Jimmy Buffett’s good time carnival rolls into town

Any smart social media marketer will tell you to keep your online presence positive. Facebook should always be a party. Nobody wants to work with you or your company if you’re constantly voicing your problems on the public stage.

Jimmy Buffett took that concept to heart from the start of his career. Maybe it’s all true: JB has never shed a tear. Life is one big beach bash, complete with bikinis and boat drinks. But that’s highly unlikely.

Instead, from his first recordings, Buffett embodied a lifestyle. Songs such as “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise” may be easy fodder for Buffett’s detractors to pinpoint with their criticisms, but they’ve also been parlayed into multimillion-dollar enterprises.

From the get-go, Buffett knew how to market himself. Caribbean vacations, fruity cocktails and relaxing in hammocks never go out of style.

If you’re a landlocked, snowed-in Midwesterner, his songs may just be your mental ticket to paradise. If you live in the land of subtropical, 70-degree January days, heck, it’s just another excuse to take the boat out.

For true Parrotheads, however, Buffett fandom goes far deeper than just the songs we all know by heart.

With 26 studio albums under his belt since releasing “Down to Earth,” his first, in 1970, there’s obviously a lot more to the man than a few “Boat Drinks.”

“A lot of people want to come and hear one song,” Buffett said to the audience on his 1978 live release, “You Had To Be There.”

“We’ve got 9 million albums and many songs, so we’ve got to do them one at a time. I promise you we’re going to get to all of them.”

Thirty-four years later, despite continuing to write prolifically and record new songs (his latest is 2009’s “Buffett Hotel”), JB knows that classics such as “Fins” and “Volcano” are his bread and butter, continuing to play these and the rest of his “Big 8” at each show.

The latest addition is 2003’s “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” a duet with country star Alan Jackson, and the first and only recording to win Buffett a major award, the Country Music Association’s Vocal Event of the Year (despite 17 Gold or Platinum albums over the course of his career).

Whether he plays them at his always-sold-out coliseum and arena concerts, it’s often his lesser-known deep cuts that have the most resounding effect on his fans.

For Debbie McLean, a veteran member of the Lowcountry Parrothead Club, that song is “If the Phone Doesn’t Ring, It’s Me,” from 1985’s “Last Mango in Paris.”

“Long story short, bad relationship, new guy; torn by the what-ifs,” McLean said. “I listened to the song and album until it was worn out.”

Chiropractor and Lowcountry Parrothead Bill Cromer first saw Buffett in 1976 as a freshman at the University of Tennessee. He credits “Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude” as his inspiration to eventually move away from Knoxville, Tenn.

“Various songs have meant various things to us (Parrotheads), depending on what phase we were in our life,” said Cromer, who named his practice Island Chiropractic and has themed his offices after Buffett’s tiki bar motif.

“The songs that meant a lot to me in college don’t pack the same punch today. Late teens/early 20s are always a tumultuous time in anyone’s life, and I was no different. No matter how hard, how dramatic or how painful those years were ... I could put on Jimmy’s “A White Sports Coat and A Pink Crustacean” or “Living and Dying in ¾ Time” and things would not seem so bad.”

Members of the local Parrothead group admit that they’ve often had to defend their favorite musician and the misconceptions that often accompany his name, including excessive drinking.

“It is not all about the party, but the party is all about the cause,” said Debbie Graf, the club’s PR director and a nurse at Roper Hospital. “Jimmy said he would support the Parrothead name if we spent 80 percent of our time giving back to our communities and charities. We do, and more.”

In fact, the local Parrothead group sponsors a mile of highway between Folly Beach and Crosby’s Seafood and a stretch of beach on Sullivan’s Island, regularly surveying the area and removing trash.

They also host the annual Mardi Crawl, a fundraiser on the last Saturday of February that combines a pub crawl with donations to the Alzheimer Association (Buffett’s father suffered from the disease), Pet Helpers, the Ronald McDonald House and other causes.

With 200 clubs nationwide, Parrotheads collectively donated $2.9 million and 215,000 volunteer hours in 2010 alone.

Buffett himself founded the Save the Manatee Club in Florida, an organization that’s played a substantial role in protecting the endangered species.

“The club’s motto is ‘Party with a purpose,’ ” Cromer said. “I think that says it all.”

Whether they’re active Parrotheads or not, for most fans, Buffett’s music provides an escape and a way to relax.

Graf juggles her nursing work with raising three grandchildren, meaning late nights and long days.

“Stress is me,” Graf said. “(Buffett’s music) has taught me not to make a ‘knee jerk’ reaction to people or stressors, but to stop and take a look at what is happening, and then deal with it.”

McLean adds that the inclusion of members from various educational and social backgrounds demonstrates the broad appeal that Buffett’s laid-back approach has on people.

“We look like raving lunatics, with our parrot paraphernalia and assorted beach junk in tow,” she laughs. “Buffett allows us the opportunity to get away for a few hours from all the stresses in our life.”

Today, Buffett’s income is indeed based more around his stress-free image than his music.

At his website, www.margaritaville.com, the “Jimmy Buffett” section with info on his music is just one of nine tabs, falling after “Shop” and “Products” in the pecking order.

In addition to his Margaritaville chain of stores and restaurants, the brand recently opened a casino in Las Vegas and launched an online role-playing game.

He’s got his own beer (Landshark), and is estimated to make more than $100 million a year through all of his projects.

Despite all his commercial ventures, Buffett still finds plenty of time to surf, travel and explore. He recently took his van, outfitted with surf and bike racks (dubbed “The Green Tomato”), on a surf road trip through North Carolina’s Outer Banks down to Charleston, documenting the experience on his website.

“I believe you have to find the substance of a story or a song, as Twain said, ‘out there in the territory,’ ”

Buffett wrote. “Thus my writings cover my love of different latitudes, hot climates and remote stretches of beach front, which is what brought me to the Outer Banks in the first place.”

Playing Charleston is a bit of a homecoming for Buffett, who regularly spends time here with his wife, Jane, who grew up in South Carolina.

In 2004, he even recorded the music video for “Trip Around the Sun” with Martina McBride on Folly Beach. That album, “License To Chill,” also included the fan favorite “Coast of Carolina.”

Whether it’s through his songs or books such as his 1998 memoir “A Pirate Looks at Fifty,” Buffett intoxicates his fans with dreams of the ocean, sailing and lazy days on the beach.

As local Parrothead Graf puts it, “Nothing is ever so terrible that a trip to the ocean, a few tunes and possibly a margarita or two can’t solve.”

The Parrotheads will have plenty of time for frozen drinks at the concert: They plan to set up outside the Embassy Suites at 10 a.m. to begin a day of tailgating. Although club member Cromer said he can’t make the 8 p.m. concert today,

he’s still planning to stop by and hang with his friends in the parking lot beforehand.

“Buffett is an average musician, pointing the way to a better place and a mellower state of mind,” Cromer said. “I don’t know if it would mean as much if he were a Jeff Beck or Stevie Van Zandt (of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band).”

Like Springsteen along the Jersey shore, Buffett reigns as a spokesperson for a region’s ideal. There’s arguably no other voice representing the Southeast with such widespread proclivity as the Alabama-raised Buffett.

“I still have a bit of a problem with that celebrity stuff as I do still only see myself as a beach boy, ex-altar boy from Mobile, who worked hard and got lucky and not much more,” Buffett wrote on his website. “To me, it is just my job.”