Last year at the annual songwriters festival I cruised through the bars but I only found country music bands, so I ran screaming.

This year my friend author Tom Corcoran is in town and I said I’d go anywhere, except for anyplace playing country music.

We met up at a restaurant called 2 Cents where it was just Tom & some friends and some chatting.

Then it was time to push off and so I glommed on.

Everything was going swimmingly when, a half a block along Duval, right around Margaritaville where a swelling of swollen Parrotheads always mills out front, here is where Tom turned and entered.

Suddenly Tom was explaining to me how his songwriting partner John Frinzi was playing at Margaritaville, and Tom had promised to drop in.

Mollified, I trotted behind, espying the assess of the masses in their denim and the restaurant’s servers squeezing through with UFO-sized trays held high in the air on their fingertips, bulging with heaped plates of fried things, and of course, cheeseburgers.

The only empty table was at the center of the room, right in front of the stage. Tom knew everyone, moreover they knew him and many paid homage. Turns out Tom writes country music songs! As this momentous reality was sinking in John Frinzi began his set, humorously bandying from song to song, many of them co-written with Tom. I was shocked, they were lovely!

Some songs were written by Tom and Jimmy Buffett. Including a song called Fins, about sharks in bars and everyone in the room knew not only every word but also some hand gesture, a sort of shark fin salute to the middle of the forehead. John Frinzi has a gorgeous voice and turns words into glass blown sounds.

When Tom joined John on stage for the last verse of Fins, after much urging from the room, he was a hit.

John Frinzi & Tom Corcoran

Tom asked me, “Is this hell for you?”
“I liked!” I said, but I had to confess I couldn’t accept a song about a cheeseburger.

To which Tom helpfully explained the origin of the ghastly lyric. He said they were sailing with a man who brought with him a silly childhood saying about how fabulous it would be to be a hamburger, and years later when sailing with Tom and Jimmy Buffett and joshing about being a hamburger, Buffett upped the ante, which is perhaps the secret ingredient to his superhuman success, and he said, “If you’re a hamburger then I’m a cheeseburger! A cheeseburger in paradise!”

To which I would say, not every funny thing you say should go on a bun, or in a song. Otherwise, country rock on lads!