It’s Generational: From the Middle to the Top & On Down
Bob Barrick, lead singer and founder of Jammy Buffet (boo-fay), was 5 when his oldest brother took their dad to a Jimmy Buffett show (likely June of 97) in Deer Creek, IN and the patriarch came home a changed man. Since then Bob hasn’t gone a day not listening to Buffett in some capacity.
We can all agree, there’s powerful nostalgia and there’s the earned emotions that power memories from childhood to color people forever. We can probably also all agree that only so many of those core moments can carry fully through a person’s make-up and shape their life’s work. That’s where the music that Jimmy Buffett wrote, recorded, and played took Bob.
After Bob graduated from college he did a year in AmeriCorps and then moved to Brooklyn and played under Kingdom Jasmine. Working musicians, they played out regularly, and were invited to Colorado for an annual festival called Frozen Dead Guy Days - there are food, booze, and music events happening all over town … sounds like HyperLocal bait, frankly - but let’s not lose the thread. Bob immediately fell in love with Colorado and, after a brief series of synchronicities, moved there with his lady.
But that begs the question - why does a guy who grew up landlocked in Indiana and now lives landlocked in Colorado gravitate so strongly to Jimmy Boat-Life Buffett?
“Why did it resonate? He’s an incredible melodical writer and an incredible lyrical writer - the stories in the songs are incredibly vivid.”
That doesn’t sound like a lot - right? Simple observations. But when you feed all that Jimmy Buffett into a young impressionable mind with a bend toward poetry and songwriting, well, now we’re talking about the makings of a lightning strike.
(Note: Bob studied poetry in college but does not endorse using it as a study technique to retain any facet of biology.)
80s Genes
Brendan Mayer is the son of Peter Mayer & nephew of Jim Mayer: Peter is the lead guitarist and Jim’s the bassist for the Coral Reefer Band, Jimmy's band since the late 80s. The 50 year-old band wasn’t even 15 when these brothers enlisted. They still hold their roles today - in a band that’s wound, reinvented, and recreated itself as many times as was needed over the decades. It’s also no accident that these two brothers come from jazz backgrounds.
Considering these two large talents joined the band when they did - 1989- it stands to reason that the massive impact another established act with a disciple-like following had on the music scene when they released Touch of Grey in 1987 wasn’t lost on Buffett. That song, and its video, exposed a whole new, and younger, group of listeners to The Grateful Dead’s music and shot their community full of lit'ril HGH.
Buffett, twice a NY Times Best Selling Author (once for fiction, once for non-fiction), no doubt had a boss processor between the ears and gleaned what audiences wanted: in a late 80s ripe with greed & graft and still nursing a disco-cum-synth pop hangover, they looked for meaningful connection and musicianship that ran deeper than a little Spring Love.
You can see this in his ticket sales - which rose dramatically from the late 80s (hey, look, it’s the Mayer boys!) to peak in 2006. For an artist to start making records in 1970, have their (,,, arguably [Anaheim] ) biggest hit in 1977, and see a spike in concert attendance over the next 30 years … you would likely be right to say Jimmy Buffett had a strong sense of timing.
So now imagine how Young Mayer (full circle back around to Jammy Buffet’s guitarist, Brendan) must have felt when he got an email from Uncle Jimmy B in 2014 after the elder statesman an songwriter'd listened to one of Brendan’s original songs.
He reached out with a suggestion, an offer, and a demand. The honcho recommended Brendan adjust a lyric or two so the audience would grab onto the hook louder. Buffett then offered Brendan the opportunity to join the band on the road but required that, if he did, he’d have to perform that same original song on stage. These were all champagne problems Mayer had no problem solving.
A lightning strike has only a few key components … that’s two down.
Manifest Uncertainty
“Boulder has its own unique roots sound - the blend of traditional roots sounds and feels from bluegrass, rock n roll, Grateful Dead to Americana - it’s a distinct sound you can hear in the rock n roll jam bands that come out of Colorado. It's a new explorative expression of the great American roots music tradition. Having a rhythm section with Boulder jam roots with Bob and Brendan’s Buffett legacy opens the door to a whole new experience for both the fans and us, alike.”
That’s keyboardist Paul Copoulos spitting out anthropological quotables while clinging to the roof rack of a supervillain’s Wagoneer, railing around Nantucket island corners on the run from the bartenders in Chatham - who apparently have an airtag in his pocket. (Don’t worry Cynthia, he’s fine.).
Out in Boulder there were several bands flourishing when Bob approached a friend and asked who should be lined up to play in a strictly fictional Jammy Buffet band. Bob was given names. Those names are the same who’s who who’re touring with Bob this very night. That rhythm section (Paul Copoulos on keys, Tyler Gwynn on drums, and Andrew Cooney on bass) come from the improvisational jazz scene in Boulder. Paul was ticklin em for Flash Mountain Flood and Andrew and Tyler sat back on the beat in Tenth Mountain Division, keeping the heart thumping and telling private jokes with their eyebrows.
