A Summer without Jimmy Buffett (Music Monday)

It's 9am somewhere.

My daughter recently asked which was my favorite holiday. At first I said Thanksgiving because everyone celebrates it, but then I remembered I hare going anywhere and would just as soon stay home and play video games, watch football and get a pizza. I switched my answer to “Friday afternoon before Memorial Day.” THAT’s the greatest day of the year. You have the entire summer in front of you!

I’m a crazy person. Once we get to July 3rd I start counting down and feel like the summer is getting away from me. August 1st is like the two minute warning of summer, and then once we get to August 20th I am obsessed with getting my Beach Days Count up as quickly as possible.

It was somehow appropriate that if Jimmy had to go, he went on Labor Day weekend. TOMORROW is the worst day of the year. Summer is over. The bosses get all hopped up about Back To Work and Fall Initiatives. The town traffic is busier in the morning.

Traditionally I’d have to get up earlier, but this fall brings an Empty Nest so maybe I can sleep past 6:30 wooooo, especially because I work from home.

I was on my way to the beach last year when I saw on twitter that Jimmy had passed. I knew he had canceled shows but had no idea he was that sick. Stunning.

I spend the day on the beach listening to his music pretty upset. I never met him (and I have met a fair amount of celebrities, so it’s not absurd that we might have crossed at Sirius) but it hit me hard.

Jimmy came around every summer. He’s the soundtrack of the summer. And now he was gone, just like summer. It was strangely perfect.

I last saw Jimmy in August 2022, at Jones Beach, a perfect place to see him. There was a full moon behind the stage on that clear warm night and it was perfect. I just looked, and Jimmy only played 15 more shows after.

This year, I lost my mom, and one of my dogs, and the other dog turned 17 (!) yesterday. I’m about to turn 55 and this year for the first time I started thinking about how many summers left. It’s only “July 3rd”, but it did occur to me that in 25 summers I will be 80, so there aren’t the endless days at the beach left that there once were.

I was able to listen to Jimmy’s music this summer without being sad.

Zac Brown and Mac McAnally put this song together as a tribute. It’s not a Jimmy Buffett song, but it’s a “Jimmy Buffett Song”

That one I can’t listen to without getting sad.

As I tell my family, “Go to France when you get a chance, you never know when a pandemic happens.” What the hell does that mean? I was in Paris in February 2020, and the airport was already segregating people who had flow in from China. A week later things really started to shut down.

Here’s that set from Jimmy at Jones Beach. Thanks for a great show JB.

Here’s an episode of Travel Is Back where we toured the parking lot before the show.

My Halloween Consume October 2023.