#93 – Brahma Fear

by Stacy Loves Buffett · April 15, 2024

#93 – Brahma Fear

-by Stacy Garwood-

We are dipping back into the early Key West days this week, where Jimmy was still in his transition between folk and country into the more beach and ocean vibe that he would later call Gulf and Western, a genre of his very own. And Brahma Fear is a song that seems to combine all of those music types into a soft and gentle as well as nostalgic and introspective.

Brahma Fear was released on JB’s 1974 album Living And Dying In 3/4 Time. This album was recorded late in 1973 and was built following the success that Jimmy had started with White Coat Sport And A Pink Crustacean, which had been the first of his Don Gant produced albums. Here, In Living And Dying In 3/4 Time, we again have Don Gant producing and long time Coral Reefers Michael Utley and Grey “Fingers” Taylor playing. Both the keyboard and harmonica are strong sounds in this song, along with guitar playing.

Brahma Fear is a song that feels like it covers that transition in Jimmy’s career, from Nashville to Key West with a bit of Jerry Jeff Walkers influence and a stopover in the Austin Texas music scene. It’s interesting in its lyrical composition as well, as it feels like is has two choruses that get repeated twice in the song, yet in reversed order, each almost feeling like this must be written by a person with fifty years of poor choices under their belt, who is now looking back and cataloguing the choices that got them to the point they are, instead of written by Jimmy in his mid-twenties, still fresh in his life and career path.

“Drink a lot of whiskey, It gives me such a glow, It makes me quite immobile, Ah but it lets my feelings show…”

This first chorus seems to sum up the things that Jimmy seems to appreciate and not appreciate about whiskey. On the appreciation level, it gives him a glow and helps him express his feelings with ease, but on the not-so-great level, it makes him quite immobile. Now, immobile as a word touches on the lack of movement, the honesty of drinking yourself to a standstill, leaving behind the glow and easy expression stage and moving into the darker side of alcohol.

“And I’m somewhere below the spotlight, Somewhere below the ground, You dig deep enough you might find me, Find me, and you’ve found my sound…”

This second bit of chorus touches on life on the stage, yet it’s not elevated as we could expect, but seems to almost be something that Jimmy feels buried by, and perhaps that is a hint of the toll his early career felt like it was taking. Jimmy had some commercial success with White Sport Coat And A Pink Crustacean, but the success of Changes In Latitudes Changes In Attitudes and his first hit song Margaritaville were a couple years of hard work away at this point.

However, combined with the chorus that prefaces this one, one might wonder if the “buried” comment is tied to the haze of the whiskey glow as well. If Jimmy ever said what he meant in these lyrics, I have not found it in any interviews. And sometimes there is something nice about letting the lyrics touch the listener without any explanation, so it can really mean to them whatever the listener needs it to mean.

The verses are also quite interesting, touching on things we know that Jimmy loves, or we learn about if we get to know his music enough, boats and airplanes, the ocean and the skies, but also touches on that hint of Texas talking about rodeo and a vague idea of where “home” is for Jimmy.

“I’d like to ride the rodeo, But I’ve got Brahma fear, So I’ll just stick to airplanes, Gently pop my ears…”

If Jimmy ever considered actually climbing onto the back of a bucking bull, I can’t find it, but this song opens with a strong hint that it had indeed crossed his mind. And Jimmy was both adventurous as well as curious, so it would not surprise me if he had considered it.

I love the phrase “Brahma fear”, which is something I have never heard outside of this song, but perhaps is a phrase used around the rodeo circuit and was one of those great lines that JB heard and immediately wove into the lyrics of a song. I have listened to a 1974 recording of a live show from The Record Plant in Sausalito California, which has a mention about this song. Jimmy did the show while promoting the release of Living And Dying In 3/4 Time, and it involves quite a bit of Jimmy interacting with the crowd, taking requests and he mentions about this song, which was a request, that after writing and recording it, he has been corrected a couple times on the pronunciation of Brahma, perhaps from some of those Austin Texas crowds. I grew up around cows in Montana, and I have always pronounced brahma just like Jimmy does in the song, but I might have been doing it wrong my whole life for all I know. Not only is the show a fun way to get familiar with Jimmy’s early live shows, but it also has Jimmy at his finest, telling stories and interacting with the crowd, something I truly think he loved to do.

Of course, this indicates that Jimmy was talking about the cattle breed of Brahman, sometimes referred to as Brahma, in this song. This is a hybrid cattle that was developed in the United States and is heat, humidity and insect tolerate, hardy and does well in poor feeding environments. It is a quite large beef breed, therefore with quite large bulls that are useful in rodeo rough stock. Brahmans are now documented as their own breed, but started as a cross between Zebuine from India and Taurine, which were already plentiful in local areas already. While most of the crossbreeding occurred in Texas, the first documented crossing was in South Carolina, which I found interesting, because I think of Brahma as being a Texas breed of cow. No matter how they started, if you are watching rodeo and you see a large, humpbacked bull, it’s probably at least part Brahman/Brahma.

