Jimmy Buffett and Mac McAnally

in Mississippi, Alabama between here and Muscle Shoals, Alabama. My, uh, just cross pollin ad a couple of a couple of recording studios with beds in them. And for those who were uninitiated, how far is Muscle Shoals from Nashville? It's about two and a half hours, or maybe a third of a song if you're writing, you know, I tend to drive with my knees and play a mandolin back and forth and so. But but it's about a two and a half hour regular drive. And Jimmy, where are

you right now? I am in sag Harbor, New York, Bob at my house here, summer house, and have you the entire coronavirus house now, well that's my question. Have you been there the whole time during since March in the lockdown? No? Actually, I got locked down in California

for about almost three and a half months. I was visiting my kids when it all happened, and there two of my children are living out there, and we have a house out there to where my wife likes to go for like January April, so we were there, so we just stayed and then we came back here in May. And to what degree are you social distancing lockdown quarantining near in sag Harbor. I am. I'm at a bubble here, but it's a bit it's a pretty cool bubble, so I can do things that I want to do. You know,

it's kind of like being at camp. But to me, it's like, uh, you know, I've been talking about taking a year off for forty two years, but this is not what I intended to do. But you know, there are some silver linings in it that my kids are all here and I probably wouldn't see them this much ever for the rest of my life. And it's been great and uh and busy, and thanks to zoom and to Matt, we've been doing a lot of stuff out of this is a model my studio here in tach Harvard.

So we're doing a lot of zoom and the stuff from Marguet Redeville Radio and margat Revill TV. Now you mentioned camp. Did you go to summer camp? Yes, nothing like this. Summer camp to me was in what Bellefontaine, Mississippi, and a in a mosquito infested by you with the dormitory with ex World War two beds in it. You know. But I would look into my Boy Scout magazine and see these beautiful pictures of camps in Vermont and Maine. You had to sell Rick magazines to win a win

a trip to those camps. I never made it. So one of my kids went off to one of those camps up here. You know, we dropped them off. I'm gonna stay at least have breakfast because it looks really good. Okay, So the camp you went to, was it a boy Scout camp? No, it was a Catholic school camp, Camp Gravolin. Yeah. It was like where all the parochial schools but from Mobile to Pascagoula to like Buluxie that's where you all went camping. And were there girls there? Yes, there were,

and wrote life is just a time. No, there's a there's a top much. Cousin Baxter went to camp with me, but he got homestick after two days and I stayed the whole two weeks because I knew I had a little more sensitive benchure than he did. Well, I always felt, you know, I would someone said you want to go to summer camp for the rest of your life, I'd make that deal. But that's where I had my first real experiences with girls. How about you? No, No, this

is tackling, Bob. Come on, you know this is another day in another time. I waited till I finished high school and moved to New Orleans in the French border, and I didn't and I made up for a lot of lost time. Well that begs the question, what's your view on Catholicism today? Well, uh, you know, I gotta say to this about that um being taught by the

Sisters of Mercy and then the Jesuit's. Uh. They had kind of a superiority complex to the other orders in the Catholic Church, and they were educators and they were warrior priests, so I went along with it for a while. But then not now to what degreed you believe you're negatively inhibited or affected by your Catholic upbringing. Uh, let's

see the good things. Where when we were alter boys, we had had a friend Ricky Benson, and we they they encourage you to have contest to say, you know, served as many masses as you could, you can win a Red Shandy second baseman's and mid for doing it, and I want it. And we served more masses during went than anyone. And then we got good at funerals, and so we got out of school to go serve funerals. So I was already making a high stuff anyway about it.

Red shandyd you you who pronounced it better than I did? Were you a big baseball player as a second baseman? Red Shandy says, one of my heroes, Red Shandyson and Henry Aaron was from Mobile, so of course he was a big hero. I just remember was in nineteen sixty two with Bobby Richardson. You know, caught the lines right from the Pirates to in the World Series. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Well yeah, okay, So Mac, what you do during the summer growing up well, we uh we raised catfish uh in Mississippi is uh so we were We were farmers on several levels. We had about a five acre garden because my dad, you know, was sadistic that way. It's a lot of bending over, a lot of full of peanuts and potatoes. But we we raised cat fishings and that kind of took the joy out of fishing for

me for the most part, because my dad would volunteer. Oh, Michael, go down the hill and catch a mess of fish for Mrs Woodruff and dress him and bring him up there and put them in the refrigerator. And that's that's a few hours work. That that sort of takes a little bit of the joy out of fishing. So consequently I took a guitar down the hill and entertained myself with that, mostly me in the shade, avoiding serious work playing guitar. That was pretty much my my childhood. I

actually worked on a farm picking vegetables. Two days. That was enough for me. It's not where where was the farm, Bob. This was in Fairfield, Connecticut. You know, you need a summer job. Remember the guy next to me had a transistor in his pocket. But never again. I didn't even get paid the second day. I just went home. Forget

it about raising raising catfish? Was that your father's mean business? Now, my dad was a school teacher and my mom was a gospel piano player, and he was a terrible business man. We raised catfish and gave him away. I don't think we ever sold a catfish, not one single catfish. He just had. You just had me dressed him like I was the entire staff, and and give him away. So so patients. I learned a lot of patients from my

dad A little bit slower. How do you raise catfish? Well, you you go down to a to a lake that you either have or you made man made. We we hit an artesian well looking for a lake and made a couple of little lakes on the We had maybe thirty five forty acres and uh and and you you put catfish fingerlings in there and you feed them puring a catfish chow, which was another one of my chores. And uh and at that point, fishing is not really hard because they will just follow my ass around. You know.

All I gotta do is walk around the lake and there's a dark cloud of catfish following me everywhere. I go, I could throw a raw treble hook out there and catch three fish on it. It was not really a great challenge other than I knew I was gonna have to dress him and give them to anybody, So I didn't even really want to catch him in the first place. But that's, you know, another story. But that's that's how it works. If you're in a catfish child, you gotta

you gotta have it. Okay. So how many kids were there in your family. I was the oldest of three. I had two younger sisters, and uh, and I kind of was I kind of tormented them. I was probably not a good big brother. Uh Mississippi tradition, I'm guessing, uh, well, not big from Mississippi. What what is the tradition with older brothers. Well, I know that I pretty much they've come to like me in as an adult, my sisters, but it took a long time, took a few decades.

I remember I remember spreading my baby sisters fingers out on the table with a dart and just kind of going between her fingers super fast, like like it was pulp fiction or something like that. And I said, if you don't move, it's gonna be fine, uh this, you know, I thought I knew this guy really did. Well, I'm just bring I'm bringing out some bad stuff, you know. But you aread cat cat child and sticking Darcia. I I was the oldest of three and had two sisters.

That's nice to mom. Well I'm nice now, I know. Okay, since we're into this. Your two sisters, mac or how much younger than you? They're each were stacked in three year increments. So I'm I'm three years and six years older than my sisters, and you, Jimmy, I am two years older than my oldest sister and ten years older

than my younger sister. Well, this begs the question. Usually the oldest, never mind a male, is the family favorite, and all the hopes and dreams of the parents are in the oldest and their supportive It was that your experience of the oldest of the oldest female. My my oldest sister was the dream girl. And uh, I was supposed to go and followed the buffet NaN's uh uh calling of going to the sea, and I was supposed to gone to the you know, enaval academy. That didn't

work out. Okay, so you're the middle kid now, that's what I thought. But all the hopes and dreams were in the middle, sister, that pigs the pigs. The question who dominated your family at home? Your father, your mother, Well, it was kind of a mixer. And my mother worked. She worked, She ran labor relations at a shipyard and mobile. My dad was a project engineer home building ships. So they both worked and uh, we were banging, you know, so they kind of shared these. My father was a

disciplinary and my mother was the artist. Okay, and were you this was a different era where you kind of a free range kid, where we were troublemaker, were a goody goody. Now I was like I was still you know, I was still an altar boy until I was like in high school. And know, I didn't I didn't do much and we spent a lot of time. I had no brothers, like I said, So I had cousins in Pascor Google. Uh, two cousins, the three actually, and I would go down to where my grandfather and grandmother lived

and all the cousins would would go there. It was only but you know, my dad was from Pasca Google and my mom from Gulfport, so I had family in close proximity. But it was all on the Gulf coast, so we did a lot of moving between that, and then we go over and meet and see the wicked part of the family married into an Italian kind of low rent mafia group in New Orleans. Okay, And were you a good student? I made two a's, uh, and

in high school it wasn't that interested in. One of them was an art and that was the the semester that we did float decoration from Marty Grath and type I did. I made a and type in him and a and float decoration. So that probably it says a little about me. Hey, And that was the best course I took in high school in retrospect with computers, just for just once again for the ignorant northerners, of which I include myself. How far is momobile from New Orleans? Okay?