Back at the Chatham Squire, Bob matter of factly says, “Paul, Andrew, Tyler - the guys from the CO jam scene - they’re the heartbeat. Those dudes are the foundation for what makes this band great. Their ignorance of the intricacies of Buffett’s music really serves us well — “
Brendan jumps in, “we’re Intentionally not over rehearsed.”
Bob’s back to introduce the ends of the loop to each other, “yeah we want to make it exploratory. (to Paul) He’d know more about that … would you agree that not rehearsing keeps it more exploratory?”
Paul has a whole other story to tell but, true to good form, suppresses his giddiness for the sake of the clean soundbite, “Ya know, respectfully, it’s been a gift to unpack the songs and not try to -- or focus on what the other pianist or organist have done previously because the fresh eyed guys like myself and some of the other guys who aren’t as familiar with Jimmy’s songwriting and experience -- It’s been a cool way to put a different twist on it. We’re calling audibles live on stage, we’re playing songs we’ve never performed together live on stage for the first time … “
He goes on in italics about the real value that’s there for them by not overcooking the steak. Or over-mixing the meatballs. Or the meatloaf.
We’re still talking about over-rehearsal.
Brendan does not come from a jammy-improvisational scene - he’s used to more structure in his performances but during his first show with Bob & the Boys (Jammy Buffet’s April show in Nashville) he learned quickly “feeling my oats, I started to see what Bob and the guys were doing and I figured ‘ok, this is what we’re doing this is my chance to go for it’ … so I just went into Gimme Shelter not knowing it was gonna fall flat on its face but these guys were right on it and I thought ‘this is gonna work out.’
“We got you buddy! You got us too.” Paul, the pearl.
Just as Bob is about to pick his way through the Live In Nashville album and tell me how much he loves that night'spin on One Particular Harbor and Scarlet Begonias, specifically because that night he was on stage with the main macaroni Peter Mayer. Paul had reached capacity.
“OK get a load of this, the guy who booked us last night owns this bar, and the place across the street — this is Greg the Bartender, tell us where we are and how it connects to the beach club and what you did as a teenager.”
Greg the bartender - known Chatham centerfold pinup - does in fact tell the story. We do not have a stenographer but we DO have an audio file at the top of this post - scroll up and be regaled. Comes complete with J. Geils Band reference.
Drop Anchor
We’ve gone adrift, so to bring it back: the sprawling improvisational music scene that surrounded Bob in Boulder - personified by Paul, Tyler, and Andrew - proved to be the charge falling from the rolling clouds that met Bob’s inspired vision emanating from street level.
Finally the lightning struck.
Their very first show was a sell out - strong omens for sure.
It brings Buffett’s own sense of timing back around … he intuited when to open the band up to greater possibilities, and he was right. Is there something to the fact that Jammy Buffet is coming along right now? Borne out of a songwriter’s cosmic connection to a hero artist, a legacy player paying homage to his forefathers & the icon who was a fixture of his youth, and the large, amoebic talent of a three-pistoned musical engine on Mountain time … wie sagt man Zeitgeist?
“The power of the band thrives when the essence of the songs are taken out of Buffett’s signature tone (the steel drum and the margaritas) and dropped into a more straight forward rock & roll environment that’s conducive to the interpretation of these musicians, who come from strong improvisational backgrounds. It’s in the reframing,” Bob explains.
The audience knowing the deeper cuts has surprised Brendan. As someone who grew up with Jimmy around his house, in his life, crooning at birthday parties, he knew there was a group of dedicateds but to perform in front of a sea of people singing Cuban Crime of Passion back to them woke him up to how much the music really speaks to the folks who line up to listen.
And ultimately that’s the forest from the trees message radiating from Bob Barrick … it always comes back to the songs and the storytelling. The philosophy buried in the tea leaves is what may actually power his approach to … life? You almost get the idea that his OS is current to Buffett and he refuses the Snow Lion update.
"Keep the party going."
Jim Mayer, that jazz bassist who’s been playing with the Coral Reefer Band for more than 35 years, got on the phone with us - he had played the private event the night before in Chatham with the fellas - and he went on about Buffett’s ethos and how Barrick and the boys have been able to grab onto their part of it and rip it wide open. Uncle Jim had a similar experience to his nephew’s taking the stage with Jammy a handful of hours earlier. “If I heard a song going somewhere, they encouraged me to follow it and being them along.”
Because he knew the seaplane pilot himself, he reminded me of one of his (rumored) last word. “Keep the party going.”
Bob pick it up, “You can either have a wake forever or you can create new memories. And that is what it feels like to me. Each time I play one of these shows, I feel like I’m experiencing another Buffett concert as a fan, which I miss because of all the shows I saw. And for a while I thought there was a lock on that, that’s over. But now I see there’s a lot more to experience.”
Cruise through their site to check out their dates.
Jammy Buffet is performing at The Beachcomber next Thursday, 17 July 25, at the tail end of their Northeast run. If you think that maybe it’s not for you - you’re exactly their target audience. Show up, have a drink, it’ll be a lively Wellfleet Thursday Night.
