Jimmy Buffett Turns Little Rock's Verizon Arena in Margaritaville for One Night

by Julian Spivey
North Little Rock’s Verizon Arena turned into Margaritaville for a few hours Thursday night [March 1] as more than 16,000 Arkansas Parrotheads turned out to party with Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band.
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Thursday night’s concert was Buffett’s first at Verizon Arena and incredibly his first performance in Arkansas in around 40 years. The North Little Rock stop was the seventh on Buffett’s Fin Land Tour. 

Buffett’s fanbase is easily one of the most loyal in all of music, which makes his concerts more than just a concert. Buffett’s concerts are a daylong event as many Parrotheads began tailgating early in the morning all the way up until the arena lights went down.

There were many highlights from Buffett’s set, including the performance of every one of Buffett’s seven concert staple songs: “Margaritaville,” “Come Monday,” “Fins,” “Volcano,” “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” “Cheeseburger in Paradise” and “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.” Among these, the biggest ovation from the audience came rather surprisingly during his performance of “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” which is a fun novelty song, but not much more than that.

“Margaritaville,” the song that Buffett is most known for, drew a big reaction from the 16,000-plus in the audience as Buffett sang the “not-so-lost-verse” that wasn’t recorded on the 1977 recording, but is frequently performed in concert.

One of the coolest things from the roughly two-and-a-half hour show was when Buffett and his bandmate Mac McAnally, a four-time CMA Award Musician of the Year winner and inductee of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (along with Buffett), performed “A Pirate Looks at Forty” with almost the entire arena singing along in unison.

A personal favorite performance from the show was Buffett’s performance of his first top 40 Billboard hit “Come Monday,” which I consider to be his finest and most beautifully written song.

Buffett kicked off the raucous concert with “Piece of Work,” a duet that he recorded with country music superstar Toby Keith for Buffett’s 2004 album “License to Chill,” he’d perform that album’s title track next.

Other highlights throughout the concert included some of Buffett’s newer music like “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” a number one country music hit with Alan Jackson from 2003, (with McAnally doing many of Jackson’s parts), “Knee Deep,” a 2011 hit that Buffett recorded with the Zac Brown Band and “Bama Breeze,” from Buffett’s 2006 album “Take the Weather with You.”

Buffett and the Coral Reefers also pleased longtime fans with performances of oldies like “Pencil Thin Mustache,” “Grapefruit-Juicy Fruit,” “One Particular Harbour” and “Last Mango in Paris.”

Buffett ended his set with a terrific cover of Crosby, Stills and Nash’s “Southern Cross,” which he frequently performs and has previously recorded.

Uproarious and raving cheers from the crowd brought Buffett out for an encore of “Fins,” which had everybody on their feet doing the “fins to the left, fins to the right” wave, and a great cover of Van Morrison’s 1967 rock classic “Brown Eyed Girl,” which is another frequent cover of his.

Following the encore the Coral Reefer Band took their leave and Buffett serenaded the crowd one final time with an acoustic performance of “Lovely Cruise,” the most fitting way he possibly could have ended the show.

It was a night that the Verizon crowd surely won’t be forgetting anytime soon and judging by Buffett’s appreciation and candor I don’t think it’s going to be long before Arkansas sees the son of a son of a sailor again.