Going back to you, Mac, So your father was a teacher. What did he teach? Uh? You know it? I kind of caught it in a in a poor loop. He was. He was the elementary school principle when I was in elementary school, So I was what was that like being the son of the principle. I was watched, I was watched really close Uh, and I got beat up by about twenty kids the first day that I went to school because and then then once once they've realized my

dad was the principal, it didn't never happen again. But uh, all the way through school, he would move up. You know, he moved up to Junior High when I went to junior High, and then he was a sister principal high school when I was in high school. And I I actually dropped out of high school to put to play in a band when I was in the lefth grade. And and I had to had to make a presentation to my dad to get permission. Uh, as a teacher,

that was a pretty good deal. I had a little pie chart I had, you know it was it didn't I had a little pie chart? Yeah? Yeah, okay. And at what point did your father okay when you sold that? Was it like I'm done or if this doesn't work out, I'm coming back. No? No, Honestly, I wouldn't have done it without his permission because I knew he was going to catch the hell for me dropping out of school because you know, I was a teacher's kid. You're not

supposed to drop out of school. You know, but I am. Probably if you talk to musicians every day, Bob, you're you're not going to talk to very many that are what their parents wanted them to be. I'm a musician. That is what my parents wanted me to be. They probably envisioned that I would be a youth minister or music minister at a church somewhere when they but they wanted me to a musician from the time I hit

the ground. One one of my grandmothers said he's got the call to preach, which is, you know, a noble thing in North Mississippi. But the other grandmother, which I'm very grateful for, said no, he's got the call to preach music. The second grandmother, we're just about the same age. So to what degree were you affected by the Beatles

or were you a big musician already before that? Well, we we were in sort of a valley, and I didn't really have much in the way of radio except we could get radio late at night, so I never I didn't hear we did gospel music at church, we did played gospel music at the house my mom. That's how we entertained ourselves. We were one of the last

families in my hometown to get a television. So our entertainment in the evening, maybe three nights a week, was my mom would start playing piano, and our neighbors would just come over to the house with whatever instruments they had. They didn't necessarily fit together. It's just literally like the old joyful noise biblical thing. It might be a dulcimmer in, a soprano, saxophone, disparent instruments, just all clanging and smoking

cigarettes and drinking coffee and singing songs. That's that's what happened in my house, like two or three nights a week. So actually, my first record I ever bought was Let It Be. In the Beatles had already broken up when you know, you know I got a Beatles. Yeah, mine went backwards. I started with Let It Be and went backwards, you know, because I was late to the game. I've been playing music. I mean I was playing. I was playing in bars before I had ever even really heard

a lot of the songs that we were playing. Okay, were you a good student? Uh? I was a ridiculously good student until about the seventh grade, and when I was thirteen, I started playing in Honky talks at the State line. I played in church up till then and from thirteen. My my home county is a dry county. There was no legal alcohol sales, No, no honky talks. No, you couldn't buy a beer untilteen. You couldn't buy a beer in my hometown. But since you wrote about it,

where is your hometown? Well, uh, Bell Mint, Mississippi, the very northeast corner of Mississippi is my hometown, not far from Tupelo, where Elvis came from. A matter of fact, we're we're sort of cousin in laws. Elvis and I. My aunt Maverine mcinally married Flavis Presley. A little bit slower, tell that part again. Well, Flavius Pressley, who was the first cousin of Elvis, married my aunt Maverin mcinnally. Uh, And so we were sort of cousin in laws, like,

which is not rare in North Mississippi. Pretty much everybody we are cousins. Yeah, we've run back, Yeah we have. We have we have a blood connection, which is also Mississippi. But at any rate, Uh, Tupelo is where Elvis came from. Uh. But he got all the he had all the musical ambition in the family. I got maybe a little bit of the talent, but it was left, when did you

start playing an instrument? In what instrument was that? It was piano first for me and my mom was she was a great gospel piano player, and she played both by ear and and the old fashioned shape notes, which is a whole that you could do a whole other podcast on shape notes. Sometimes I don't even know what that is? What is that? Uh? They there was a shape for every note of do REMI fossil la t do. There's a there's a triangle is dough and you know

there's a different shape. And so it's very similar to the Nashville number system basically, like like if you're in the key of C, C is one in Nashville, and C F and G is one, four and five. Well, the shape notes, you can look at the shape notes and you can play in any key. It doesn't matter if you're looking at if the triangle is one, you can just you can just look at those shapes and play.

My my mother played that way, but she wanted me to learn traditional classical, so she put me in what was to me much more boring piano lessons because she wanted me to learn correctly in a way that she felt like she had not. And I took those from like the fourth grade to about the sixth grade. And then I negotiated the guitar because you can take the guitar to the lake, and we didn't have air conditioning in our house and I wanted out. Uh So the guitar was a good trade. And and you know went

from there. Okay, two questions. Were you a popular kid? No? No, I was an alien? Uh So are you more of a loner? Are you a guy who fits in with a group or what? I like everybody. I've always kind of gotten along with everybody. But but I honestly say I never really felt so much like I fit in. I wasn't part of any click. Uh And I and I Jimmy will tell you I'm pretty easily entertained. You can you can leave me on a porch for a week and I won't do anything. You said, find something

to eat? You know, pretty bad. But he he won't wear a hat. And what is the what's behind that mac? Well, it's it's twofold one. As I an enormous head. I'm a big guy. They wanted me to play football in junior high school, and the high school did not own a helmet that would go on my head. I had

this sort of tearful meeting with the coach. The high school coach came in there and said, son, you're a big boy, and we'd like to have you out there on the defensive line if you can get any one of these high school helmets on that junior high head of yours, I want you out there on the field.

And uh, And sure enough, I sat there in the high school locker room when I pushed as hard as I could on every helmet at Belmont High School loaned and I got one down to maybe my forehead, and the fast face mask was actually all the way up above my hairline. And I go running out on the field and he's like, no, that's not on. I'm sorry son. I couldn't play football even in junior high because there was no helmet that would go on my head. Now, if someone sees you now, you do have quite a

head of hair, quite a bush. Yeah, we had crew cuts back then, and it's the same. It might as well say spaulding up there is. It's just a big round. I would love to say there's a brain in there. That's the it matches it. But it's just grizzle. It's just a big hit full of gristle. And then just one final question on this topic. You played Hockey Talks. We always here and we see in movies even the Blues Brothers of the chicken wire and people throwing stuff.

Is that real? I never had the chicken Go ahead, Jimy go, you take the first one. I'll take one too, Yes, yes, and uh I wrote I wrote it in a song called the pastor Google Run one time about because I had one of my uncles was a merchant seaman and he was kind of a little a bit of a wild person. And so he got off of a boat one time and came in two mobile and said, and as my dad saw, I said, well he maybe you need Jimmy to take to try to be the rest

of the way at Pasca Google. These were in those days, and so I thought, and he had like a Triumph t R three because in whether it was stole owner or there, or they were after me or whatever. But I drove him to that and in the state line he stopped at every bar and that was the first place I saw chicken waring a bar in front of a van. And it's the first place where the guy there was a drunken there. I'll never forget this. And they threw the guy out and he came back with

the chainsaw. I started cutting the bar whoa, and we got into Triumph and I drove him home. And I've been behind chicken wear too, Yes, spat Muse Louisiana and I can remember that yet, Mac, you wanted to add that or did Jimmy cover cover that? Well? No, I'm gonna add a little bit because it's it's it relates to him. I after after growing up only in church, I've never been to a hockey talnk. You had to go across the Tennessee line to get the one, which

is about an hour away. I was thirteen. This guy came to our house and knocked on the door and introduced him off to my parents and told him that he had a band called Dean and the Reefers. Get that, Jimmy, that was the first band I was ever remember I of Dean and You were not my first reefer band. Yeah, the thirteen years old and he he had heard that I was a good piano player, and his piano player

had quit. I was actually not a good piano player, but he had heard I was, and he made a pitch to my parents to let me play five nights a week at Iron City, Tennessee, at a place called the Circle E Club. And I had to go through muscle shoals to get there. But at any rate, I'm I'm figuring my my dad's about to throw this guy off the porch. Because my parents had never been to a honkey talk, We're never ever gonna go. All the years I played honkey talks, so they would never come

and hear me play. They wouldn't walk in the door of one of those places. They were very religious. It was not their deal. And I'm thinking they're about to kick this guy out. But he he kept talking and he said, well, I'm a good Christian man, and I know, I know you want your boy to be a musician.

He needs to learn to play with other musicians. And I will drive down here and pick him up, and I'll take him up to Tennessee and i'll bring him home and I'll make sure he behaves himself and uh, and I'll pay him two hundred and fifty dollars a week. And I was thirteen years old in nineteen seventy, and that was more money than my dad was making teaching school in Mississippi in nineteen seventies, more money than my mom was making at the Wrangler factory in Belmont making

blue jeans. And something in that guy's presentation made an impression on my parents. And that Friday night, I was at the Circle E Club in Iron City, Tennessee, wearing a lime green leisure suit that was a hand me down from George Jones's band that did not fit, and I was playing songs that I've never heard in my life on the piano. And although I didn't have chicken

wire there, there were live chainsaws in that club. There were a couple of guys that would rev up their chainsaw instead of applauding at the end of the song. So I was afraid, you know, I was. I was. It was like deliverance or something. I was a ready to get off stage. We would take a break and I would just go hide behind the piano and uh and wait un till he's played again. But but I made two or fifty bucks a week, got home about two thirty in the morning, and got up and went

to school. Of seventh thirty in the seventh grade. Wow, Jimmy, So you went to Catholic school. Yeah, all twelve years. Okay, what kind of student were you? I was. I was an average student. And there there's something I loved history, and I would things that I that inspired me. I like I like in English, I like reading. I like

reading all the classics. And so then that was my mother was the reader and the family and she at that point wanted me to be a you know, another Mississippi literary person, I think, because she adored the people like you do are wealthy and uh and and William Farker and people like that, and she made us read them. And then you know, and then the and the music you listen to is your parents music, because this is before there even and so they had great musical taste.

And you know, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Rosemary Clooney, people like that that I heard. But Frank Sinatra I really liked as a kid. And then my grandfather would bring him all records because he was still a captain of a steamship and he his run was from New Orleans to uh down to the Caribbean to Argentina and Brazil, and he loved Clipso and Bossanova music, and he'd buy albums down there and bring them to my mom. And so that's where I first heard Caribbean music, was those

records my grandfather broke back to my mother. And at what point did you start playing an instrument? I didn't play the guitar until I went to I went off my first year in college to Harvard University of Plays I did not want to go to, and i'd I'd blown the whole thing with the Naval Academy and uh, well wait, how serious was this Naval Academy thing? Well, it was serious in my parents eyes, but obviously not

in seriously it should have been. And I, you know, the good news now is, uh, I'm kind of a part time uh instructor on on offshore sailing as as like what they call auxiliary at the Naval Academy. So I kind of I went from not men here to get in to being a sailing teacher there. So I'm good. Did you actually applied? Yes, you had to have a congressional appointment in those days, which I think you still did, and that was all politics, do it? You know? My?

You know my? Like I said, my mom and dad worked at the ship, right, they knew some people had connections, but I blew it on the tests. And then so I went away to Auburn. What what what? What before you get there? You want to go to the Naval Ecademy. Yeah, but I guess not bad enough, huh. And so I wound up at Auburn, and um, you know, it's one of those first things. And I still was a pretty

shy guy there. I mean, I you know, I went to one of those pledge parties plitched, you know, in the opening of school at this fraternity house, and there was a guy playing guitar, and all the girls were rather interested in what he was singing. And I noticed that. And and so when it when it came time to you know, pledge of fraternity, I knew nobody there. Knew nothing about the fraternity system because we never had those in in in Catholic school. So I said, you know,

this guy was playing the guitar. I like this place. I'll pledge here. So ironically enough, when I did, they they gave you a room assignment in the house. And my room assignments wound up being with the guy named Johnny young Blood who was the guy playing on the guitar.

