CONDITIONS

Sometimes the best things that happen to a song weren’t part of the plan.

When we started recording Make Your Own Weather, I had a song called “State of Mind Line” that had a distinctly mid-1970s Jimmy Buffett feel to it. I kept hearing pedal steel guitar on the track, but I didn’t know a pedal steel player in New Orleans who seemed quite right for it.

So, on a whim, I reached out to the management for Doyle Grisham.

If you know Jimmy Buffett’s records, you know Doyle’s playing whether you realize it or not. His pedal steel is woven through Buffett’s music going back to the 1970s, and he remains a Coral Reefer to this day. Asking him to play on one of my songs seemed like a long shot.

Then Doyle himself emailed me back.

He told me he liked “State of Mind Line” and that it reminded him of the music he and Jimmy had been making back in the mid-1970s. Better yet, he said he’d love to play on it.

He sent back a beautiful steel track that sounded exactly like what I’d been hearing in my head.

Then something unexpected happened.

Doyle asked me if I had any more songs.

As a matter of fact, I did.

OUTLOOK

My old friend and Norfolk Academy classmate Whitney Lester and I had written a song about Jimmy Buffett. At the time, we called it “Hippie From Mississippi.”

The idea wasn’t simply to write a tribute song filled with Buffett references. We wanted to tell a story.

Jimmy starts out as a kid from Mississippi and Alabama, heads toward Nashville, discovers Key West, and gradually creates a musical world that really didn’t fit comfortably into any existing category. Eventually that world becomes something much larger than the records themselves.

The song follows that journey.

So I sent “Hippie From Mississippi” to the guy who had actually been there for much of it.

Doyle immediately understood what we were doing.

And he had an idea.

Because the song moves chronologically through Jimmy Buffett’s career, Doyle decided his pedal steel should move through those years with him.

Rather than simply putting a great steel part over the entire song, Doyle approached different sections with the sounds and style appropriate to the period of Buffett’s career being described.

In other words, the pedal steel became part of the storytelling.

For a song about musical history, we suddenly had someone inside that history helping tell it.

That’s something Whitney and I obviously couldn’t have imagined when we first wrote the song.

ADVISORY

Doyle’s contribution changed the way I heard the song.

What had started as our song about Jimmy Buffett now had a direct musical connection to the records and musicians that had inspired it in the first place.

Eventually, “Hippie From Mississippi” became “King of the Coast.”

That title seemed to capture the larger point of the song better. Buffett hadn’t simply become a successful singer-songwriter. He had followed his own instincts long enough to create his own musical geography — a place somewhere between Nashville, New Orleans, Key West and the Caribbean that didn’t really exist until he made it.

The story could have ended with Doyle sending tracks from Nashville.

Fortunately, it didn’t.

I credit Doyle with the Make Your Own Weather record-release show at Chickie Wah Wah in New Orleans in June 2026.  When we were making the record he said that if I had a record release show he would love to come down from Nashville and be part of it. With an offer like that, there was no way I was gonna let that opportunity pass by! 

So there I was onstage with Doyle Grisham playing “King of the Coast” — the same guy whose pedal steel had been part of the soundtrack that inspired the song in the first place.

There was something wonderfully circular about that.

Whitney and I had written a song looking backward at Jimmy Buffett’s journey. Years after that journey began, one of the musicians who had actually traveled it was standing beside me helping tell the story.

And Doyle wasn’t there simply to recreate his studio part. He became part of the Weather Makers for the night, playing the new songs alongside John Gros, John Fohl, René Coman, Russ Broussard, Bucky Henry and Dex Daley - an extraordinary group of musicians.

EXTENDED FORECAST

For me, that is one of the great pleasures of making records: you never quite know where a song is going to take you.

King of the Coast started with two old friends writing about an artist whose music had meant something to us for most of our lives.

Then I sent (what was then titled) “Hippie From Mississippi” to a legendary pedal steel player on a whim.

He answered.

He asked if I had anything else.

And suddenly the guy who had helped create some of the music that inspired “King of the Coast” was helping us finish the story.

Since then, Doyle has become more than somebody I once took a chance on emailing. He’s become a friend and an important part of the music I’m making. What began with one pedal-steel track has continued well beyond Make Your Own Weather.

Which seems appropriate.

Jimmy Buffett built a career by following interesting currents without worrying too much about where everyone else thought he ought to go. In a much smaller way, that’s how Doyle ended up on this record in the first place.

I heard something I wanted in a song, took a chance, and sent an email.

Sometimes you make your own weather. Sometimes you just have enough sense to recognize which way the wind is blowing.