June 22nd, 2010 7:14 AM

Jimmy Buffett concert gets approval from Gulf Shores City Council

Published: Tuesday, June 22, 2010, 5:00 AM

GULF SHORES, Ala. -- Looking to inject life into a quickly fading tourism season, the Gulf Shores City Council on Monday approved permits for a series of surfside concerts, the first of which will be held July 1 and will feature Jimmy Buffett, with guests Zac Brown, Kenny Chesney and Allen Toussaint.

The Buffett concert will be free, but there will be a ticketing system in order to limit the crowd at the city's main public beach to 35,000. It will also be televised live and re-aired several times over the holiday weekend on Country Music Television, which reaches into 90 million homes.

"What a tremendous opportunity for us to show the world that we don't have oil slicks all over our beach and we don't have oily pelicans standing around," Mayor Robert Craft said. "This is the beginning of us being able to participate in saving our community and we hopefully will be able to extend this and do some others."

Lucy Buffett, the singer's sister and proprietor of Lulu's at Homeport Marina, said Monday that her brother is aiming to promote tourism on the Gulf Coast and thus putting money in the pockets of the area's hurting small businesses rather than raise money for a particular cause.

"His vision is to see all of the restaurants and all of the hotels and all of the condos full again," she said. "Jimmy has lived in and owns either a business or property in every state that's being affected right now.

"In trying to figure out where to do this we went slap in the middle, and he also wanted to come home."

Jimmy Buffett, in a prepared statement, said: "There are always welcome breaks in every storm but the unfortunate reality is that this disaster is not going away for a while -- but a few hours of fun, void of the constant reminders of the situation, is a good thing and that is basically what I do."

Tickets for the show, scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. with a yet-to-be announced opening act, will be available through Ticketmaster beginning Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. There is a four-ticket limit. Gates will open and the commercial-free broadcast of Buffett's set is scheduled to air from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., according to CMT Executive Producer John Hamlin.

In addition to the television broadcast, the set will be aired on Sirius and XM satellite radio and streamed live on CMT.com.

Hamlin said Buffet and his Coral Reefer Band will take the stage at about 6:30 p.m. and will be joined by high-profile guests, including Toussaint, Brown and Chesney.

"I think Kenny's going to do at least two songs, I think one without Jimmy and one with Jimmy," Hamlin said Monday. "Zac's going to do at least two songs in the same manner, one with him one without him, maybe more, and hopefully we'll have something fun at the end with all of them."

The Alabama Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Alabama Tourism Department are sponsoring the show using money BP PLC gave to the state to promote tourism. Organizers of May's Hangout Beach, Music and Arts Festival, including Hangout restaurant owner Shaul Zislin and Mobile's HUKA Entertainment, are putting on the show.

Convention and Visitors Bureau President Herb Malone said Zislin's group was already talking with tourism officials about a series of concerts when Buffett entered the picture last Wednesday.

A flurry of meetings ensued between local officials, television executives and concert organizers to put together the July 1 show, which is still very much in the planning stages.

Grant Brown, who oversees the beaches for Gulf Shores, said that while there are many lingering issues to settle, "We feel very comfortable that we're going to be able to pull this off in such a short time period."

Zislin said details, including the dates and artists, of subsequent shows were not ready to be released. But city officials said they intend to schedule them on Wednesday and Thursday nights, hoping that concertgoers stay through the subsequent weekends.

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