Concert review
Clear skies and cool temperatures greet Jimmy Buffett at Alpine Valley Music Theatre.
was paradise for the Parrotheads after all.
Saturday’s weather forecast was one of the worst this summer in southeastern Wisconsin, with an excessive heat warning and a heat index above 100 degrees — plus some thunderstorms.
That didn’t bode well for Jimmy Buffett’s Alpine Valley Music Theatre Saturday.
It was a night Parrotheads were especially excited about. Buffett generally plays Alpine every year but had opted for Wrigley Field for recent tours, making this his first Alpine appearance since 2016. (That time away may have helped ticket sales; Saturday’s show was sold out with at least 27,000 people in attendance.)
Fortunately, Saturday’s weather didn’t ruin the occasion. By the time Buffett and the 11-piece Coral Reefer Band took the stage Saturday, it was 71 degrees, with a pleasant breeze swallowing up any humidity, and not a gray cloud in the sky.
Buffett, though, took the stage a half-hour later than planned. Those storms Saturday afternoon delayed entry, and with other cars and buses full of Parrotheads no doubt waiting for fairer conditions to roll into East Troy, traffic was a bear.
This was a pretty happy group, though, despite significant delays and a lack of clear lines at the entrances for ticket-holders.
And when the show did start, a barefoot Buffett was just as gleeful as his most animated (and decorated) fans. He maintained that exuberance across the two-hour-and-15-minute set, from early number “Volcano,” during which he wore a deflated shark balloon like a hat; to closing songs “Migration” and “Tin Cup Chalice,” where he grinned and strummed his acoustic guitar alone on the stage.
The 72-year-old Buffett was so passionate Saturday that his effusive commentary about how lucky he was, and about how much fun he still had watching his fans having fun, seemed like the real deal, not crowd-baiting lines.
That said, Buffett went the extra mile to court the Wisconsin crowd. Across 28 songs Saturday, Buffett freviving
Jimmy Buffett catered to the Wisconsin fans who sold out the Alpine in his first stop at the venue since 2016.
quently substituted lyrics for “Lake Geneva,” “Cheeseheads,” “Wisconsin cuties” and the like. At one point, he implored the crowd to moo for his guitarist, Mac McAnally. There was edited video of fans tailgating Saturday afternoon to accompany “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,” and a photo on the big screen of Wisconsin farmland as he sang “it’s pretty up here” during “Come Monday.”
And Buffett talked about the first time he was hit by a wave in Lake Michigan, and the lack of salt inspired “Margaritaville” — before he admitted he was lying and really wrote the song when he was drunk in Key West.
There were other special accommodations Saturday.
“Fruitcakes” included a special nod to the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, with pictures from that mission and a recent photo of the surIt Apollo astronauts on the screen.
The set also included two new songs, “Half Drunk” and “The World Is What You Make It,” that Buffett said he planned to record this fall for a new album.
The laid-back “Half Drunk,” performed during a midpoint acoustic set, turned into a chatter-and-beer-run break despite festive trumpet flare from John Lovell, but a full band rendition of “The World Is What You Make It” — dominated, like many songs Saturday, by Robert Greenidge’s warm steel drums — was an instant crowdpleaser.
And there were plenty of other crowd-pleasing hits, of course. Fans pressed their palms together above their heads for “Fins” and shouted out “salt, salt, salt” for “Margaritaville,” and a singalong for “A Pirate Looks at Forty” had a lot more heart Saturday than any song about a pirate is ever expected to have.
And after “Cheeseburgers in Paradise,” Buffett made sure to thank Wisconsin for the cheese.