A person might also recognize the word Brahman tying to both Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, as well as Brahma being associated to one of the three main male deities of Hinduism, with Brahma being the main creator god, while Brahman is tied to the highest universal Hindu principle of eternal truth and consciousness. But I highly doubt those were things that tied into Jimmy writing this song, but I always found that an interesting side concept. Now, if George Harrison had written the song, then maybe that idea would be more plausible because sometimes life does feel like a rodeo!

And just to cover our bases with Brahma, it is also a breed a chicken and a type of beer. I honestly feel like beer has tried to buck me off in a rodeo experience before, and those chickens can be mighty feisty. But moving on…

The next line brings in more of what Jimmy loves, and that is airplanes. Jimmy didn’t get his pilot’s license until he was nearing age forty, but the mention here in this song, so many years earlier, tells us that airplanes were certainly already an interest of Jimmy’s. He did have a friend who introduced him to flying back in his college days, so the bug was planted back before this song was written, and he had taken some flight lessons when he was attending the University of Southern Mississippi, although he did not seriously pursue it at that time. However, it was a dream that he kept in mind.

In the song, he jokes that the biggest concern with flying is having to gently pop his ears. Of course, Jimmy’s later experience with planes, include having his beloved Hemisphere Dancer plane riddled with bullets by Jamaican officials in 1996 that inspired the song Jamaica Mistaica and crashing another seaplane into the ocean on take-off, and relying on his survival training to extract himself from the terrifying situation off the coast of Nantucket in 1994. Those incidents certainly make the popping of ears related to altitude changes seem trivial but are certainly some of the great things that surround the lore of Jimmy Buffett.

And then more of things that Jimmy loves are mentioned in the second verse, tying back to the seas and oceans and the boats that skim across them, certainly on the long-time pastime list of loves of James William Buffett.

“Yes, I own a whaler boat, It slides across the sea, Some folks say I’m part of it, And I know it’s part of me…”

In truth, I don’t know that Jimmy owned a boat at this point in his career. The first sailing vessel I am aware of that was owned by Jimmy was the Euphoria, a ketch, which he purchased in 1976, then the next year upgraded to a larger clipper-ketch, the Euphoria II. In 1979, he purchased a sloop he called the Savannah Jane, after his first child, daughter Savannah. So, this idea of having his own boat to skim across the waves might have only been a dream in 1974, but if so, it makes me happy this was a dream that Jimmy was soon able to make possible for himself.

Whether he had his own boat by the time he wrote the song really doesn’t matter. My takeaway from the lyrics is how much Jimmy loved spending time on the water, and the lines “Some folks say I’m part of it, And I know it’s part of me” could tie to the ocean as a concept just as much as a vessel that floats upon it.

The two verses in the song seem to sum up in general both fears and loves, as well as risk taking interests, but they also mention more gentle arenas, such as the sea. He also touches on the concept of “home” although its left vague, I think that reason is so each listener can determine what home means to them or speculate on what home the singer/writer is referring to.

When Jimmy starts to close the song, he touches back to the chorus in reverse order, but with slight lyric changes, talking about the sunlight, upon the sea, instead of the stage, below the ground.

“And I’m somewhere below the sunlight, Somewhere upon the sea, You dig deep enough you might find me, Find me, cause that’s where I’ll be…”

I honestly think those lyric shifts are the most beautiful transition in this song.

Jimmy was an incredibly poignant and gifted songwriter. Many people do not think of him that way, associating him more with a casual boat and beach life and songs that tie to a lighter or more humorous side of life, but even those songs, such as Margaritaville, have a deeper meaning if you want to look into them. Brahma Fear is full of questions and fears, not just bucking rodeo bulls, but of failure versus success, and places that can calm our minds and renew us, until we are ready to face the world again. That is what Brahma Fear means to me, anyway.

He ends with a repeat of the chorus, again touching on the whiskey, the glow, the flow, the relaxation, the numbing, and the immobility that it can bring.

Some people might not know this song of Jimmy’s. It’s certainly not part of the “Big 8” that he played at the majority of his live shows, but I know many of his fans connect to it. And if you do not know it, maybe this will help introduce you to another one of Jimmy’s early songs, once that is deep and beautiful and has a feeling of being vulnerable, wounded and searching for answers.

Honestly, think it is one of his more beautiful songs!

Stacy

Please enjoy Brahma Fear. I have included the link below. Enjoy!