I'm not a Parakeet, but I always wanted to be one

Pondering Jimmy Buffett's legacy of ancestral music fandom.

For about a decade, my parents hosted an annual music festival in Springfield, Missouri, but never had the chance to book their all-time favorite band, Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks.

It’s been sweet watching the remembrances of Jimmy Buffett this weekend.

“Margaritaville” has been on a loop in my head. As a human living in America, I’ve heard it enough to have the song engrained in my brain. Memories of going to Key West with my parents when I was a teenager float on the edge of my consciousness. I can hear my late friend Troy sing the alternate call-and-response lyrics that his fraternity came up with to go along with the song. (“Where’s the salt, where’s my goddamn salt?” is one of them.)

I wasn’t what you would call a Parrothead — or the offshoot, a second-generation Parakeet — but I know a thing or two about ancestral musical fandom.

The author of that article identified five stages of becoming a Parakeet: introduction to the music, education (e.g., learning all the lyrics before you can read), growing out of it (“Ugh, why are my parents so WEIRD?”), apathy (“Jimmy Buffett, who?”), acceptance of one’s fate.

My parents, having married in 1972, spent the first 10 years of their lives playing an endless stream of vinyl records and seeing as much live music as they could. (They even hosted pig roast music festivals in Springfield with the Vet’s Club that were big enough to require permits from the city.)

In an alternate timeline, they would have fallen for Jimmy Buffett, but instead, they followed the bluegrass/Americana path that led them to their all-time favorite musician: Dan Hicks.

I’ve never even met enough millennial whose parents were as obsessed with Dan Hicks as mine were, but one day, just maybe, I’ll meet someone besides my sister who can sing every lyric to “Last Train to Hicksville” or “Striking It Rich.”

Every time I go camping, I play these albums, in part a tribute to my late father, but also, because I genuinely like the music.

I’m a Parakeet, but for Dan Hicks.

There’s no collective name for the second (or third) generation fans of any other bands that I can think of, even ones with massive followings, like the Grateful Dead.

But as I thought about what I would call ancestral music fandom, I realized that it doesn’t matter what music your parents listened to on repeat. All of us have songs, albums, musicians that became the soundtrack of our youth because they were the soundtrack to the formative years of our parents’ lives.

My kids and me at the Austin City Limits Music Festival in 2017.

For Frank, it’s Trio Los Panchos, a bolero trio from New York City that was popular when his mom was a young girl growing up in Cuba.

For my high school friend Abby’s kids, it will surely be the soundtrack to “Cats,” to which they already know every word.

My friends’ Zane and Tracy’s teens have already seen more Widespread Panic shows than they could possibly count.

After I went to the Grand Ole Opry earlier this year, I realized that this has been happening for a long time, longer than cassettes and CDs have been around.