So he I walked in the room, I show him a little and you know, they bought guitars and I kind of faith seeing Elvis songs and my parents parties or Marty raw Thing, but I never really played until I got to know Johnny young Blood And I said, how do you do that? How do you do And he said, I only know three course G, C, and D, and I would teach me those cords and that's about all I'll learned it all and with those three chords, and it worked out, and Johnny young Wood was ironically enough, uh,

I was clear. I was, you know, doing some other chores around her, cleaning out guests and things that we're doing now. And I looked through a whole stack of letters that I had because I always used to keep all the letters, and I had letters from Johnny Youngwood because by that time he had had a little trouble in his life and had an alcohol problem and and was up and was in jail from anslaughter, but then cleaned up around the program in prison, and I got

letters from him there. I don't know if he's still allowed now, but I'm gonna find out. I read that three days ago. Okay, your dream of going to the academy is dashed. Prior to picking up the guitar, did you have a vision what you wanted to do with your life? No, I knew. I knew I was in serious trouble because I did not tell my parents. I flunked out in the UH after in the middle of the second quarter. I knew it was not gonna happen.

And by then I was playing with Johnny, and Johnny had had gigs in Panama City, so I kind of made a deal with him. I said, you know, the little bit of money my parents were sending me for school, I said, I'll let them keep sending it to you and I'll split it with it, but I'm gonna go down to Panama Sit and try to get into junior college down there because Vietnam was bubbling up and I

can work down there. So that was my motus Opperremdi and uh it did not work out, and I kept trying it out at other junior colleges, UH that, and and finally it wasn't happening, and I knew I had to go home and face my father. And I drove normally I'd always drive Highway Downy along the coast because that's where all my family lived. But I was so depressed about what was happening. I said, I'm gonna go home and join the Marines and go to Vietnam. I'm

just blown everything. And Uh. On the way there, on the back road US eleven, I went to stop light and I look up and I see a sign says Pearl River Junior College. And there's this very charming and very pretty girl walking through the cross walk and smiled and wait at me. I went, I don't know, So I pulled in. I went to the admissions that what does it what does it take to get in here?

And they said a point five nine overall, and I went, I got a point six and it was It turns out it was a flunky school for everybody from l s U or Old Miss or anybody. So they were in junior college to stay out of Vietnam. And I signed up and I went to Pearl River Junior College and there was a guy there I started playing with.

So I continued playing there, met people, then went to the University of Southern Mississippi just up the road, and by then I've been in New Orleans kind of playing and hoot Danny Knights for free, you know, for for the pickup nights. And I at that point New Orleans is already in there, and I knew that's what I wanted to do. Then, Okay, were you a popular kid in school? Kind of but not? You know, I was okay,

but I wasn't like kind of running then. I wasn't a class blown and I wasn't an a student, so I was somewhere in the middle. Now, okay, so what point in this his era do you decide that you want to be a musician professionally? I knew. I knew it because I was working by that time. We had a band and we were we were working. Uh very I was gonna tell the Beatles story I had was that, Uh I was, I was working on Bourbon Street and

in the folk group. And when the Sergeant Pepper came out and by that time, I'm at school in Hattsburg, Mississippi, but basically living in New Orleans and driving back and forth. And uh, Sergeant Pepper came out and we bought it, and we and we said, you know, we gotta chank, we gotta become a folk rock band, and we bought the Sergeant Pepper album and we said, all right, here's

the plan. We're gonna drop acid to night and learn this entire album and go in and audition the next day to the club owner and say we want to play next store at the Gunga then and and be it because we knew they had an opening for a band there, and so we did it. We staid, and then back at school, well a little bit lower. Hey, did you smoke a lot of dope and drop a lot of acid before this? Uh? Not. I didn't smoke

a lot of week because I never smoked cigarettes. But yeah, during that time, yeah, I took a little acid at the time. But then you know, then I kind of you know, that's enough of that. But the fun thing was that at this point I was day to a girl in the theater department, and I knew that there were costumes in the theater department. So after we learned the album, we drove back to Pettisburg. She gave me the key and we went in and borrowed outfits that

looked similar to what the Beatles had on. Sergeant Pepper put those outfits on, who ran back to New Orleans audition and got the job, and you played Sergeant Pepper. Yes everything, We played the entire album. We became a very popular Beatles cover band, and we started playing fraternity parties all through that part of the South. Okay, you graduated from college, yet how do you stay out of Vietnam? Um? At that time you had to fill out forms for deferments,

you know. And uh, and and by that time I started flying. I had two roommates who were in r RTC at the Mississippi Southern, and they were flying in a little a little airport in Hannisburgh, English flying Service because it was part of the Navy program. So I could, and I was making a little little money then, and I wanted to find my dad was a fly or in the war. And uh, he was the only one that didn't go to see you. He flew. And so

I started flying a little bit. And so when it came around, Uh, what happened was I was late for registering, and you had a register for the draft in and this girl in the office admissions helf has just gave me all the forms. And I looked at him, and I thought, man, that's I'm not supposed to be filling this app that that's the uh, that's the selecting service for him. I filled it out. It was this was

nineteen sixty eight and it put expected data graduation. I'm supposed to graduate and six at the end of sixty eight, I put in nineteen seventy two, and I just I

forgot about and nothing ever happened, you know. But the thing of it was, by that time I was playing in a bar in Hattisburg and Camp Shelby had a had a jungle warfare training facility there and there were people coming back from Vietnam who were training people to go and they became clientele and this are and that's the first time because I was always thinking what they get caught. I can fly now and I will go

and they want you don't go there. And that's the first time I heard soldiers telling me not to go to war. And so that was a very there's a there's a chapter in the first book or for Vietnam Mississippi, and that's what it was about. So by that time, Okay,

I get ready to graduate. A call comes in to go to the office and there's the head of our OTC with my form that I had forge and he said, not only am I going to see that, you go uh into the arm I'll make sure you're in the infantry and you go to the front lines to Vietnam for full inness off. And I went hell with that. So I went over to the naval recruiter, passed the task as I've flown some to go to officer candidate school. Said if I'm gonna go, I want to go as

a flyer, and so I passed that. Went for the physical wound up. I had a peptic ulcer pod from drinking too much in New Orleans when I was eighteen and I was one. While that was it. I never saw another thing there just was lucky for you. Wow, you were really lucky. And then I went right back to New Ords and just kept playing. Oh yeah, it was like the greatest day in your life. That point you've been okay, going back to you back you're playing piano in this band, but a right, you would really

viewed yourself more as a guitarist. At what point do you start writing songs and at what point do you say, hey, I want to be a singer songwriter or what do you say to yourself? Well, I was Jimmy says he was a bashful kid. I would have been competitively bashful. I was really bashful and uh, and I gotta say to you also, Jimmy, I was in Dean and the Reefers. But the interesting thing about Dean and the Reefers is a Dean, the lead singer, did not know what reefer was.

He just thought it was a cool word. He was extremely straight laced, with a crew cut, and you know, butch wax on his hair, and and he had Dean and the Reefers painted on our van. And he could never figure out why all the long hairs gave us the peace sign when we drove by, Like why did they do that? You know? He had a different observation. Yeah, but uh, but my I was I wanted to be a guitar player, but I couldn't be. If you knew the notes on a piano, you were sort of the

piano player. And in bands up there because everybody played guitar, and whoever was the worst guitar player played bass. That's just the way it went. You heard the old Willie Nelson line. Ray Ray Price asked, Willie said, can you play bass? And Willy said can't? Everybody? Uh, in reality that not many people can play bass, but but it

was perceived that anybody could play bass. Back then. I I would play piano, and when we took a break, I would sit down behind the piano and pull out my acoustic guitar and and and try to practice fingerpicking when I was at these nightclub gigs and just the physics of doing that. Uh. The guys from muscle shows, the muscle shows, Rhythm section, guys that Roger Hawkins and David Hood and those classic musicians, if they wanted to play live, they had to go to the Tennessee Line too.

They went up above the honky Tonks. They would come up there and sit in That's how I met those guys. And they would come and say this idiot kids sitting behind the piano playing acoustic guitar on the breaks. They just come and see what I was doing, and and they decided that I could play a little bit. And they said, hey, man, would you would you like to

play in some studios? Shoot you out? And I didn't you know, I knew what was going on in muscle shows, but at that time, for all the music that was happening in muscle shows, there wasn't really a dedicated acoustic guitar player. Uh, And so they said, well, you know, give us your number and we'll call you and you come play some acoustic guitar. And you know, Dwayne Almand had already gone from there, but there were great guitar

players there. Pete Carr was there, and and uh, Tippy Armstrong and Eddie Hinton and Larry Byron from Stepping Wolfe was still in in in town. But there wasn't an acoustic player. So I started at fifteen. I started playing Muscle Shoals sessions as an acoustic player, and I didn't know what in the hell I was doing, but I was in the in the presence of some people who

really did. I got to work with Rick Hall, and I got to work with Terry Woodford, Clayton Ivy and and Jerry Wexler, and great record producers came to Muscle Shoals and I got to sit at the feet of those guys and just be a sponge. And I didn't. I was too bashful to say I want to be a songwriter or a singer or the guy in the

middle of the stage. And to this day, I'm extremely grateful to have this guy over here in the zoom meeting to stand next to and uh and draft off of in the in the NASCAR sense of drafting, because Jimmy has that kind of ambition that I was born without. My ambition is just to make music and try to make it a little bit better tomorrow than I did today. That's what drives me. And the fact that I get

to to be a coral reefer. Uh men. And and in the cracks of Jimmy schedule say the little things that pop in my head every few years and and go play a solo show and sing that to the listening room full of folks that want to hear. That makes me about as lucky a guy as I could possibly be for for what I like, I wouldn't change anything about my life. So, Jimmy, were you always ambitious? I think so? I mean, yeah, I learned, you know, because after that kind of you know, we I was

