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- Artists
- Robinette, Garland
 - Bands
- *multiple band event
- Edition Details
| Year: | 2011 | | Class: | Poster | | Status: | Official | | Run: | 3,000 | | Technique: | Screen Print | | Paper: | Rag | | Size: | 20 X 37 | | Markings: | Signed & Numbered |
- EB Awards
- Nominate Now
- Venues
- Fairgrounds - New Orleans, LA
- Event
- New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival
- Comments
- Add Comment
Busking Out: Becoming Jimmy Buffett
by Garland Robinette
Emerging musicians have drifted to New Orleans from near and far for over a century, earning a living on its streets as they hone their craft – a practice called busking. And while jazz may be the big attraction, musical styles, like so many things, blur in the gumbo of New Orleans. Many such venturers go unnoticed, but all those who play here in their formative years invariably carry a dash of roux within them forever. That Jimmy Buffett released a tune called I Will Play for Gumbo in 1999 – more than three decades after he first came to New Orleans as a budding troubadour – proves the point.
If you ambled through the French Quarter in the mid-60’s you might have come upon an engaging longhaired college student from Poplarville, Mississippi with a beat-up guitar, a few chords and an old Ford. If you dropped some coins in his cigar box, you may have helped shape his sound. As Jimmy recalls it:
"On weekends I was out of Poplarville as fast as my Ford Falcon would take me. In those days, folk music was happening in New Orleans… New Orleans competed on the world stage at all levels… The Bayou Room was smack-dab in the heart of the Bourbon Street strip joints… The people who taught me as much about being a performer as anybody performed on that little stage… After the last show at the Bayou Room, I would make my way to Jackson Square with my gig bag and set up shop on the corner of Chartres and Conti. I will never, ever forget the first time someone actually dropped money into my cigar box and told me I was good. I would bang away till the wee hours of the morning, until my cuticles bled or there was no one listening. Then I would count my money, close up shop, and relax at the Morning Call with a cup of café au lait and an order of beignets…”*
So pay attention as you walk the Quarter. You may witness the future and be blessed with an opportunity to shape it. If you do, linger a bit and throw some coins in the box. If you play your part, they’ll thrive and return your kindness a thousand-fold. To this day, Jimmy is a presence on the streets of New Orleans, at the CAC or attending a Saints game, in his Margaritaville Café and performing at Jazz Fest (and was early to commit to the post-Katrina 2006 Festival, clearing away uncertainty and inspiring others to join in its rebirth). Passing through means never leaving – and certainly not wasting away.
All in the Gulf South from Texas to Florida know Garland Robinette as a singularly intelligent voice of reason in a region battered to the limits of endurance by disasters, natural and otherwise. As the mid-day host on WWL, the 50,000-watt powerhouse radio station that reaches more than two million people, he talks despair off the ledge and weaves narrative lines from tangled webs. In addition to moderating competing ideologies within the region, he also has become a vital voice of New Orleans nationally, explaining the issues facing the area on NBC, MSNBC, PBS and NPR.
Robinette travelled a route to New Orleans that paralleled Buffett’s. He began his journalism career at minimum wage as the sole newscaster for the then-new, tiny and short-lived Cajun French KHMA-TV station in Houma, Louisiana in 1972. Six months later he was lured to New Orleans’ WWL-TV as a neophyte beat reporter and, three months after moving, found himself anchoring the evening news and garnering a 50-share. Although New York’s CBS came calling in short order, he stayed put until he left television news in 1990. He returned to broadcasting at WWL radio in 2005, filling in for an ailing friend just before Katrina hit.
What many don’t know is that this Boutte, Louisiana native is an equally accomplished and sought-after painter. He was first recognized – as were all classical masters – by the Church, when the Archdiocese of New Orleans tapped him to paint Pope John Paul II’s official portrait commemorating the Holy See’s historic 1987 visit. Since then he has quietly painted the portraits of many other bold-faced (though perhaps less saintly) names, from CEO’s to celebrities, as well as scenes from his rich imagination.
For the Jazz Festival poster, Garland literally took pages from Buffett’s autobiography & imagined what it would have been like to meet the young musician as he played on the streets of New Orleans in 1967. He pictures Jimmy at the corner he worked as night melted to dawn, with the musician’s trusty Falcon parked nearby, and after his weekend gig filled his cigar box. Flying in the distance is a parrot, prefiguring Buffett’s ultimate destination of Key West, Fla. And if you look closely on the sidewalk behind the Falcon, you’ll see the contemporary Jimmy Buffett walking into the future, glancing over his shoulder at the young man who would eventually catapult him to international acclaim. Robinette’s glorious image is heightened by this allegory, spanning and compressing time in an image richly imagined right down to the old N.O.P.S.I. manhole cover in the street.
As this work amply demonstrates, Robinette’s art, previously available only to a fortunate few, is as deserving of acclaim as his exceptional journalism. We’re privileged to be able to present the first widely available art print in decades from this towering stalwart of contemporary New Orleans life and culture.
The poster is available in four editions: An unsigned numbered edition; an artist-signed edition; an artist-remarqued edition signed by the artist and his subject, and; a canvas C-Marque edition overpainted by the artist and signed by him and his subject. All prints are limited edition numbered silk-screens produced on acid-free archival paper; Artist signed and artist-remarqued prints are produced on 100% cotton rag museum-quality sheets. All prints are offered subject to prior sale.
Editions:
10,000 numbered posters, 19” x 36”, $72.50
3,000 Artist-signed & numbered prints on 100% rag paper, 20” x 37”, $239
750 Artist signed and pencil remarqued, signed by Jimmy Buffett & numbered Remarque prints on 100% rag paper, 21” x 39”, $595
350 Artist-overpainted and signed, signed by Jimmy Buffett & numbered C-Marque canvas screen prints, suitable for stretching, 26” x 40”, $895
Actual poster and specifications may vary slightly.
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 | Original Price | $239.00 |
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| Collections | 1 |
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