#76 – Wings
Day #76 – Wings
Jimmy Buffett said this about wings, “Let’s face it, I like my wings. The ones you can see on my plane and the ones you can’t see in my brain. They have taken me on some very interesting flights”. Wings have multiple different meanings to people, but one thing that most can agree with is that wings are tied to a higher plane than the one gravity ties us to on earth. Here’s to a new set of wings, Jimmy, and to wherever they may take you next.
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Original post from 11/16/2023
Day #76 – Wings
Wings is a song released on JB’s 2009 album Buffet Hotel.
When I was reeling from the shock of Jimmy’s passing on September 1st, my first instinct was to listen to his music, in a way it helped me mourn and appreciate both the man and his music.
I shared the first song, Changing Channels, because it was an ear worm for me, the morning the world was waking up to the news. It felt good for me to share his music, and his stories. I have come to see it as my own personal therapy journey, and I really can’t explain how the death of someone who I never knew could hit me so hard, but I always knew it would. And it did.
I thought a month of songs would be a great tribute, but after about two weeks, I realized that a month was not nearly long enough to cover my list, which was growing every day, and involves a catalog of music more than fifty years in the making. In my mind, I wasn’t sure of a stop date.
But what quickly felt right was 76 songs, one for every year Jimmy lived. For every trip around the sun he had! My list is still much longer, and he has enough music I could do this every day for a couple years. No lie, Jimmy was a prolific artist.
So here is Day #76, and the final day of what started as a very spontaneous way to honor him and share his music. And I knew pretty early that this would be the song that I ended this with.
Wings was co-written by Jimmy and Will Kimbrough, an artist who has a significant songwriting career and solo career. Jimmy had heard of him, knew some music, and invited Will to a songwriting session. They collaborated on four songs for the record Buffet Hotel and continued to be friends and collaborators. As a matter of fact, Will is the co-writer on five songs from Jimmy’s just released album, Equal Strain On All Parts, including University Of Bourbon Street and Bubbles Up.
When it came to today’s song, Will had started with some lines, which he used to encourage his children, and Jimmy loved them, and with his unique perspective as a pilot and his own songwriting experience and lyrical gifts, they joined forces, and the two men created a beautiful and uplifting song.
“If you’re gonna fly high without fear, You’re gonna have to learn to love the atmosphere, And you gotta learn to use those wings, You can’t see…”
Jimmy loved to thread other song titles into his lyrics, usually his own and sometimes belonging to other artists he admired and this one nods to more wings, Merle Haggard’s Silver Wings, which is a stunningly beautiful song.
“You have wings, Look and see, Silver Wings, Like Merle and me…”
Touching back to Jimmy’s first time in sailing into St Barts, when he and crew were greeted by a dingy full of children bringing coffee and beignets, the children “from the Moon” that Jimmy wrote the song Chanson Pour Les Petits Enfants for and about. At some point in that stay in St Barts, Jimmy invited those kids to come aboard the Euphoria II and watch a movie. Jimmy had some huge movie player on the boat, with four movies, one of which was The Wizard Of Oz. He had seen the movie “about five hundred times” but they had never seen it and he was excited for their reaction.
At some point, Jimmy was visiting with the kids and a ten-year-old talked about his own car. Jimmy said at that time, the island of St Barts had maybe twenty cars, and none of them belonged to a child. So, Jimmy asked him where he kept his car, and the kid pointed to his head. Ahh, imagination… so at the time, Jimmy translated that to wheels in your mind. More than thirty years later, that stuck with Jimmy and translated to a line in this song.
“I’ve got wings, You can’t see, I’ve got wheels on my feet, Way up high, I feel free, On those wings you can’t see…”
So, the title of this album is Buffet Hotel. It’s subtle, and sometimes we see what we want. I don’t think I noticed the spelling of the album for about two years. Buffet is actually a dictionary word that means “a meal consisting of several dishes from which the guests serve themselves” (which is ironically kind of fitting for Jimmy and his career), and I know Jimmy’s last name has been misspelled probably a million times, usually by dropping the second T, from Buffett to Buffet.
In this case, the record cover, ironically is spelled as it was intended, with one T, while Jimmy’s name has two T’s.
“And maybe if you open up your mind, You might learn some things, God only knows what you might find, Floatin’ on those wings…”
Jimmy loved to travel, he loved seeing and learning about the world. In 2009, Jimmy visited the town of Bamako, Mali, in Africa, which includes parts of the Sahara desert. They held a yearly music festival there, called the Festival au desert. It celebrated Tuareg music, which is the music of the Berber peoples of Northern Africa, as well as other world music. While there, Jimmy discovered the Buffet Hotel.
Officially, the Hotel De La Gare Buffet was inside the Bamako train station. It was in a colonial age train station and hotel that was a center of nightlife and was part of a wonderful music scene in the nineteen sixties. Of course, a place like that called to Jimmy, and became the cover of the album he was set to record.
Buffet Hotel also wraps up a journey through all of Jimmy’s studio albums… I think. There are a lot! I left out the greatest hits and compilation albums, I left out the many, many live albums, I left out the two staged musical albums, and only landed on one of two Christmas albums, but tried to cover a vast recording career that started in 1970. Equal Strain On All Parts, which turned out to be a posthumous gift from Jimmy (although I don’t believe it was necessarily meant to be), wraps up fifty-four years as a recording artist. And Jimmy had been playing live music for years before he made that first record.
I am so grateful for every year, every album, every song, every live performance, every story he told, every experience he shared. Jimmy might have flown off this big blue ball of a planet, but he gifted us with so much, and we have it… to listen to, to enjoy, to sing and dance too, as long as we want. Thank you, Jimmy!
And I hope many of you have enjoyed this journey through Jimmy’s music as much as I have.
My life has felt shifted since you left, but I am so grateful for you! Safe travels, Captain Buffett!
“I’m gonna fly on out of here, On wings that you can’t see…”
Please enjoy Wings. I have included the link in the comments below.
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This song has been and continues to be on autoplay on the ear worm juke box in my mind. If it’s not skittering along in my brain, I am catching it on RadioMargaritaville. In many ways, this song has given me comfort in dealing with the loss of Jimmy Buffett from this world. For over thirty years, he has been what honestly feels like an integral part of my life and development. I connected with the music first, and the entertaining lifestyle that comes with being a Parrothead, second. But now, I can see no way to separate those two things, nor do I wish to. I am so thankful for it all, which is one of the reasons I started this song tribute. Because he was so much more than a beach bum drinking margaritas. He built an empire, and I think he did it with smarts and hard work and a deeply creative lyrical talent and joy involved with entertaining people and being entertained by them. And Parrotheads are entertaining…
Wings has felt like the perfect song to wrap things up with, because while Jimmy had already earned his wings officially with his pilot’s license, he earned them in a spiritual sense on September the First, a date that will never be the same for me again, nor will I ever look at a Labor Day weekend quite in the same way.
I hope your new wings carry you far James William Buffett.
Stacy
Please enjoy Wings. I have included the link below. Enjoy!
The link is from Jimmy’s official YouTube channel, which I have no personal affiliation with.