always you know, taught to the industrious. And I did small jobs because I wanted my independence in my own money. So you know, I've worked in I was a bag boy horse store on Mode lawns and that as a kid. And uh and you know when when when school came along, I could I could work again in the shipyard, but I was going off to school and make some decent money to help my parents because they were trying to

trying to send me to school. So but the thing of it was when I started playing, um, yeah, I kind of had more ambition than the other people I was playing with. So it kind of made me the leader because I would get stuff together. I wouldn't do the set list. I would, you know, I would say, these are the songs we ought to be playing. And then you know, when it when it came time to have a real band and we were going to really go for this, I was still kind of working at

this show. You know, I had like real jobs then, and so I had I had actually a credit at the music store and mobile. So when we started to do this, I said, well, we're gonna need a sound system, and uh, everybody else had went well, I'm very I said, well, I'll I'll get and I went on and I applied for a loan and I got a book full and I got a credit that was a Bogan p A system and I bought and I said, well, I bought

the A system. So that I'm gonna have to be the leader of the band because I'm not gonna let you all break my p A system and I gotta pay for it. And so you know, I liked being the leader of the band and it worked out. Okay. A couple of questions. While you were playing in New Orleans and in this era after college, do you ever have a day gig? Uh in New Orleans? No? I played, h I played, you know, I played honors other you know, the only thing I had to I could make extra

money by when we were off. We played a half hour on half hour off, you know, like nine to nine at night at two in the morning. But I could get it making extra money going out and being the barker on the street on Bourbon Street. And I think that kind of that kind of sharpened my edge or being a shameless performer because you had to be shanless go out into that. But I had fifty extra week. Yeah, absolutely, I could never do that like the guy standing on

the corner in the subway outfits, etcetera. So at what point does it turn from a band into a singer songwriter thing? For me? Yeah? Yeah, for you, Jimmy, well, everything to have the band broke up as they do, as they will, and the band oca and uh, so I still had made connections with agents that booked some of these other bands playing, which this was like the big when folk music was still big and and folk

rock was big. These two clubs, and you gotta remember at that time Bourbon Street was just about as much music given out, more so on Bourbon Street as you know, strip joints and beer parlors, because Pete Fountain Alhert had a club there. Uh you know, um and the Neville Brothers were playing at the Ivanhoe. Uh Preservation Hall was there. Um Allen Toussaint had a stuck Cosmo Studios downtown. So there was a lot more music that was going on on that street. So I was immersed in and I

loved that stuff. So when the band broke up, I mean I immediately went back down there and tried to get a job in a band, and I played drums one night in the band. They fired me after the first step, and I remember I was playing local up by Sergio Mendez, and that's I thought I was doing a good job. And because I played drums and the third grade marching bandage, so Anyway, I had connections up there, and I had been't doing solo gigs, and so I found that this booker up in Minnesota that could put

me on the road doing doing stuff. And I played that and then those those shows when I could. Then I went back to Mobile when I graduated from college, kind of figure out what what else to do, and I got a job at a bar called the Adimal Sims Hotel, in a hotel right downtown Mobile, and I'm uh again. I was following a friend of mine who had worked in New Orleans together and he's the one that brought me up to kind of jam. Next thing

I knew when he left town. I had the job and I've worked there for almost a year and I created a following this as a solo act and people my parents friends at first within you know, it was on a soul out every night and uh, and that

kind of worked. I was And from there I wanted to make a record to sell in the bar, and I went into a little uh record coming Audiomobile Records, and this guy Milton Brown heard me play and said that's pretty good, and he had Nashville connections, and Milton eventually took me to Nashville to do demos there, and that's how I got to Nashville. Okay, what was the dream at this point, Since we've established you're a very ambitious person. I wanted to be the next modern Lightfoot. Okay,

let's go back to you. Mac. You know you're very humble guy. But at a very young age, you get you get record deals. You're making records, so you may be Bashville, but something is happening. Well, but the way I got a record deal isn't just ridiculous. Because we're sitting We're sitting in muscle shows and I'm I'm the acoustic player on a on a session and the artist misses a plane in doesn't show up. So we're just a band sitting in a studio with nothing to do.

And they start asking, Okay, who's since we're here, let's cut something. Who's got a song? And all the other guys were the regular guys. I was the new guy, and they had already cut everything they had they had already cut, so they said you got any songs? And I, being the way I am, I said no, I don't have anything. And they went around the room about three times.

I said no three times kind of biblically and then uh, this this engineer, Steve Moore was the engineer in the studio and he had played in a couple of bands with me, and he says, this guy or here is just bashful. I know he got songs. I know he writes songs. And they made me play a song, and uh, and I pulled up my guitar and I played this little song called It's a Crazy World that I wrote when I was sixteen, and they went, jeez, we're just

gonna make a record on you. That was it. I played a song for them that I had never played for my parents. I had never done a gig, I'd never been in a and I'd never played a gig and sung a lead vocal as me in my life anywhere. My sisters had never heard that song, and all of a sudden they cut a record on me and went

to l A and got a record deal. And I mean it took about three Old Testament miracles Daisy chain together for me to have a record deal, because I would have never gone anywhere and asked anybody to listen to me and said, you know, even though I wasn't that far from Nashville, I never would have gone to Nashville. The fact that I could go to Muscle Shoals, which was forty minutes from my hometown and and fail and be back home by supper time made the physics of

it more workable for me. And and somehow or other, I got a record deal and and they put out It's a Crazy World as the first single, and that was a chart record. And and I'm riding around the country and my granddad's hand me down overalls with a Scottish afro, a pretty easy to spot, might as well have been on Mars. But I was in l A at the Larramattage with this room that came with a Bentley and a driver. Nobody in my family had ever been driven by a driver, and nobody in my family

had ever been on a plane. I mean they when I when I flew to l A to sign the record deal, they like broke out into prayer groups, wondering whether I was gonna crash on the way out there or get killed by the folks in Los Angeles. One of those two things was almost a certainty. And so it was it was sort of like Marco Polo, you know who played you that record? Bob Who, Uh, Howard Stark and Jay Lasker. Wow, ready for this? Yeah, I'm

my ears are open. Uh. So I was doing okay by then and uh him Al was on ABC Dunhill. They signed me in Nashville. Didn't know what to do with me, but they got a corp. Donnyhue, I don't know if you ever ran into corp. He kind of took a liking to me. And uh and and I was in Key West by that time, living you have a bar gig in the daytime, were working on cocktails

perfect were cocktail out of five to nine. And then I go out and raise hell and I get up on a fishing boat and worked forward to working offshore, charter fishing and playing at a bar. So I didn't want to go anywhere else. And this guy said we

need to come up to New York. And I went and played, uh Sam Hoods Max's Kansas City and the next thing I knew, they took me to l A. They signed me, and you know, and Jim Croachy was still going there at the time, and uh, you know they were they were kind of I wasn't a little bit slower. How do you get from Key West to New York. I was, I was told I was called because I did White Sport Cone, a pink crust station.

We did the album in Nashville for three days and eleven thousand dollars, and I saved some money and got the key West, paid off my student loans, and bought boat and so I figured that was my insurance policy. So I was down there and living the life when I get a call from Corbe Donohue, astead of Artist Relations at ABC. Doniel said, this is not a country record. This is really good and we want to get behind this.

We're taking over from from l A. So they didn't know what to do with in the Nashville and so, long story short, had a nice run there with when Jay and Howard were running ABC Dunhill and then they got fired and then they had what was it the name of the audio Ariel Ariola America, Ariola America. So I just was, you know, I was. I was doing well then, but I'd always go see those guys because Jay Lasker was the guy said Jimmy, you know, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna try to take your money from it.

Your job is to find out how we're doing it, and so I had a great relationship with those guys, you know, and and I went to see them and they said, come in here, come in. You gotta hear this. You know, you're the next Jim Approach. This is the next Yu And they played me It's a Crazy World and that Mac that album with him and those overalls on it, and I went, that that kid write songs like William Flinger a book. I gotta find out where he is. And they said he's trying to miss a

simpy like you. And I went, I went in search of back back and now I found him. Okay, in this peripatetic journey. You get married? What's going on there? How old were you when you got married? Yeah? What Jimmy, Jimmy? Oh? I was was I was? I think twenty one or something. You know. I've been a crazy musician and I thought I needed a stable the Catholic girl to settle me down.

And I knew a sus and then I was going to Nashville and uh, she was my girlfriend at the time that she's gone off to be a t wh Stewards. And I drove from Mobile to Kansas City and asked her to marry me and come back. You know, by the time we got married, went, oh, that wasn't such a good idea. But she's a great girl. We were last we went to Nashville together. She wound up working in the music business and actually wound up being a pretty big executive with Capital and was married to Bob Mercer.

I don't remember Bob Mercer Frum who ran Capital, but uh, we we have. We stayed in touch and then you know, after that was over, then best when I went to key West. How long were you actually together? Two years? Okay, how did it end? Uh? It ended? Let's say it ended amicably after the event that ended it because by that time I was also working for Billboard. Then you know, I had to get a had to get a day

job there. And when I out answered an ad in the National Banner and said journalism degree needed the reporter I want, I got a journalism degree and it was Billboard Magazine and I went to work for Bill Williams, the southern eritor Billboard and taught me more about how the music business is stacked against you and anything. That's where I learned about the music there. So you know, um,

Margie was working at Capitol Records. I was there and uh, and that that's you know, and then so we were we were kind of, you know, when we're getting along, and it was Jerry Jeff Walker came to town and a friend of mine was hosting him, who worked at ascap Of course, we went out to the bar that night and Jerry Jeff wound up at my house and uh, and it was not a very uh, it was a very good waking up call from my life at the time.

And so we kind of knew we were kind of going in separate ways, and so I was trying to be nice. But at that time, everybody had a Mercedes in Nashville. I wanted to look good, so I bought a old Mercedes that we shared. So part of the deal was I said, you know, I'm I'll send you some half of whatever I make. Now we'll figure out. We had no kids, and she wanted to stay there.

I was gonna go to Key West and try to find work, and uh, so I borrowed I said, kind of borrow the car for one more night and just before I leave down so I went out my friend Tod Andrews, who played in Mother Earth at that time, and as we were, I was kind of sneaking home to get out. I opened the door and a car came by and knocked the driver's side door off of the car. And I'm still kind of drunk from night before.

