Sixteen years ago, Jimmy Buffett stepped onto a stage overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, looked out at 35,000 people gathered on the beach in Gulf Shores and smiled.
“Hello, Gulf Coast,” he shouted. “We’re here to save the day.”
And, for a little while, he did.
It was July 11, 2010. On a sweltering afternoon, the Gulf stretched out clear and calm behind him while thousands of people in leis, Hawaiian shirts and hula skirts packed the white sand, waving inflatable sharks, parrots and beach balls into the air. For a few hours, they stopped worrying about the oil spill and whether their businesses would survive.
Nearly three months after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, Buffett had come home to remind the world that the Gulf Coast was still here.
Buffett wasn’t just another celebrity touring through. Born in Pascagoula and raised in Mobile, he grew up on this coast. He fished these waters, sailed these bays and found the people and places that filled his songs.
Less than three months earlier, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig had exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, triggering the largest marine oil spill in U.S. history. As oil drifted toward Alabama’s beaches, vacationers canceled trips, hotels emptied and restaurants wondered whether they would last the summer.
Attendance at Alabama’s Gulf Coast beaches fell from 4.6 million visitors in 2009 to 3.6 million in 2010, according to the Alabama Tourism Department.
“My boss used to say something flips after every natural disaster,” said Kay Maghan, public relations manager for Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism. “Before the oil spill, we were a summertime destination. Everybody made their money in the summer to get through the rest of the year. If we lost the summer season, the year was shot.”
BP funded a tourism recovery campaign, and Alabama leaders used that money to remind the country its beaches were still open.
The inaugural Hangout Music Festival, two months earlier, had proved Gulf Shores could host a major beach concert. Buffett took the idea a step further, offering a free show for the people of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
“The oil wasn’t here yet, but we knew it was coming,” said Grant Brown, now Gulf Shores’ director of recreation & cultural affairs and public information officer, who helped organize the Concerts for the Coast series.
“If Jimmy Buffett had come up with that suggestion without us already going through Hangout, I don’t know if we would’ve had the courage to try,” Brown said.
The concert was postponed from July 1 because of Hurricane Alex. Even after the weather cleared, organizers faced new uncertainties: the July heat, thousands of people on the beach and when tar balls might wash ashore. No one knew what the Gulf Coast would look like weeks or months later.
“The unknown is the biggest fear,” said Jim Cox, host and emcee of the Blue Marlin Grand Championship and a longtime Buffett fan. “I kept thinking about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. We didn’t know what Orange Beach or Gulf Shores were going to become. We didn’t know what our coastline was going to look like.”
For Mobile native Will Kimbrough, the concert was personal.
He grew up on these beaches and was married here. That afternoon, he stood onstage as a member of Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band.
After nearly two sleepless days getting there, Kimbrough looked in the mirror before walking onstage.
“I hadn’t slept in 48 hours and looked like a raccoon,” he said. “So I put on dark sunglasses and went out.”
The Coral Reefer Band opened with “Pascagoula Run.”
“It’s great to be home,” Buffett told the crowd. “Thank you for coming down here to support our friends, neighbors and some of my family.”
“I spent my misspent youth on these beaches. A lot of my music came from these shores. Highway 90 — I’m a child of it.”
When the band launched into “Bama Breeze,” the beach erupted.
“Everyone was so happy to be on the beach and so thankful Jimmy was there,” recalled Will Dickson. “The crowd went crazy when he played ‘Bama Breeze.’ I may be making this up, but I swear I remember the wind picking up.”
Throughout the afternoon, Buffett rewrote lyrics for the moment.
“What would Jimmy Buffett do?” he sang during “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere.” “I’d go to the oil spill and play.”
The crowd roared.
Later, he introduced Kimbrough as “a young man from Mobile, Alabama,” before the band played “Nobody From Nowhere,” a song Kimbrough co-wrote.
Images of Gulf Coast communities rolled across giant video screens behind the band, reminding everyone the entire coast shared the same uncertainty.
“This was a day of celebrating what’s good about people, community, music and storytelling,” Kimbrough said. “Music points out the best in us. Everybody showed up, sang along and gave us their best. It’s still one of the best days.”
For a few hours, time stood still.
“Nobody thought about how bad it could be,” Cox said. “For those two hours at the beach, we were together. We were ready for some normalcy.”
The nationally televised concert on CMT closed with Buffett’s rewritten version of “The Coast Is Clear.”
“The Gulf is in my body. The Gulf is in my soul,” he sang. “I wish, like you, that I could stick a wine cork in that hole.”
The concert led to two more free beach concerts later that summer featuring Bon Jovi and Brad Paisley. Instead of oil-covered pelicans and cleanup crews, millions of viewers saw white sand, blue water and thousands of onlookers singing and swaying to favorite songs.
“One of the silver linings of the oil spill is the world figured out Alabama had beautiful beaches,” Brown said.
Today, visitor spending on lodging rentals in Gulf Shores, Orange Beach and Fort Morgan has reached record levels. Lodging revenue climbed to $923 million in 2025, more than double what it was a decade earlier, according to Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism.
Before the spill, most visitors came from within a day’s drive during the summer months. Today, people arrive all year from across the country.
“Since the oil spill and the awareness it created, restaurants and attractions now stay open year-round,” Maghan said.
For Maghan, who grew up in Pascagoula, Buffett’s hometown, no other concert compared.
“I’ve done multiple Jimmy Buffett concerts, but that was the only one on a beach,” she said. “If there was ever a concert that captured the Jimmy Buffett way of life, that was it.
“For him to come back and do a concert right there on that beach — it showed he hadn’t forgotten where he came from.”
Near the end of the show, Buffett declared: “Today, this is Margaritaville, Alabama, and you’re all citizens. This is what we do best. We help each other.”
Almost two decades later, that afternoon is remembered as more than a concert. For the thousands who stood barefoot in the sand, it’s a reminder that when the Gulf Coast is tested, its people still do what Buffett said they do best: help each other.
