Why I go out of my way to hear to Jim Morris

It occurs to me as I note that Jim Morris will be singing at the Navigator today at 2 p.m. that there just may be new folks in town who have never heard the strains of our local version of Jimmy Buffet.  Ergo I pulled one of my older blogs from the vault to share with visitors in town this week and other recent Punta Gorda arrivals some of my thoughts on Jim Morris.......

Maybe it was the songs of Jerry Jeff Walker... that escapist music that first attracted me in my youth when I was already burdened by the worries and time constraints of a corporate job and helping support a family.  Maybe it was moving to a tropical climate and hearing the sounds that I always associated with beaches and islands and sun and blue-green water.  Maybe it was the sheer fun of that tropical sound with a hint of Texas in it.  And maybe it was just Jim and his extraordinary gift of capturing in sound and lyrics what it meant to live here.. and for moments in time to just drift along with life instead of always running after it.

Whatever it was and is, I along with many others who have made this tropical paradise their home will go out of their way to catch a Jim Morris concert whether it's a "Navigator Afternoon." or "When the Sun Goes Down on Charlotte Harbor."  They'll come to hear Jim and his Big Bamboo Band and dance joyfully in the Punta Gorda sun as Jim sings about a soul that they always wanted to be and maybe can be for awhile.  A guy who "has got his toes in the sand.. a tropical man" whose as "happy as hell and it shows." (The lyrics from "Laid Back and Key Wasted.")

Jim's lyrics touch those newly and not-so-newly retired who now live in the "Land of No Mondays."  It validates a life style that they earned and perhaps longed for as they sat at desks for long hours, dealt with problem after problem, stayed in dreary hotel rooms, endured the winters in snow-bound climates, sat in traffic to get to a job everyday, dreaded Sunday nights and the ring of alarm clock on Mondays. They have finally left "the madness behind... and are "living in the land of no Mondays."

Jim performs worldwide...a lot in Key West...Matlacha...along the Eastern Coast from Connecticut to Maryland..but he calls his home Punta Gorda.  For those of us who have many times heard "The Floating Opera," and have swayed to "No Beer Today," we know why we go to hear the band again and again. 

So many of us will be there tonight or any other time  when Jim performs.   If you haven't experienced a Jim Morris concert, you might want to go and hear the refrains of a very talented musician who found in Punta Gorda what he sings about in his songs.

(Mark your calendar for Jim's concert at the Elks on March 10 -- this is a huge affair on the water -- you'll want to be there. And one of the few times the  Punta Gorda Elks Lodge is open to the public.)