I went out until we went somewhere, found duck tape and disc gleen and I taped it up and left the note there said I'm really sorry about this, but I'll send you some money when I gets to working. Us and I went to Fariva and then we eventually got a divorce, and uh, but we remained friends. Okay, back, Uh, So you get a record deal, and during act you have some success. You have Minimum Love that is a

hit with a radio charting track with Geffen. You continue to put out solo record, You have some success us on the country chart. You know, at that point do you see yourself as an act? At that point do you see yourself as a side man? What's going through your head? Well, you know, I also married young and had and was having kids, and I tried to Uh, well, let's slow down a little bit. How old were you when you got married? I was I was two weeks

from twenty one. I was I was short of twenty one. Okay, A couple of questions. How experienced in that realm were you when you got I was not very experienced in that realm. Uh, as evidenced by the fact that I got married two weeks from twenty one. But but how long did that last? That lasted twenty three years because we were both really stubborn. Uh. She's she's awesome, and were We still do family vacations together with the kids and everything. She's amazing. But uh okaykay wait, waitit, so

did she get remarried? No? Did you get remarried? Both both have a significant other. But but everybody, everybody hangs out. We do family meals and birthdays and holidays and all that. And how many kids? I've got three daughters, And how old are they? Let's see, thirty eight, thirty three, and thirty Okay, are they on the family payroll or the independent? Uh?

My youngest daughter is production assistant for FOR. I occasionally am in what I called the produce section as in Mr Buffet's records, to be a co producer for for for Jimmy's records. She but she you know, she works for several producers here in town. Busier than me, and she occasionally books her old man on a on a session. But uh, but I've got one that one in the business, and uh and and one at the moment, a journalist

and a nurse. So I got all three gainfully employed daughters. Okay, so you were telling a story before I interrupt you toy to slow down, so you get married and you were talking yes, uh and I the nice thing about muscle shows is that you you know, you could play most everything that came to and still have time too to write songs for yourself and go out on the road. And it was the pace of that worked pretty well.

But when when the kids started coming, uh, I kind of wanted to be homeboar, and so I kind of I stopped doing really much in the way of road. And I was always, I don't want to say, a reluctant performer because I like it, but uh but but I always I really liked the studio, I really like record and I like it writing and arranging, and I

sort of felt more like that was my calling. And uh so I stayed home and watched the kids grow up and and made records less frequently, and and started writing songs for other people because my My contracts that I had signed were such that I was never gonna make enough money to pay the electric bill. Jimmy could he could elaborate on the No. Nobody taught me about contracts. I was. I signed one that's on the wall of a lot of lawyers, like watch out, or this can

happen to you. It's got my name on it. But uh at any rate, uh Uh. Being home and watching the kids grow up, I started writing songs that other people began to record, and I had some hit records and and made a living kind of as a songwriter publisher and and sitting around and making records for people. A couple of my friends started saying, well, you help me produce this. We and I've been around studios so

long at that point to be a relatively young guy. Uh. It turns out I knew most of the things that you needed to know to at least half as producer record and became kind of a record producer. And I didn't really do much traveling until Jimmy called, Okay, the songs that you wrote that were hits. Two questions, how did you get them to the artists? Indeed, deal own them out writers or a publisher involved. Early on, there was a publisher involved, and then and then later on

it was my policing company. But uh, it uh oddly enough that the beginning of it came out of uh when I went out to meet with David Geffen, when I signed the deal with Geffen Records and he was just starting Geffen. He had, as a matter of fact, my contract. I was the first artist. I was before John Lennon or or Elton John or any of the folks that he signed there. My contract says too and as yet unnamed joint venture between Warner Brothers and David Geffen.

He didn't know it was going to be Geffen Records yet. But uh, but I met with him at his house and he said, uh, something I'll never forget, actually, because nobody had ever said anything like this to me. He said, I think you are a real artist, and I would like to be an old fashioned patron of the arts. I would like to be associated with you, and whatever you do, I'll never tell you what to do. I'll never tell you how to do it. I just want to be connected to it. So you go home and

do whatever you do. And nobody had ever said anything like that to me. At that time, I had people saying, we want you to be the next Jackson Brown, or we want you to be the next whatever. Uh, we'd like for you to dress this way and you know, and cut your hair this way, and uh, and I did not. You can, and jim You'll tell you this. You can ask me to do anything and I'll do it. You can tell me to do exactly the right thing, and I'm probably not going to. I just don't take

direct authority very well. Uh, But Geffen said, go do what you do, and and I went home and just had this burst of songwriting. And some of those songs were country songs, and I didn't have a country record deal, so I was playing on a lot of country records and and so by virtue of that, occasionally people say you have any songs? And sometimes people would just cut a song off one of my albums, which happened a few times. Jimmy did that with It's My Job. That

was our first connection. But uh, but people, I had a couple of songs, and Alabama cut a song of mine called Old Flame and had a number one record. And then after after you have a number one record, other people say, what do you got and I would give them a song, and and I had some more number one records, and and all of a sudden that I was making actual money. You know that that was you know, put me up legitimately into the middle class of muscle shows Alabama. And uh. And I could stay

home and watch the kids. And and I also like it's sort of it was Pavlovian for me. And from that point forward, if I wrote something that sounded like a hit, I would rather give it to one of my friends that has a personal trainer and a bus or an airplane and some ambition that I don't have. Uh, And it works out better for everybody. I got to watch my kids grow up in a way that no really unemployed person gets to spend as much time with

their kids as I did. You would have to be unemployed or or a trustafarian, you know, to be able to see your kids like I did growing up. So I was really blessed in that way. You have a country hit with back where I come from, and then ultimately Kenny Chesney covers it. How do you how do you have the solo record? Then how does he come to cover it? Uh? You know, the solo record was I was writing some songs and Jim Ed Norman at

Warner Brothers Records. Uh, we got to be friends. And the bad record deal that I had signed got drug across several label deals. But it ended in a way that the guys that had signed me to this horrible record deal had had taken a budget from David Geffen to make an album and they blew it and then they filed bankruptcy. So I owed, I owed a record that I couldn't make, and and jim Ed Norman. I

saw the bind that I was in. I couldn't finish my obligation to them to get out of this production deal that I had signed, and I owed David Geffen a record, and jim Ed Norman came to me and David Geffen to Geffor together and said, if I let Mac Mac make his pop album that he owes you,

will you let me make a country out? Will you loan him to me like a cup of sugar and and let me make let me make a country album on him with these other songs he's got that we think our hits, and and Geffen's like, yeah, I always knew he listened to him talk. I always knew he's you know, he's got this country thing. I mean, Geffen thought the Eagles were country anyway. Uh, But so so Jim ed let me make my last pop album my obligation to Geffen Records. He gave me the Wonder Brothers

studio and my my just departed. Buddy and Alan Shulman and myself went in there and made that record. I played pretty much everything and Alan recorded it. And and at the same time we made the album Simple Life that had back where I come from and down the road, and that album was full of songs I honestly probably never intended to sing myself. But over the years, the the eleven songs on that album have been recorded like

thirty nine times. I've had thirty nine cuts from that one album, uh, with various you know, some number one records and a bunch of album cuts. And and Kenny at that Kenny told me this. I didn't know it till later, but Kenny cut a record and Barry Beckett Fromussele Shuls was producing Kenny, and he gave him a copy of That Life, that Simple Life album of mind. And Kenny had to drive to Canada to play a gig and the only thing he had in his car

was that that record, and he learned that album. He pretty much memorized it, and and he he recorded back Where I Come From that Barry Beckett produced it on him, and we became buddies after that, and and then from that we he and I did a duet of down the Road that was a number one record later on, like twenty years later. Uh. That that was also on that same album. And he's he's just been a great advocate of a couple of my best songs. And anybody

that knows Kenny knows what a great guy is. So I've had between David Geffen and Jimmy Buffett and and Chesney as well, and and jim ed Norman and David Geffen, I've I've been I've been so shepherded. Uh, in the context of my total ineptitude about business, I've been very shepherded through the business. And I'm so grateful for that because there's not many other ways that I could possibly be here talking to you guys. Okay, So, Jimmy, how do you end up deciding you want Mac in the band? Um?

I knew that day the the Jay and Howard played me the record I got and they gave me the record. I went on and then I started going to two friends I knew and said connections I had in Nashville, and said, who is this where is this guy? You know?

And and now now because I didn't really know because the time, it took a long time to get him to come to work for me, and I, you know, I had kind of sherry picked some people and we we've done some band reconstruction and and the first person I really wanted in my band was Michael Uvely because you know, he had worked for Jerry WEXLERND and I met him in Miami when he was part of the Dixie Flyers and and uh and he and he eventually he was working with Chris and Read at that time.

And then uh, he came to work for me. So I had Utly in there. And I wanted him because he was such a solid person experience, like Max said, And I I didn't know then that Mac had been in the studio since he was fifteen. But I learned pretty quickly and and I we just you know, I got him on the phone, I got a number, and I said, you know, if you ever want to come play, and it was a while and he'd come out two

shows occasionally to see us in the band. And and then you know, now I know that he wanted to stay at home with with with with his kids more than that, but he was, you know, and I couldn't quite understand why didn't work in the Croprim band go on the road. And now I know because he wanted to stay at home and raising his kids, you know, and me me having that nomad gene, you know, Uh,

it bothered you. It gets in the way of some things at that time, like so um and we just I stayed in contact with him, but there was no pressure to do it, and I said, if you want, you know, you know, come out and try it, if you want to do it, and then makes some extra money, and uh, we could really use you because I knew how good a songwriter he was and how the good of a range and just but I've also seen him do solo gigs. I go him to some of the solo gigs and he you know, that's one thing he

as we all know, he's a very shy man. And uh, but he's probably one of the top solo performers I've ever seen take a stage and with an audience and know how to work an audience and has more ability on a guitar than I could ever possibly uh have. And I was in awe of his solo performances and I didn't want him to. I said, you know, you just go do that whatever, because you're good at it. And and uh, but if you want to come playing the band, we love to have. But I think that's

the where it went. It is. And to how many years before? Did you ask before he became a permanent member of the band, I'd have to ask the uh, my wing man here, how how long you know it was at while there? But uh, but you know we did we did a little thing during the band transition. We did a thing together called the living Room Tour in nine nine and uh and and my last my

my youngest daughter was born in eighty nine. And but we in the winter of eighty nine we went out and did you know, half dozen shows or what We rehearsed and did a half dozen shows there and just the two of us with living room furniture, and uh, you remember, Jimmy, we're following Hunter Thompson around. He used our set on a couple of those shows. Playing colleges and theaters and uh, and that was just a blast.

