JIMMY BUFFET

Acclaimed music critic Ryan White looks to find the real story behind the legends and myths of beach-bum, rock star, and billionaire musician Jimmy Buffet who, even after four decades of live shows, beloved music, and countless lost flip-flops, still manages to amaze audiences and pull in new fans to his tropical fantasy world of Margaritaville™.

Jimmy Buffet is a rock star and benevolent pirate icon of the tropical lifestyle, but he’s also the hugely successful CEO behind the “Margaretville Industrial Complex”—a vast network of merchandise, chain restaurants, resorts, and lifestyle products, all inspired by his country-rock crossover hit 'Margaritaville.' (Wasted away again in Margaritaville. Searchin' for my lost shaker of salt. Some people claim that there's a woman to blame. But I know, it's my own damn fault.)

A must read for his legion of fans (the Parrotheads), Searching for Margaritaville is the first book to finally tell the definitive story of Jimmy Buffet and clear up the myths of a song he turned into a billion-dollar industry. It’s about a search for that fabled island that has been sewn into the fabric of the American dream. Acclaimed music writer and longtime Buffet fan Ryan White journeys from Mobile, Alabama, where Buffet was born and raised, to Nashville, where Buffet tried and failed to be a country music star, to Key West, where Buffet found his tribe, to Aspen, where Buffet found fellow landlocked pirate Hunter S. Thompson, to Tierra del Fuego, as close as you can get to the end of the world and find bottle service. Ryan has sat down for beers and cheeseburgers with many of Buffet’s band members (the Coral Reefers) as well as his original crew of island-hopping outcasts and scallywags who were with him when he wrote 'Margaritaville' and remain his compatriots to this day. As Jimmy Buffet says: “Some of it's magic, some it’s tragic, but he’s had a good life along the way.”

The author of Springsteen: Album by Album, Ryan White has twice been named one of the top feature writers in the country by the Society for Features Journalism. He spent 16 years at The Oregonian covering sports, music and culture. He’s written for the Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, The Sacramento Bee, The Dallas Morning News and Portland Monthly magazine. He writes “Daddy Issues,” a parenting column for Metro Parent magazine. Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and daughter. He is a perfectly OK beer league hockey player.