Ken Hoffman of the Houston Chronicle attended Monday night’s private show for American Express platinum cardholders at the Toyota Center. In a review of the concert, he explains how it wasn’t your typical Buffett show. ” I’d never been to a rock show with commercial breaks before.”

American Express e-mailed two free tickets to local platinum-card holders as a thank-you for years of paying their bill on time. It was a very platinum-looking crowd, too, not Buffett’s regular throng of Hawaiian-shirt-wearing pretend beach bums and surfer girls.

When we entered Toyota Center, there was a sign, “Food and soft drinks are complimentary.” American Express picked up the bill for all the hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken tenders, soft drinks and pizza. I should have told Garfield to meet me in front of Toyota Center. Beer was not free. People in line at the concession stand ordered “two hot dogs (free), two hamburgers (free), three sodas (free), popcorn (free), peanuts (free) … and one beer ($7.50).” On average, it was a pretty good deal.

Buffett is a huge star, especially in Houston. If this were a normal concert, with normal ticket sales, the place would have been packed, every seat filled to the top row, front and back. American Express blocked off the entire upper deck and behind the stage Monday night. American Express gave away 7,500 tickets, hoping to present an intimate concert event.

There were empty seats throughout the lower bowl. Some rows, including mine, were less than half-filled. I figure maybe 6,000 people were inside the 19,000-capacity Toyota Center.

Buffett usually walks onstage without a formal introduction. The fans know who he is. Monday night, an American Express spokeswoman welcomed the crowd and introduced Buffett with a weird flowery speech and commercial for American Express.

Buffett opened with two songs from his country album, License to Thrill. Then he launched into a story about having lunch with his distant relative Warren Buffett – one of the few people in the world with more money than Jimmy Buffett. Jimmy said Warren told him that he judges America’s economic strength by how many people are paying for things with their American Express credit card. Buffett mentioned American Express throughout the concert.

He did everything but use an American Express credit card to slice and dice potatoes “faster than a food processor!”

There was no intermission, like a regular Buffett show. The fans didn’t know how to do “fins to the left, fins to the right,” during the closing song. And for his encore, he did a rocked-out Brown-Eyed Girl instead of an acoustic ballad.

There were no tables selling T-shirts in the lobby. I saw only one beach ball being batted about in the audience.

And Houston area parrotheads… Hoffman says that Buffett hinted that he’d be back in the Spring.

The Orange County Register has a review of Thursday night’s Jimmy Buffett show in Irvine, California. They’ve also got a photo gallery from the show. See it here.

Drummer Russ Kunkel, who played on so many of Buffett’s (and everyone else’s) ’70s recordings, turned up to shake a tambourine during “Brown Eyed Girl” alongside rock-solid percussionist Ralph McDonald. Sam Clayton, who once anchored Little Feat, did the same for more than a few numbers — though he needed some guidance during “One Particular Harbor,” which, like “Son of a Son of a Sailor” later in the set, was noticeably peppier than normal.

Other longstanding yet still momentary members stuck around for the whole set, including slide-guitar whiz Sonny Landreth and Buffett’s current go-to co-writer Will Kimbrough, who added fretwork and vocals to just about everything but stood out most on material from last year’s Buffett Hotel album: the opening blast “Nobody from Nowhere,” the subtly inspirational “Wings” and the twanged-up ditty “Surfing in a Hurricane.”

Continue reading here.

The Houston Chronicle has a review of Thursday night’s Jimmy Buffett show in Houston: “Jimmy Buffett brings good times to Woodlands Pavilion”

Jimmy Buffett sized up his audience, bursting at its seams from the front row to the last blade of grass on the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion lawn, and saw astronauts and doctors and cheerleaders and loony dads dressed in grass skirts and coconut bras. And kids.

“That’s how I see Houston,” he laughed. “Einstein … and beer. Everything in the middle is up for grabs.

“And thank you for raising your children with this music.”

Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band played 26 songs over two hours on a hot, sultry, clear, starry Thursday night. Beach balls were flying, the beer was flowing, and, thank you Harry Belafonte, the dancing girls were swaying to and fro. He brought the full Coral Reefer Band plus the taxi squad – 12 people onstage. Every person on that stage has been with the band for 20 years or more. Most of them more.

Cameras flashed shots of Space Shuttle astronauts and Houston Texans cheerleaders in the crowd. Not one ticket was left unsold, one beer undrunk, one T-shirt unsold, or one fan unsmiling. Buffett is a pure entertainer who delivers exactly what his audience wants. And then does two encores.

Read the full review here.

Update – The Houston Press has another review with some pictures from the show: “Jimmy Buffett Kicks Off His Flip-Flops At The Woodlands”

Severe weather pounded Nashville all day Saturday, flooding streets and causing headaches for parrotheads trying to reach the Bridgestone Arena in downtown Nashville. But at 8 pm Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefers took the stage for the first show in Music City since 2003. Fortunately for the fans the venue was indoors.

Not only did the weather snarl traffic, it also caused problems with the Radio Margaritaville feed, interrupting it at times. On Facebook, Buffett’s crew sent out this message: “thanks for bearing with us… technical difficulties at the venue. Weather is wreaking havoc on the electronics required to broadcast from the big top.”

This was the first show to have live streaming video in full on USTREAM. Commenting on streaming the whole show, Buffett said “Hey it’s a Saturday night. Why not?” The previous three shows have only had portions of the show streamed.

Buffett had a couple of surprises in the set list for Nashville. Marshall Chapman joined Jimmy for “Smart Woman (In A Real Short Skirt)”, which she cowrote with him. A rare appearance of “Landfall” came after “Back Where I Come From” and Jimmy finished the show with a beautiful solo, acoustic version of “He Went To Paris”. View the entire set list for the show here.

If you attended the concert, share your review and experience on our forum.

Tonight’s show concludes the first leg of the Under The Big Top Tour. But it’s only a two week break for Jimmy… he’ll resume in Indianapolis on May 15th, followed by Cincinnati, Houston, and Dallas. View the full tour schedule here and find tickets here.

Update – The Tennessean has a review of the show, plus a photo gallery.

Two St. Louis area newspapers have reviews of Thursday night’s show:

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Buffett Brings a New ‘Volcano’ to St. Louis”
Riverfront Times: “Trying to Reason with Parrot Head Season at Jimmy Buffett”

The Dispatch also has a photo gallery from the show. View the photos

Thanks to all of you that came by the BuffettWorld area and said hello. It was great to meet you all!

(photo by Sarah Conard / STL Post Dispatch)