Here’s another remembrance of Jimmy Buffett, who turned Brookings, SD into our own Margaritaville

(Tom Lawrence wrote this for the July\August 2008 edition of the South Dakota Magazine)

I heard from a friend at SDSU that Jimmy Buffett once lived in Brookings, but I wasn't sure if it was true. In all my years and beers downtown, no one ever said anything about Buffett performing at a local lounge. So was it true? How do I know? Jimmy Buffett told me.

I met Mr. Margaritaville in Houston, while covering a concert in 1987. Buffett was becoming a huge concert draw for his avid fans, known as Parrotheads. The promoters were unaware of his surging popularity during his "A Pirate Looks at Forty" tour. There weren't enough bathrooms, and beer lines snaked through the grounds.

I was backstage looking for Buffett. On his early albums, he was pictured with a mustache and shoulder-length blond hair. He seemed a tall, lanky sort. So I paid no attention as I walked past a 5' 10" clean-shaven, balding man in shorts, his muscular legs striding toward the stage.

I asked a security guard where Buffett was. "You just walked past him," he replied.

I ran toward The Son of a Son of a Sailor, the uniformed guard at my heels. He tried to hold me back when Buffett turned and smiled. A former music journalist, he noticed my camera and notebook. Although the guard tried to shoo me away, Buffett said he had a minute to talk. 'One question," the guard told me.

My mind raced. Should I ask him about his biggest hit, "Margaritaville," his rumored years as a drug-running pilot or his friendship with the Eagles?

"Did you ever live in South Dakota?" I blurted.

A broad smile broke across his face. "Yeah," he said, "in this little town." The name escaped him.

Brookings?" I offered.

"Yeah! That’s it."

When I told him it was my hometown, we became buddies. He told the same story my classmate did a decade earlier: he moved there to play music in the Midwest. He enjoyed it for a while, but a tornado chased him away. He had his arm around me and we were walking toward the stage. The security guard slipped away.

Jimmy Buffett was as friendly as a fan could hope. Soon we were in the wings, watching his group, The Coral Reefer Band, warm up the crowd. I don't recall many details of our conversation, but I was thrilled to be with a musician I had followed for 15 years.

Finally, he had to go to work, but he told me to stay. He moved into the spotlight, eliciting a burst of cheers. As he played his first few songs, he would turn, smile and nod at me. About 15 minutes later, the security guard nudged me. Time to go back to the audience, he said, and I floated back to my friends with a great story to tell.

Buffett wrote about Brookings in his memoir, A Pirate Looks at Fifty, published in 1998. He recalled leaving his native South in 1969 and moving to the Midwest. "The Great Plains looked like as good a place as any to get lost in for a while," Buffett wrote. "The next thing I knew, I was headlining Steak 'n' Ale joints all over the Midwest, making five hundred bucks a week, with a free salad bar. At first I loved the wide-open spaces, but one afternoon in a trailer park in Brookings, South Dakota, where I was living, the siren in town sounded a tornado warning. Across the flat, open field to the west came not one but two twisters. I, of course, had been in storms at sea, but this was different."

Buffett was living in a mobile home that he feared was about to get a lot more mobile when that storm hit on June 13, 1969, according to National Weather Service records. "Well, it's no secret how God feels about trailer parks, and these storms were no different," he wrote. "Like heat-seeking missiles looking for a tailpipe, they smelled out the cluster of aluminum trailers on the edge of town. We hightailed it out of there and watched the whole thing from the road as the stingray like tail whipped along the edge of the trailers, turning several of them into chunks of aluminum the size of beer cans. That was my cue to get out of the Midwest."

After the storm, Buffett went to Kansas City and married his first wife before launching his career.

Most people I asked in Brookings didn't know Buffett had lived and worked there. But David Dotson remembers: he worked with Buffett at The Townhouse, a supper club that closed several years ago.

In 1969, Dotson was a chef at the restaurant and recalls Buffett playing weekends. "He did a good job of packing the house," says Dotson. "He was very popular."

Don Urquhart, longtime owner of Jim's Tap, recalls Buffett passing through his bar. Future congressman and senator Tom Daschle graduated from SDSU in 1969. He has fond memories of seeing Buffett perform. "I think I went a couple of times," Daschle says. "I remember liking his music. It was fun."

Buffett’s short run at The Townhouse ended with a bit of comic opera. He sang a song in which he asked the customers to have a shot of tequila. After the song ended the manager asked Buffett who was going to pay for the liquor. The young singer said he thought the bar should. 'That was the end of him playing there on weekends," Dotson recalled with a smile.

A few years after he left Brookings, Buffett's song "Come Monday" hit the charts. His music career continued to climb, and Dotson and other Brookings friends and fans cheered him on.

I tried to talk with Buffett for this story, but I was told he does few interviews. Even an old Brookings buddy can't get past today’s security guards.

Tom Lawrence has written for several newspapers and websites in South Dakota and other states and contributed to The New York Times, NPR, The  Telegraph, The Daily Beast and other media outlets.