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SONGS FROM ST. SOMEWHERE

Released: August 20th, 2013
Label: Mailboat Records
Chart Peak: #4 Billboard 200
Producers: Mac McAnally, Michael Utley


1. Something ‘Bout a Boat
2. Einstein Was A Surfer
3. Earl’s Dead – Cadillac For Sale
4. Too Drunk to Karaoke (with Toby Keith)
5. Serpentine
6. Useless and Important Information
7. I Want To Go Back To Cartagena
8. Soulfully
9. Rue De La Guitare
10. I’m No Russian
11. Tides
12. The Rocket That Grandpa Rode
13. I Wave Bye Bye
14. Colour Of The Sun
15. Oldest Surfer on the Beach
16. I Want to Go Back to Cartegena (Spanish version with Fanny Lu)

Liner Notes:

“Popped from a tropical toaster”

Most islands are by-products of the forces of nature. Billions of years ago, some rose from the sea as cooling layers of lava; mud pie making on a grand scale. Others were coral reefs forced above the surface by gravity storms on the ocean floor. Others are the tips of submerged mountain ranges that topped the high water mark of epic floods that became oceans. And then there are the broken pieces of continents torn away, and set adrift until they sideswiped a stretch of shallow water and got stuck there for eternity.

The islands I have spent a good deal of my adult life on, over, under and around, are a combination of all these creation processes, and they conveniently are situated between the tip of Florida and the northeast corner of South America. Before Columbus followed the simple directions of ancient mariners, and “turned south to where the butter melts and then west,” the islands were inhabited and named by their aboriginal discoverers. The idea of planting a cross in the sand and re-naming an island Saint Somebody was a pretty coy way of marking the territory by priests and Inquisitors, who accompanied those first voyages, to do God’s work. Along with natives to save and slaughter, there was gold to be had, pirates to punder it and escape from the Old World for those willing to fall off the end of the earth. After Columbus sighted Guanahani in the southern Bahamas, he quickly renamed it San Salvador, and continued the name game with a litany of saintly new sand dunes, harbours, hills and mountains through these islands and the continents beyond.

The island, where much of the work on this record was done, was originally called Ouanalao by its aboriginal inhabitants. It was renamed St. Barthelemy by Columbus to honor the saint his brother had been named for, and is where I now sit trying to get these liner notes done, so the album will come out in August. But St. Somewhere was not discovered or named by the Admiral of the Oceans. That task fell to a son of a son of a sailor, who was way off course in a bar in Boston – me.

St. Somewhere was created one night, as part of a song that told the story of seeking shelter from a blizzard on Boylston Street, far away from any palm trees. The foundation of this island came from a bottle of rhum and a full page in the local paper, which promoted cheap airfares to a dozen distant and saint-named islands. Mine wasn’t on that list. I had to make it up. St. Somewhere popped out of a toaster of tropical tales that was powered by books that I had read, or stories I had been told by my seafaring forefathers. Like Treasure Island, Kinja and Margaritaville, St. Somewhere is not a place you can get to by consulting your GPS or going on Google Earth. It is not seen on a globe or map. It does not rest on a fault line, but on a song line. Music is the compass that charts your course to this imaginary rock.

So, if you are in the mood to go exploring with a human cannonball and his wife in a Cadillac Eldorado, or spend a sunset with the oldest surfer on the beach, or ride a rocket to the moon, or sail with Einstein through this or any parallel universe you wish to v isit, or get too drunk in a karaoke bar, or soulfully fall in love with a carnival queen, or steal an oligarch’s car, or discover a new old friend in a pawn shop in Paris or just follow the tides, you will, I hope, enjoy your time on St. Somewhere.

Jimmy Buffett
Le Pointe
Saint Barthelemy (formerly Ouanalao)
French West Indies
13 March 2013