You know. I always knew, and I think Jimmy always knew we we were going to get along and that that we were going to be of used to one another. Me and because he has a zillion ideas and and he's got all this talent and all this inner g and and and I my nature is is I'm a

little bit more of a finished carpenter. So so sometimes the idea is that that Jimmy has it are great and gets up and running, I can I can sit there and and spackle for a while and maybe put a little bit better shine at the end of him because I was there. So we provide a great service to one another, because he just generates all this energy and and and I'm kind of a one track mine. Who can you know, I'll sit there for the next two and a half months and and try to make

it this much better or whatever. So we got a good team. And do you remember what year you became full time coral reefers? Uh? You know, we went out and did the live album Feeding Frenzy, and then I think it was ninety five was my first full time year and I don't know if you remember what you actually asked me, Jimmy, but you said, if you're ready to come out, and your kids can come out. My kids are gonna come out. I only want you to play two songs and the intermission of the show. That's

all I want. That's all you gotta do is just come out. We'll do two acoustics songs together in the middle of the show. And I don't believe I've been off stage since then, except the except the weekend I had the heart attack. Uh, had to cancel one. But I like to play. I would rather play than stand on the side of the stage and wait to play. But but he initially asked me just to play a couple of histic songs in the middle. UH, And I

was and I was honored about that. But but I love to play, So I'm really happy to get And the Coral Reefer Band and and team and crew is second family. They are my second family, and I wouldn't change the thing about any of them. So, Jimmy, what motivates you to go on the road, and obviously not during the COVID era. What keeps you going in that avenue? Um? I think Mom it's just that having been so lucky

to have learned from people before and mistakes. It's like we're talking about about Geffen and uh, you know, I always bring my sea Geff and I bring Mac up to me. He smiled. He's still has a warm place in his heart. And I thought, I think it's pretty amazing that somebody is as successful as David has been.

I saw that artist in Matt, you know that that's that says something about both of them to me, and knowing them both pretty well, I like the fact that how in the hell David, Geffen and mc mcilly get in a room again, that's pretty cool, so you know, and uh, it was it was just the as it as it went on, the fact that it was to me performers. If you're a performer and cam wright and sing that, that's okay. But learning to be a performer was what got me there. And two years of working

on Bourbon Street. I couldn't have learned that in any finishing school or music school ever, because I knew that, you know, I had learned to to have to play when you don't want to play, and uh, and have to play things you don't want to really do because you want to do your own stuff. But if you

do own stuff, they will fire you. So that that gauntlet of performing, that that I was lucky enough to get into an eye and I knew that if I could make my way up the ladder of success in that little locale and to the top club in New Orleans from from then you know, a hooting and United singer. You know, That's all I really wanted to do at that time, because I thought, well, that's pretty good and people have come here. You're making good money and people

are coming and to see you. But that's what it is when you when you start performing. To me like that, you connect with an audience, uh, in a true and authentic way. It's not something that's that's put on television and you create something. Uh. I think that audiences can can can connect you know, as someone said, it goes in here as well as here, it goes heart as well as your years. And and I think that that's what keeps me out there is you have the success.

You know, the part the part about the success I learned a Nationville from Bill Williams and others that the music business basically as such sacked against you, and you better hold onto as much of your own creative stuff as you can, and that that you know, that worked well for me and I never and then, you know, I didn't want to rent a piano from a promoter who charged me back for it. I bought one and put it in a bus and paid for it in in about two months and sold it to Billy Joel

for timing tim grant. He sold it back to me. It's in the studio Key West now, So you learn those things come along. But it's part of the fun of doing it to me, you know. And so there's some nights you have to play and you have to play hurt, but you don't ever ever show it. And that's that's that's what real performers do. And it's still and in this day and time, we simply have nothing

to prove out there anymore. So for me for a good time and having Mac and having only my friends, my my compadres, my wingman who I can take I can take orders from and and and will because I know they know more about certain aspects of this than I do. You know, I can, I can certain I can start some ship. Then they can make something out of it, you know, And uh, having that and the camaraderie of like Max said, the band is our second family.

And uh now we have nothing to prove. So all I want to do is is make things that people that really like what we do can add to their collection. You know, I've got I've got a segment of the following and called the Church of Buffet that doesn't think we did anything worth the ships. And since nineteen forty two, I mean since nineteen seventy five or something, you know that, But the Church of Buffet they're still there for that.

I love having that, you know, you don't you know they're they're still fans of certain things, and you know, but I think it's an artist you have to evolve, but you've got to try to say true to who you are. It's just simply tried to do that. And I've been very lucky, and I've got people around me from you know, a lot of friends and band members, my my lovely wife Jane, who who keeps try us to keep a tight collar on me, but sometimes I can leggle loose. But all of that, all of that

is part of this. And I don't see any you know anything. I can't wait to get back and I tell people, you know, there there will be an end to this at some point, you know. And I've been lucky enough to uh to have the success that I can take care of the people around me, my band and my crew and stuff. As we go through this and wiggle our way through. Where can we play? What's it?

What's gonna be left for us to do until we can get back on that stage and do the show that people really like, you know, and so that that's what we're working on now. And just you know, and you know, so you know, there's everbody's got ideas, and you know, it's hard to kind of think about doing shows without people, but you may have to do them. But I can remember with great audiences, and in behalf to I'll up there and do it to remember them. And I'll do a show for two people as well

as twenty thou people. I'll give him the same show. So that's that's I gotta I gotta interject and brag on this guy a little bit. That's what he has from building that muscle, playing playing bar gigs, good and bad bar gigs. You you have to have both of those things. There's no treadmill that teaches that entertainers that you can't build that muscle any other way than by

succeeding and failing on stage. And I will say about Jimmy because I'm a solo performer as as he was, to the fact, the fact that he cut his teeth in those small rooms making everybody feel like that they got something personal and unique in that room has has developed into him being able to sit there in front of thirty five thousand people and make them go home thinking they got a unique, individual, intimate performance. And and

that's a trick. But I don't know anybody else that can do I don't know another magician that can make thirty five thou people feel like they just saw a small gathering, private concert that was just for them. And he can do that, and he can repeat it, he can and and he can do it on a good day, and he can do it on a bad day when he's when he's got a sore throat, doesn't It's it's no different. And yeah, I'm proud to know him because of that, because I don't think anybody else in the

business does that. Okay, So, Jimmy, how do you decide after seven years to make a new album? Well, it was. We had talked about it because there were some other

busy things that I wanted to do. The Broadway thing was something that came to me with and my mother had taken me as a kid to see every road show of Broadway and she was she played any Name and uh and Mobile Theater Guil, she was Bloody Mary and South Pacific and I had to go see those shows and I really liked musical theater thanks to her. So off I go, and somebody tells you they want to take you to Broadway. I want hell, yeah, I'm gonna try that. You know. I knew what was up

there too. It wasn't like this is gonna be ruffles and flourishes, because they were not to jukebox musicals was the term that was already being spread around. But I wanted to try it. And so that took about five years of a lot of work on getting the getting the writers to the show to get from yeah we're gonna do it, so yeah we got the money to yeah we got the cast, so oh we got to rewrite this. That was like five years of steady work

as well as going out on the road. So you know, and most of my creative energies was going to that. So I didn't feel I had really good songs at that time, and I just didn't want to put out anything just to go fill the gap. Okay, before we move on, what did you learn from doing the Broadway show and what are your thoughts about it now? Well, I was very happy with it. I would uh when I do it again, Yeah, I probably would have somebody

asked me to do it. Uh. But the thing of it was, again, it regardless of what you know, it was, it was a critic. It was not a critical because success in New York. But everybody, the politicicket of that show loved that show because it was happy and it was fun. And but I knew that going the end and we were gonna you know. But the thing of it was we we played for almost nine months on Broadway, and uh and when we came out we had two years. I knew we would work on the road, would work

so and it was working very very well. Uh when when we had to shut it down Albuquerquin, New Mexico because of COVID. So um, and I still love the theater and I'm I'm invested in a couple of shows now and I still love. I love the fact of it is that there's so much talent and those kids that don't really make a lot of money, and the dedication. Uh. And it was my friend Frank Marshall, you know who's my partner, my long friend, movie producer. Yeah, he hired people.

I could so many people whose careers he made. He went to New York to find actors, not movie stars. That's what he told me and so and then when we go through the process of auditioning, there's so much more talent there than I ever thought about having in my little finger. I just I'm an admiration of that. And I love those kids and how hard they were for so little Okay, so now once you pass that hump, you say it's time to make a new record. How does Paul Breedy become a part of this? Yeah? Uh,

Paul Gray came came to us through Martin and Mark. Okay, I'll start from the beginning. Jimmy, is there anybody you don't know? Let's see, I want to know, not really know. Okay, So how do you know Martin Boffler? I I know him, know him from the fact that I was a huge, huge fan and at one point time he had passed through. We we did the Volcano album in George Martin studio in Montserrat, and we were the only American band to

ever go down there. But mccargan did an album there, Clapton did an album there, and and our strikes my brothers in arms when we met there somewhere in an occasion. And then he was using musicians and his bands from Nashville, great players that we all know that our friends and Max, and he's a great admirer of Max too. So uh, I think we met the first time through chet Atkins, who I knew pretty well in those days, and and we just became friends and state in touch with each other.

And so when when we started to go over to you know, we every year, we almost ten years, we played Paris every year and just for the fun out it and and but the shows became like things people

had to have other bucket list. So we know, hadn't played England in a while, so we went to London and we hadn't played Dublin, and I wanted to play because the Irish would come to to the shows in Paris and hang banners over the balcony going and they sit there in the middle of Finns when everybody's going completely crazy and like this, and with a sign on a flight said, the Irish are patiently waiting. And they got to me and I went, I'm coming. So we went.

