Justin’s back this month with a new From Under My Lone Palm. This time it’s on his experience at the Nashville “Flood Show”:

I don’t know about the rest of you but when I decide to go to a show, of any artist, I always hope I catch ‘that’ show. You know, the one where everybody remarks about how great the set list or performance was. So naturally when I made plans to see Jimmy again for the first time in three years, I hoped for something special. I got it, but not in the way I thought I would.

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This month marks one year that Justin has been writing his From Under My Lone Palm columns. We hope that you’ve enjoyed reading them.

Justin writes about the “Somewhere Over China” album in this month’s column:

On January 19, 1982, “Somewhere Over China,” Jimmy’s new release, hit your favorite record store. The album represented a critical point in Jimmy’s career-”Margaritaville” was 5 years ago, and MCA was looking for the next hit single. Sure, Jimmy had been able to score minor hits in-between, but the window for Jimmy being a superstar was getting smaller with each album it seemed. It wasn’t all Jimmy’s fault-as he once put it, “Music changed on us almost overnight, and the singer/songwriter breed who populated the music scene of the seventies seemed to be headed for the proverbial “elephant burial ground.” While chart success hadn’t been there, touring had alaways been a strong point for Jimmy, and that was something that hadn’t changed. Jimmy’s cult following continued to flock to shows and Jimmy continued to please them by playing over 300 shows a year. But this constant cyle of no hit records and lots of touring had begun to wear on the band, and it showed in Jimmy’s writing on the album.

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Time again for the monthly column by BuffettWorld contributor Justin. In this month’s From Under My Lone Palm, he chronicles an interview with Country Cookin’ that occurred at an important time in Buffett’s career:

For this month’s piece I had to look deep into my archives. I admit I had several other ideas for things I wanted to tell you all about, but those just didn’t get finished for this time around. But there’s always next time. Anyway, this month we are gonna go back to the early seventies again. Looking back, how could anyone not love this time in music? Below you will find a transcript of an interview Jimmy did with Lee Arnold for the Country Cookin’ radio show. This interview took place immediately after Jimmy’s performance at Willie Nelson’s second annual picnic on July 4, 1974, at the Texas World Speedway.

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Time for another installment of From Under My Lone Palm. This month Justin provides a full and detailed history of Jimmy Buffett’s involvement in saving the manatees:

It seems Jimmy began his quest to ’save the manatee’ on February 17, 1981 at a show in Tallahassee, FL. Then Florida Gov. Bob Graham met up with Jimmy and Jimmy expressed his interest in saving the mammal to him. Bob had heard Jimmy’s song “Growing Older But Not Up” and that had peaked his interest. A new federally funded Manatee Advisory Committee had been set up, and since Jimmy couldn’t be apart of that, Jimmy and Bob put together the “Save the Manatee” committee. So on May 26, 1981, the first meeting of the “Save the Manatee” committee took place in Tallahassee.

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Read past FUMLP’s here.

Another month, another column by Justin. This time it’s about the 1976 show that Jimmy Buffett played aboard the Tom Sawyer:

By 1976, Buffett was on album number four for ABC/Dunhill, “Havana Daydreamin’.” It had dropped in January that of that year after being delayed for reasons still unknown. During a show in September of ‘75, Jimmy had mentioned that he wanted to relase the album on Christmas day. That didn’t happen, and it was likely because of the last second switch from “Please Take Your Drunken 15 year old Girlfriend Home” to “Cliches,” no doubt because “Cliches” was not quite as risque. Regardless, the album continued to build momentum for Jimmy, and he and the evolving Coral Reefer Band began to play some bigger gigs and even headlining some shows. Jimmy had opened for Joe Cocker at a couple of Florida Festivals in March and Loggins and Messina in Florida in June. He played to 40,000 at the Superdome in New Orleans on the 4th of July as part of an all day bill that included the likes of the Charlie Daniels Band, Emmylou Harris, and John Sebastian. He played a few more festivals along the way including the Banjo, Fiddle, and Guitar festival in Long Beach, CA in April and the Night in the Country festival in Baton Rouge, LA in October. But sandwiched in-between all of that was a special one night cruise aboard the Tom Sawyer on July 11.

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Justin’s latest From Under My Lone Palm column is hot off the presses, and this month it’s a great writeup on the Beach House on the Moon Tour:

This month I decided to take a look back 10 years at the “Beach House on the Moon” tour. Personally, I’ve always thought this was an historic tour for more a couple of reasons, so let’s take a look at the tour and see just why it was so historic.

The “Beach House on the Moon” tour was of course named after the album of the same name. It was Jimmy’s first album of new material since 1996’s “Banana Wind” and also the first album to see significant contributions from Mac McAnally. When it was time to hit the road, Jimmy was also finally able to get Mac to become an official member of the band. Mac had been touring with the band on and off since 1996.

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In this month’s “From Under My Lone Palm”, Justin takes a look back at the 1989 album “Off To See The Lizard”:

“Off to See the Lizard” was an album that was actually never meant to be. In 1988, Jimmy had released “Hot Water”, which once again failed to produce the major radio hit that Buffett seemed to desire. But the summer tour was once again a success, so Jimmy had that going for him. After all of that, Jimmy hadn’t planned to record a new album, no doubt because he just didn’t fill like it was time for it. But MCA had different plans. “There was a big push on me to make records with `star’ producers, but that didn’t excite me much,” Buffett said.

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Read past FUMLP’s here.

Justin’s back this month with another “From Under My Lone Palm”, and this time it’s a great writeup on the “Margaritaville” movie that never happened:

I finally begin thinking about all the useless information I had read on Jimmy over the years and the idea struck me: The Margaritaville Movie. It seems once upon a time, Jimmy had the great idea to put his most famous song on the big screen. Although nothing really ever came of it but a lot of talk, it was a noble idea. I know I personally would have loved to see it happen. And who knows, maybe it will one day. But here’s the story of the movie once upon a time ago.

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In this month’s “From Under My Lone Palm”, Justin chronicles the many guitars that Jimmy Buffett has used over the years:

Earlier this month I was talked into throwing $20 bucks in on the extremely popular “Guitar Hero
World Tour” 2 guitar controller set. I gotta say that I never thought I would like Guitar Hero or Rock Band since it always seemed to me to be a rip-off of actually playing guitar. But, I was hooked immediately. Both games are a lot of fun. Plus, how cool is it to rock out to Peter Mayer’s guitar licks on “Cheeseburger in Paradise”? I can say that it’s not as easy as it looks. So I figured a great topic for the column this month would be Jimmy’s guitars. As some of you might know, I’ve been researching them for quite sometime for a new page on the site, but I just can’t get the page to come together enough to please me. I’m sure someday I’ll get it right, but until then, here’s a look at a few of Jimmy’s beautiful guitars from over the years.

Read the entire column here.

Also, check out all of the FUMLP’s from the past here.

Time for the last From Under My Lone Palm of the year, and this month Justin reviews the Tarpon Fishing Documentary that was recently made available by the Margaritaville Key West:

If you’re up on the Coconut Telegraph, you are aware that this 1974 documentary
on Tarpon fishing in the Keys was recently made available on DVD from Margaritaville in Key West. When I saw it as I was flipping through those pages I knew I had to have it. And now I do. So sit back and enjoy a little review of this fine film.

Read the rest of the column here.

View all of the past FUMLP’s here.

And check out the documentary at Margaritaville.com.