Carol Shaughnessy, public relations director, with Just a Few Friends, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about the festival.
Just a Few Friends Festival is already underway.
Shaughnessy said, “I am very happy to say that Just a Few Friends has kicked off with a bang, and we’ve got a lot of events going on for the rest of the weekend that celebrate Jimmy Buffett’s music and the lifestyle that he loved when he lived in Key West and that was really the cradle of his creativity.”
How did Shaughnessy get involved with Just a Few Friends Festival?
She said, “Just a Few Friends started as a spontaneous tribute to Jimmy right after his death two years ago. A gentleman named Paul Menta, who is a fabulous rum distiller and chef, just staged a parade, and there were thousands of people on Key West Duval Street celebrating the life that Jimmy loved and what he gave to the world, and especially to Key West. Then, how do you not continue? It’s a party. It’s Key West. It’s Buffet. So last year and this year got even bigger and better.”
Funds are being raised for Reef Relief, Bahama Village music program and the Key West High School Marching Band.
Shaughnessy said, “We are very honored by the fact that Jimmy’s sister Lucy Buffett, who is called the crazy sista in the Buffett clan. Apparently that’s what the family called her. They all had nicknames in the family, Jimmy was Bubba. She was the crazy sista. And I’m not sure the nickname for their sister, Laurie, other than Lala as Lucy was Lulu. Lucy is the owner of three Lulu’s restaurants, and the books that she has authored include Craze Sista Cooking. This morning at 11, she accepted a proclamation, favorite son proclamation, from Key West city officials, right in front of Jimmy’s shrimp boat sound in the Key West historic seaport. She will also be co leading the Second Line Memorial parade.”
The party in the park will also be huge.
Shaughnessy said, “Jimmy’s musical cohorts and friends are going to play a large, large part in this festival, as is Lucy. Jimmy wrote A Pirate Looks at 40 about a gentleman named Phil Clark. And I discovered that after Phil Clark and I got together, and so we were together for five years, and he introduced me to Jimmy. Well, as the song A Pirate Looks at 40 explains, Phil was in the importation business, let’s say, and because of the issues relating to the importation business, he eventually had to vanish from Key West and Jimmy about a year after that, Jimmy needed somebody to put the beautiful, beautiful script to the Margaritaville movie, which he was handwriting on yellow pads, he needed somebody to put that on computer. This was very, very early in the technology revolution. He knew how to turn it on, but that was pretty much it and somebody told him that I knew how to work a computer. So he knew me. I knew him. Next thing you know, I’m hanging out with him and transcribing the movie on the computer. The script was absolutely stunning. It was set on an island, very similar to Key West, and many of the characters, although the movie was never produced, many of the characters, including Frank Bama, turned up in later Jimmy stories, later Jimmy books. Frank was the hero of Who is Joe Merchant? It was just this beautiful, feel good movie, and we worked on it for, gosh, several months, and then Jimmy and Sunshine Smith decided to open Margaritaville. Jimmy is probably the most creative person I’ve ever met in my entire life. But even for somebody like Jimmy, you can’t do a movie and create an empire at the same time. So the movie was shelved.”
Shaughnessy was waitressing when Jimmy asked her to write the Coconut Telegraph.
She said, “It was Louie’s Backyard, which was very definitely one of Jimmy’s hangouts, along with the Chart Room and the Full Moon Saloon. Then shortly after that, when he decided to open Margaritaville, one day, I was delivering a tray of drinks, and Jimmy and Sunshine Smith, his amazing business partner, walked into Louie’s, and Jimmy said, hey, Carol, I’m going to open this thing called the Margaritaville store. Do you want to run the mail order business and write the monthly newsletter that we’re going to call the Coconut Telegraph? And of course, Sunshine was a brilliant business woman, and I was focused on delivering that tray of drinks. So, I mean, there should have been, like, this dramatic music or a lightning bolt from the sky or something, because that I think was his real first announcement that he was starting Margaritaville to anybody outside his very, very tight inner circle. I just looked at him and said, yeah, Jimmy, but I’ve got to deliver these drinks. Could we talk tomorrow, when I’m over working on the screenplay? The next thing you know, Margaritaville opened in a tiny, little storefront in Lands End village, next to what was then the Turtle Crawls. It was about the size of a large hotel room, and Sunshine was at the helm. We had a store manager named Lorrie McLaughlin. There were several other people involved, and I was sitting in the back trying to pretend I knew something about a mail order business and writing the Coconut Telegraph. Jimmy would wander in and out and customers would be there in the store buying these wonderful Buffett T shirts that were produced by Jimmy’s friends, Steve Humphreys and suddenly Jimmy’d walk by on his way into the office. He’d stop and talk. It was just this wonderful, magical, we kind of didn’t know what we were doing then, but we were so enthusiastic about it because Jimmy’s enthusiasm was so infectious, and throughout his life, he never, ever thought something was impossible. If he wanted to do it, he was going to find a way. He and Sunshine and the rest of the people with the store found a way to make Margaritaville’s magic known to the world. I was a tiny part of it, and I will never forget those days. We thought Margaritaville was the center of the universe. Maybe it was. Sunshine’s son Cayman Smith Martin, who is a brilliant artist and also an extraordinary musician, he’s going to play the closing concert at Just a Few Friends on Monday night at the Shirley Siren Saloon. So the tradition continues.”
The opening of Margaritaville started with the first annual Margaritaville Film Festival.
Shaughnessy said, “Unfortunately, it was also the only Margaritaville Film Festival, but it was fantastic. This was way before music videos were a big thing, but Jimmy had some amazing videos and also early on in the process of Margaritaville, he filmed the video for Who’s the Blonde Stranger in Key West with Will Jennings, stunning songwriter, internationally known, and Jane Buffett, Jimmy’s wife. They portrayed a couple who were trying to rekindle their marriage, and things kind of went astray in Key West.”
The records of the screenplay for Margaritaville the movie went back to the family.
Shaughnessy said, “They did. Well before, probably a year, year and a half before Jimmy died, he and I reconnected through a dear friend of his, Rita Troxel, and because he had given me the yellow pads and just said, hang on to these until I want them again. Well, you don’t not do something like that. I kept those yellow pads for about 30 years, and was able to give them back to him and encourage him, tell him how wonderful the script was, just in case he had forgotten among all of his other enterprises, and he was very appreciative to have it back, so I think he got to revisit who he had been back then. Come, enjoy the Key West that Jimmy loved and that Jimmy transformed into a world that all of his fans could love.”
For more information, click here: https://www.justafewfriendskeywest.com/