we cut when we went into the studio cause it just felt so good.
When we mixed it I wanted it to really sound like a vocal ensemble and not me with background singers. I’ve been accused of having the ability to take the weather with me, but it’s usually luck. Clouds have parted after days of rain when we hit the stage on more than one occasion so I’m not gonna try to take credit for the weather, but it seems like a good metaphor and I love this song. | Back To Top

Everybody’s On The Phone
I went to Hong Kong about 6 years ago, and there are huge buildings, but the apartments are about the size of plastic water bottles or something. So everybody’s outside and I mean everybody had a cell phone. You didn’t see it in America 6 years ago, what happens here today. You know you’re walking down the street and tried to count everybody who is on the phone, walking down 6th Avenue or something, you’d be counting awhile. You also see is at shows now, it started maybe 4 years ago. When we did Madison Square Garden I played Everybody’s on the Phone for the first time, because they were. And you looked out and then when they heard the song, it went over big. I wanted another kinda fun song, I wrote the first verse, and the chorus, and handed it off to Will Kimbrough who I think is one of the unsung people that I’m going to mention from all the players on this album. I just loved his take on things when you’re looking for collaboration. | Back To Top

Whoop De Doo
Whoop de doo, Mark Knopfler, what do you say? Truly one of my favorite writers, performers and guitar players and I was lucky enough on a few occasions over the last few years to run into Mark at shows. We actually were in the studio about a month apart when we did Volcano and Dire Straits did Brothers In Arms down in Montserrat . When we recorded it we were down in Key Wes t and Chuck Raney - who’s co-producer on the album he did with Emmylou - was down doing George Strait in our studio, and I played him that track and he went “Mark’s gotta hear that.” I was taking my son to the World Cup and I had some business in London and so Mark was on tour so we did a lot of the vocals in his studio in this little room that he had designed based on his first room and ironically a lot of the guys working in the studio I had known from the “Air” days in Montserrat, so it was a very comfortable environment. | Back To Top

Nothing But A Breeze
The song is about 25 years old and it just fit. Jesse Winchester songs always wind up on Jimmy Buffett records and I think they will for a long time. You drop that in on this great band and great arrangements and then you put Utley and Billy Payne and Mac in there…We had Glenn Worf, who plays with Mark Knopfler on the road, and is a great bass player from Nashville , wonderful guy and Jim Mayer came down - our idea was to use them on certain songs. I had in mind who I wanted on which songs, because they’re both great bass players and we actually recorded on several of these tracks with double bass. | Back To Top

Cinco De Mayo In Memphis
Guy Clark. There another one of my relief pitchers out there. Guy is an old friend and when I heard this, this came again from Renee , and it was just quirky enough. The visual of Mexican towboat operators dressing up, getting off the boat going to Graceland , who couldn’t have interpreted that? And John Lovell gets to go off. We needed some place to put John Lovell’s wonderful mariachi trumpet. | Back To Top

Reggabilly Hill
I was with Chris Blackwell in Jamaica and he had a band playing and I said “Who’s that band?” And he said, “Well that’s Ernie Ranglin.” Ernest Ranglin is a legendary guitar player, for those who don’t know, who was on all of the initial Bob Marley stuff, going back to Millie Small on My Boy Lollipop and Ernie is just a classic gentleman. That original reggae “chinka chinka chinka?” That’s Ernie Ranglin.
So we took him to London and he’s on this and he’s on Silver Wings. I wanted him on Reggabilly Hill because this is my second favorite song on the record. I don’t know why, but it just speaks to me. I just like the story and I like what it says and I love that groove and it’s another one of those you can hear that double bass and then there’s Ernie Rangel in there and it’s pretty straight ahead. | Back To Top

Elvis Presley Blues
Gillian Welch, a Berkley School of Music Student. I love this song, I love her stuff, but then when I heard it I wanted to do it like the Tennessee Three used to play with Johnny Cash. I told Pete Mayer you have to think Tennessee Three, and boy did he come through. Pete really shines on this thing and it’s exactly what I wanted it to be. It’s a far cry from Gillian’s arrangement on her album, so I hope that she likes it. | Back To Top

Hula Girl At Heart
Every now and then I gotta write a Jimmy Buffett song and I can write 'em probably better than most people. A lot of people try to these days it seems, but I still have to hold my own. There’s nothing about a beautiful woman doing a hula that I don’t like, from the motion to the dress to the costume to the backdrop, nothing about it. I've got one of those hula lamps that wiggles, so that’s where I was when started it. | Back To Top

Wheel Inside The Wheel
The first thing I started to write on this was Party At The End Of The World, and I was actually in Argentina, and fishing, and there was a little town called Ushuaia, which literally is at the end of the world, I think it is the most southern point on the globe. I'd heard stories of Tierra Del Feugo from my grandfather, and from reading, and I expected it to be like the surface of Mars. And we ran into a funky little town, at the end of the world with duty free shops, and a cruise ship taking off for Antarctica , and a great Five Star Italian restaurant. It was like Key Wes t at the end of the world. We wound up going to a party that somebody invited us to.
Mac played me the Mary Gauthier album, and it intrigued me. We play her a lot, I think she's one of the best country writers out there. As somebody who has lived in New Orleans , and actually cut my teeth in the French Quarter, it's the ultimate tribute to the Mardi Gras philosophy. If you lived in the French Quarter, pre-Katrina, you saw what is explained in that song, and that's life in the French Quarter. | Back To Top

Silver Wings
I'm glad that people have picked me up on country radio after two or three failed careers in country. I have always loved those traditional songs, and Merle Haggard is still out there doing it. What can you say about Merle Haggard, I mean, a living legend. Silver Wings and Gordon Lightfoot's Early Morning Rain are my favorite two airplane country songs. So this is for anybody who flies out there, or wants to fly, or is afraid of flying. | Back To Top

Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On
Matt Betton has always been another of those people that can write as good a Jimmy song as I can. After Katrina, I was deeply affected by that. I remember being on stage at Wrigley Field while New Orleans was flooding…and it's still terrible down there. And that we as a country, should be ashamed of the way things are being handled down there. And I feel passionate about that.
But, that said, you gotta move on. I think saving the cultural heartland of America is something that I'm gonna be involved with. And on a daily basis, I'm still working, because the world moves on. In a way it should, but things need to still be tended to so. I was gonna say something on an album about what happened down there, and for the people that still live there. I hope that this song just says we gotta deal with it and move on. It is a quiet gesture, not an in your face kinda thing that I wanted to do on this song. | Back To Top

Duke's On Sunday
Kapono playing at Duke's in Waikiki , I played there awhile back and listened to him do that song. I gotta have a little bit of Hawaii in me wherever I go. And again, this song, and then what we did with an arrangement and what Mac and Michael did to arrange this. It's a great way to finish out, and leave everybody smiling, and that's what this record was supposed to do. And, you can pack the weather up and then head on. | Back To Top