So where we went, Um, you had to have an opening act and so and I knew that like going to Australia or New Zealand, you take local acts on there and it's a great thing, you know, for people to support their local talents. And so I didn't know whether they needed one or not in Dublin. So I just was in touch with I was talking to Mark about something else, and you know, we worked at his studio over there and stayed in touch. And I said, you know, you know my band and you know me

and you know what we do. And I said, we had to have an opening act, Uh to go to Dublin. Before I finished the sentence, he said, Paul eighty. Now I've heard about Paul Brady from Bonnie Ray and they wrote some things together and then he was he was in Nashville. Uh, who does he stay with? Mack? Uh? He stays with Jerry Douglas somebody Jr. Bara Douglas is a good buddy, so I knew a little about him, but I didn't know the depth of his material. So

I started getting it. I went up on Spotify and I got a Paul Brady Settlers and by this time, I'm now in California, kind of running around and driving back and forth listening to and I went this, I felt the same way everybody when I heard Paul Brady song where I did when I heard uh Mac's first album. And I said, I gotta get in touch with him.

And then uh Mark gave me his number and I called him and I said, you know, Martin Novel gave you your number and I said, he said, oh yeah, I know, as I just got back from New Zealand, and I said, you know, we're coming to Dublin. We're playing one night at at the Olympia in uh I Love. We need an opening act and I would just luck for you to open for us there. And I heard him laughing on the phone. And this is the first

time I ever spoken to him. We did shange email and he said, well, you know, Jilly, uh last time I Plater did ten nights there. Oh you don't open you know, I'm going, you know, and he just laughed. He said, but maybe I could do a joke up on that, you know. And then by that time I heard the songs and there's incredible, unbelievable, unbelievable material. And

then so he we did. We went over and he opened for us, He came, he did a couple of songs in the show, and uh, and then I was just then at that point and knew about the material, and I said, up, it inspired me to go back to start writing stuff again. I had a lot of stuff there that I thought was pretty good stuff. But listening to him and going back and listening to a couple of us earlier um uh uh Mac albums and

earlier novel albums and earlier Gordon life. But I went back and listen to those guys that I really wanted to be like a write like, a play like and it got me going again. And so I started churning out some some pretty good stuff for this and as as well as and then Paul sent me a song called out the Lotty Donard w wasn't finished and uh, we finished it together. So it is now like you know, it's one of those people you meet once and you

know them for fifty years. Well, you know, I know him an email and he sent me the world is what you make it. And I was on my computer and on a different screen I had to and I said, wait, wait, what's going on here? Really cracked me up? Well, that that song was that song got to me. You know, that is a great I mean to me, what I like in a song. It's a very very strong point

of thing to say, but it is it is. It is uh is presented and in a fashion and it's a great song and you're gonna wind up listening to it and later on going man that there's a lot of me that there are a lot of media that though, you know, which is that? To me is what Bob Marley is so great. He was a political force, but he gave it to you in the really wonderful songs that had you know, people singing before they knew what he was talking about. And I think Paul writes the

same way. Okay, so Mike and Mac produced the record. What does that mean? Were you really hands off? What was the process there? I know what I know what I do best, and I know what they do best, you know, And as producers we've done this for a long time, and you know, it's it's to us, it's an extension of writing a settlers for a show. Now it's you've got to have a certain amount of energy and for a certain amount of recognition and a show.

And so I looked at, you know, getting a song one together because I wanted it to be a project and and uh, the the original title was gonna be slack Tied because I've written the song slack Tied and uh, and then you know, we wound up another title. But we started writing together and Paul was in the mix, and it just kind of felt really good the preparation and now but you know, and this is before coded time, and but we were all exchanging kind of ideas and

songs were coming together. So I put together what I thought were the best songs to do going to the studio in the fourteen or sixteen tracks, and we hadn't been a studio with our band and their people. Everybody.

This band can play way above what is required for Jimmy Buffett songs, and I, you know, I dine out on that because you get them in the studio and they can really shine, but they stay they stay true to you know what people like to hear us play, and it's just a great experience to go into the studio with these musicians you've been with us for you know, from Robert Greenwich to Eric Darthan and mac Ugly to the Mayo Brothers. I mean, it's an amazing lucky guy.

I am that you're standing in front of that band. But everybody was really in the same mood to go in and do this, and we cut how many sixteen tracks in four days? I think, yep, ye, you're behind the board. What are you doing as a producer on Jimmy? I'm not behind the board. I'm sitting on a guitar. You don't you don't want me. There's there's no empty hands in the studio. Everybody's playing something. So what is

your role other than playing on Jimmy's record. Well, because we're writers and we like from from the from the German nation of these songs, Jimmy and I and and Utly are sending, we're sending things around. There's you know, they're parcel songs are going for for a while, you know, as they're being written, and some of them weren't written until we didn't weren't finished until in the studio too.

But the the love jury of of being a Coral Reefer is the fact that that band can go in and create and listen and play at the same time. And we we we were confident going in that we had we had the great the shell of a really

good album. You know, we had we had the cornerstone songs that the you know and and I think you know we Jimmy, because of the nature of the business the last few years, there was a couple of times he said, I don't know if people are even gonna make albums anymore, and I go, you, you got fans that want them. I still, you know, I grew up listening to albums sitting in the middle of a sofa holding an album cover, double folded out. And I don't

multitask if I'm listening to music. I'm listening to music. I'm not sweeping the floor and listening to music. I listened to an album, and I still want that, even though I know there's a whole generation that maybe has never even done it. I still want it to be an album. I want there to be a thread. And we have that in common, he and I and ugly the same way. So we were we were conscious about that in product from the very beginning, and to have it all come together kind of in a hurry, you

still get that rush of energy. There's there's still a couple of brand new songs, and then there's some things that we've been looking forward to cutting for four or five months because we've been working and polishing, so so you you get different levels of gratification from that, the cornerstone pieces and the brand new pieces that like, you know, slack Tide wasn't actually finished until the very last day, so and and that was the album title, and it

just kept getting better and kept getting better until until I get chill bumps thinking about the actual track going down right now, just telling you guys about it. Uh And and Jimmy was there. There's there's some chill bumps on that, you know, and coming from the whole band. And and the fact that it was it was hypothetical until it was magical, and and the fact that we got to experience that, and you know in a little concrete block building and Key West, I will not ever forget.

So you know, me being in what I call the produce section is mainly me just having a whole bunch of joy at being in the proximity of well made music played by phenomenal musicians. Well, I gotta tell you about when you get out of the studio, you just you hand something over there. It's life, he said, He's the he's the Finnish guy, you know. And somebody's got to do the vocal comps, somebody's got to do the mastering.

Somebody do that. I just I put it in their hands and they called me if they need anything, because I trust them they know what to do with with that. Because, as as Max said, you make magic in in a studio like that, and we're not the only ones that do it, but that's there's something about camaraderie and music together that you can if you can do that once or twice in your life. And I've been lucky enough, I think they do it four or five times on

records that were truly magical. And this one album well, and and there's there's a really almost a generation of artists who who don't have that as part of their experience, sitting in a room full of phenomenal musicians playing and listening at the same time. That doesn't happen as much as it used to happen. Well, I don't want to say that. I mean, really that's almost almost like a lost art. Anyway, simultaneously you're working on and you put out an album just very recently. How long have you

been working on that and what were your thoughts? Well, my records traditionally are are kind of spackled into a schedule of other things that I'm doing. Uh, And it's just just as well for me, because I considered a luxury that I don't make a record based on having a tour that I have to support, or a record deal deadline that I have to make, or or you know, as as Jimmy does, which I'm grateful that he does, a pile of employees that you have to make viable

business wise. I only make a record when I when I think maybe I've collected enough things that I have something to say, and and that usually takes three or four years of life for me to cook down into a reduction sauce of thirty forty minutes of music. That's the way it historically has worked for me. That Uh, this particular record is uh. We we started cutting tracks I think June of last year, and of the twelve songs, I think nine are are just myself and Eric Darkin,

who's our percussionist in the Coral Reefer Band. My show, my life show these days is just the two of us. I'll do half an hour by myself and then bring Eric up and and we you know, we we make a fair amount of noise for two guys. It's sort of impressive what we're able to do from a stage. But but the record itself, at the core is the

two of us. He added some percussion that's more than he can play at once, and I might play a bass in another couple of guitars and and and some harmony vocals, but it's really the core of it is just the two of us. There's one track that's the whole Coral Reefer band, and and one acts an old demo, But but in general it's it's it's us and and the pandemic. As bad as it is for for on so many levels, it actually afforded me the opportunity to to finish this one out in the same way that

I finished Jimmy's Out. Sometimes sometimes I hurry mine, but this one because because I was sitting around here at the house. I got to I got to a stay true to my original perception that it be primarily simple just myself and Eric and be. I got to I got to really you know, I had to sing some high harmonies that God never intended me to sing, uh, because I'm the only guy in the damn house, and I and I got to play some bass that I

should probably shouldn't have played. But but on the other hand, it is it is me and probably closer to my total vision of the of these songs than I usually get to do on a record. I was I was afforded some time that that I don't always have. So I feel pretty good about this record being similar to what it was in my head when the songs were born. Now, what are your expectations in terms of reaching audience? You know, for me, Bob, from the beginning, I just wanted out

of my head into some other storage medium. You know, I'm thank God for binary code because I got terrible handwriting. I never wrote songs down in the beginning. I just figured if I couldn't remember them, I didn't have the right to inflict them on any any of the public. But you know, I'm I'm in my sixties. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna buy a tour or or get a personal trainer or or a tour bus or but

I'm gonna play shows. I've got some folks who who like what I do, and I can you know, it's It's not an enormous group of folks, but it's enough folks that I can make a living just doing that. If if that's but I don't want to do just that. I don't want to just be a mac artist. I want to be a coral reefer. And I want to play on George Strait albums and kenn each As the albums.

I want to strump beside my buddies. So my particular life works so that I could do those things at that level, and I can play awesome little listening rooms and small theaters and and get whatever self aggrandizement that comes from being in the middle of the stage and having somebody overly brag on me every once in a while. That's that's cool. But I don't I don't anticipate a

mass audience or I don't pine for one. I'm really grateful for folks that connect and that my songs mean something too, and I'm super grateful that that I can be the rhythm guitarists in the Coral Reefer band and and and play on other folks records as well, and still write a song for somebody and every once in a while, Like I said, I have the ideal life for the way that I'm built. Okay, just one question

relative to that. Once you get it out of your head, you put it on the record, you ever listen to it again? Uh? If I gotta relearn it, like about to have to learn how to play some of this tough live, I gotta go listen to it again. What it's What the hill did I do sitting up there? Or why did I? Why did I sing that? Now that I gotta go out and do it on the road, That's what I'm doing here too. But I'm I'm learning these songs very well, the ones that I wasn't that

familiar with. I mean, if I got to do cussing Island, I gotta go and learn it again, you know. But that's a big mouthful. But you're gonna do it. We're gonna make you do it. But I gave the Mac album and listen, I took it out of the boat with my with some man and my daughter and her husband, Josh, and we gave him. We gave it worked very well on the boat. But I just I love the fact that I knew there was just the two of them,

but it sounded that's what my kids are going. Boy, is that the band I went on one cut and you know the best of what Matt can really do. But you know, as the as the owner of mail Bowl Records, I'm glad that I'm in the same category as Dave Deaf that I let this man be an artist and didn't put any you know, do it when you turn it in, when you're finished, okay, flipping it

over to you, Jimmy. Uh, the bit you may or may not have changed, sort of like the Joe Walsh's song Life is Good, but the scene is completely changed. The records in the Spotify Top fifty have never been so small and cultural impact, not like when the sixties said that you had to hit. Everybody knew it, so you said earlier, you have a good opinion on it.

You're making this for your audience. But to what degree do you pine, if at all, for a larger impact, which is difficult for anybody, Never mind people irrelevant of the quality of the record, you know. You know, like I said, I'm seventy three now, and and I've been a lucky, lucky boy from from those early days, you know. And and uh again, it's like, there's not really much out there that I haven't done that I want to do. I want to go to space, that's the one thing

I would like to do that. And I did you sign up for Virgin Galactic? I did? And uh and uh I've actually played a show for it, and uh, I had a deal with Richard Bramson and I got But anyway, but Johnny Glenn Win he was he was seventy seven and I'm seventy through. So I'm you know, that's that's like one thing. But as far as and you know, the way the business thing is is gone and stuff that was just a byproduct of a brand

that was basically authentic in the beginning. And you know, you see so many other people trying to create something that's authentic. It doesn't happen that way. It's got to be authentic, you know, and and and so um, you know, there's not that much left to do. I'll tell you what I'm thinking about, right now is because of the roadblocks against that that have been put up by the

COVID nineteen. The world that we live in, of music getting out there, of love music being played by bands and and clubs, you know, and I understand why you can't do it, but I'm also looking at how can you do it safely and reach your audience? And so I leaned back to for whatever reason, I'm the reason I started radio. Margaint read bills because it can never

get on the radio. And I came back from Australia where I heard, you know, there were twelve radio stations in Australia in those days, but they programmed for what what the hours people were listening And I got that idea in my mind. And when when the Internet came out and I started seeing it radio stations, I went, We're just gonna do one of our own up there and find find out if anybody wants to listen, and they do, so, you know, with with that and with

Margaint Red build TV. Right now, we're basically supplying those two entities we started fifteen twenty years ago with products like Max album comes out on that and then you know, we've got we've got we do wednesdayson Saturday nights and replaying shows so our au and so I know we're still out there. So my job right now is to stay in touch with the loyal parent head audience. And I get sneaky, got sneaky things that I can go out and do, like uh, you know other people are

you get on other people's tracks. And it didn't hurt that Alan Jackson asked me to come come played all five o'clock somewhere and and there's something else coming out now that you get people that are doing duets and being honored by other people. That's enough to kind of stay uh, to stay current, you know, and and not have just your audience to be people your age. And I think we we have gone generational by just being who we are and people being able to play their

music for their kids. And we're like four fits generation and we see it in the shows when we go out there, and so I'm just gonna still keep doing that in the limited way that we have we are able to do it now waiting for that day. I mean, I'm not going back until people going to parking lot and tail game, because that's part of the show. I mean, un two of you do that, it's a half as show as far as I concerned, because people aren't getting

the bank or the buck that they want. And when it's safe to do that and we can do it, you know, we'll go back and do big shows. In the meantime, Like Max said, you know, we both have avitability to play solo or with smaller bands. You know, I'm looking at that very very closely because I love to do it, and because that's all you can do now. And if you don't have an audience, we better in

a club then you got one up online. So I'm looking at being able to utilize what's what it's available to us now in order to get back to where until we can get back to where we want to be, this question go on, mac I was just gonna interject though, that in in the context of of whether you want a larger audience or not. He did. He did just have the number one country album with Life on the Flip Side, and the number two pop album behind Lady Gaga.

Who's who's not you know, you know she she's no slout, She's amazing. But uh, but the folks, at the point Jimmy is in his career that are that are having number two pop albums and number one country albums. Uh are are rare. I'll be surprised if too many, too many folks get to match that. Okay, uh both of you grew up in the South, and needless to say, from when you were little children is not today. But what does the rest of the country not understand about

the South? WHOA, that's you got about eight hours. I'll tell you the one thing they don't understand that there's more Souths than you can possibly imagine. It's not one place. And as a traveling musician, I know Matt knows that, and I know that, and that would be the one thing about it is like you know, living in the Northeast as long as I have, you know, New York is not New York. New York is boroughs and neighborhoods. So they people tend to think of the South as

a place. And you know, and if you go back to the Civil rights movement started in the South, you know, out of brave people like mar lud King and John Lewis and and you know, and John Siginfaller a good

friend of ours. And I admire those people because I was I was brought up by my parents, not to heke and what Mac, Do you have anything to add to that about people not knowing about the South, Well, I think, uh, you know, through through the things that we've done poorly and the things that we've done correctly over the years and learned hopefully from mistakes, uh, slower

than we should have learned. The one thing that that comes out of here is because the South as segregated as schools where the South has been generally rural and and not necessarily affluent. I believe that that people from the South have a sense of community that's not necessarily

all over the world. I think it's spread. That part spreads well that what's Jimmy's talking about their South in the rest of the world, those folks that have gone out have have represented the best of what the South has in a good way, whether it be literature arts. I joke about spare time being the major export of Mississippi. Uh, but uh, it kinda is. But but you look at

what's come from that. Uh. And And as you said, Jimmy, I I although Mississippi doesn't have a great total track record in regard to civil rights, a lot of civil rights was born out of it. In my particular family, we're just so wonderful, and in saying that we were, you know, nobody's better than anybody else. We all need one another, we all have a use for one another, and we all have an obligation to one another to

make everything work. And you can see that in a small town, in a small community in a way, sometimes it might not be so obvious in a in a pile of millions of people. You know, if you if you're sitting in New York City, which I love New York City, but if you walk out the door and you decide you're gonna punch out the first person that comes down the street, there may literally be no repercussion

from that. But if you go out the door in a small town and you punch the first person, not only do you know that person and you know their family and your family and how those two family intersects. You see the effects of your accents. You see the effects of what you do, and you see how it's better to get along than to not get along. Even if there's some of those folks as you don't care for,

it's better to get along than not get along. And that that as just a singular, abiding message would would benefit the world a lot right now, If every if everybody took a little bit more of a grip of that, I think it'd be we'd be better off than we are. Okay, needless to say, we have a very fractured country. And uh so, Jimmy, hey, do you believe music has a part in this forthcoming election and bringing our country together? And I don't mean to be all kumbaya, but nettles

to say we grew up. We could we could point out that people are on the other team now, they're music fans that are both on both sides of the fence. One, to what degree do you feel an obligation to go on the record? Do you feel it works? To what degree you inhibited? Because obviously your entire audience doesn't feel the same way. Yeah, you know, I've always been uh

you know, my politics. I've never taken on the stage because I believe that there's a place oasis is are there for reasons people to rest and uh and I believe that that's what we are. And everybody tends to go into the political world of it, but uh, music is is the universal language. I've I've I've lived it,

I've experienced it. I've going around the world, uh and play places where I can sing in other languages and where I can or I can I can listen to songs that I don't know what they're saying, but I love what it's the way it's making me feel. And uh, you know, it's to a degree. You know, I think there's been a little too many celebrities getting into the political world. And then you know, in the beginning it

was pretty interesting. And and of course politicians want your audiences because they think they're there's uh and I've done that and uh, you know, but my polife were like I said, I was raised not to hate in the South by my my mother and uh and and friends around her. She worked in labor relations in a shipyard to was segregated. So I came up that way, and uh, I'm gonna stay that way. And yeah, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go do work I always have in the past.

But you know, if you don't like it, I don't see how I'd like to see less equating politics with music. Uh. You know that sounds weird because protests songs have gone out there, but and done, done good. But in this climate, you know, there's has to be some agreement on something which there's a very little degree on. But I think people can agree on bands and probably their favorite baseball, football, or basketball team. And if that's what we got, that's

our job right now. Well, gentlemen, this has been wonderful. We've explored stuff that certainly I wasn't aware of, and I really thank you for taking time out of your day to appear and tell us your stories. Well, yeah, thank you for being Bob Lester's absolutely and I also want to want to thank you, Bob for for for the the letter last week, the kind words and uh, because as you know at this point you you're bound to know how terrible of a self promotor I am.

So the fact that you're helping is much appreciated from the mcinally daughters for sure and myself as well. That's uh, it comes straight from the heart. I mean, it's you look for things to connect with, you know. It's kind of like people say, kids today have a really short attention spin no, they just have an incredibly good ship detector. They go no, no, no, and if they find something they like, like a series, I'll watch all day I am looking for those tracks, and when I find a track,

I will literally play it out infinitum. I made a Spotify playlist of those three tracks. When Hiking in the Mountains played only those three tracks. They set a mood. I will play them into the ground. You'll get a few thousands of a penny from Spotify for me, but it's certainly hit me emotionally. Well. That's music is one of the only things in the world that can make bad good. It can turn bad into good, and we

get to be associated with that. And I know I know from your letters over the years that you're passionate about it. I know that this guy in the in the florally in the pretty shirt. You got a pretty shirt there, Jimmy, that guy, I must to him. Yeah, it's not a costume. And I know what it means to me, and I know how grateful that I am that we all get to talk about it and go out and do it again tomorrow. Thanks so much for doing this. Until next time. This is Bob left Sex