The Music of Mike Miller and the Boat Drunks

Jan 2

“I think for me, what's unique is that I've got a great band behind me. I mean, the Boat Drunks, every one of those guys could easily be a front man for a band, they're all very, very talented, they're all great guys, we get along, we like each other. “

If you’re like me and you’ve been listening to Trop Rock / Island Music over the last 20 years or more, you know the Boat Drunks, a band that consistently draws large loyal crowds and wins big awards, including being named Trop Rock Band of the Year nine times, most recently in 2024, by the Trop Rock Music Association. While starting out mainly as a cover band for Jimmy Buffett tunes in the very early 2000s, the Champaign-Illinois-based band has since recorded a wealth of original songs that have become staples among Island Music lovers. These songs include A Pirate on the Caribbean; Beer, Buffett and Baseball; Callin’ in Gone; Tropical Standard Time; Corona Alone Again; and Long Time No Sea (S-E-A).

I had the pleasure to attend a Boat Drunks performance recently at a Parrothead event in Milwaukee, and it was amazing to see the fans crowd the dance floor, swaying to the Boat Drunks music, singing along and even line dancing.

When the band broke out its signature song Hollow Man – written by Mike Miller – this is what it looked and sounded like ...

The Boat Drunks clearly have worked their way into the hearts of Parrotheads and all Trop Rock / Island Music lovers.

Today I am talking with Boat Drunks frontman Mike Miller, who co-founded the band with Jake Tatar in 2001 and has entertained thousands of devoted audiences throughout the first quarter of this century.

Hello Mike, thank you for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

I just played a clip from last weekend’s event in Milwaukee, with the Parrothead crowd singing along to Hollow Man while circular line dancing and singing right out loud. That must feel great to be playing a song like that and having such a powerful reaction. Does that happen all the time?

It frequently gets a good response at Parrothead events because you know they're familiar with the song and that's something we're very grateful for, we still have a lot of people who really seem to like that song, and we love doing it for them because it, it always gets a good response from Parrotheads, for sure.

What do you think it is about Hollow Man that gets that response from people?

I wish I knew. If I did, I’d try to write ten more just like it, but, I mean, that's one of the first songs I wrote with the band and, you know, it's for some reason I don't know if it's the idea of the escapism and starting over or you know what it is about the song, but it really seemed to have spoke to a lot of people which I'm very grateful for. I've had discussions with other songwriters about it and nobody can really agree on what it is that that everybody seems to like, but I'm just grateful that they do.

Sometimes, a song just has that magic.

Yeah, I mean, like I said I can't really take much credit for it, you know, just people like it and I'm grateful that they do. It's fun song to do for them.

What, what do you remember about writing that song back in the day? How did, it, come, about?

How it came about is the band had been together for about a year and we wanted to, I mean, at the time, we were doing all Jimmy Buffett, if he didn't record it, cover it or, you know, perform it live, we didn't do it, that was just our rule. And we were following other trop rock bands, and specifically St. Somewhere, they were kind of our musical heroes at the time, and so at rehearsal, Jake brought up, hey, listen, I want you guys to go home this weekend and start writing songs, because I want to record a CD of our own stuff, and present that so we have something to do besides just Jimmy Buffet covers. And so that weekend, I went home and I wrote Hollow Man and This Ain't DuVal Street all in one weekend, and both of those stuck, you know, and, you know, luckily for us they did, I guess.

Do you feel like sometimes those songs just come to you?

I mean it's weird. There have been songs that I've written that have taken months, and there are some that I've written, you know, in just a couple hours. Beer, Buffet and Baseball, I wrote that song in my head when I was out walking and by the time I got home, I had the whole song, sat down with the guitar and finished it up.

But other songs, like I said, I've labored over for weeks and sometimes months or I'll leave it alone and come back to it. There doesn't really seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, it just happens, you know.

So, aside from Hollow Man what are some of the favorite songs that you've written and performed over the years?

Well, um, Together We Fly. I like that one because, again, it was written as kind of a thank you to the Parrothead community who really stepped up, you know, when I got my cancer diagnosis and went through the bone marrow transplant and all that. They really came to my aid.

And I made it a point to want to get that one recorded and in the can before I went to Bethesda for the transplant, and we did, we managed to get the whole album recorded in about two days, which is practically a miracle in itself. And I drove home from St. Louis that night, packed up and left for Bethesda the next day.

So that one's kind of special to me. There's some songs from my solo CD that I'm pretty proud of. One's called Perspective.

At that time that I wrote most of those songs I was living and traveling on a sailboat, so my life at that time was kind of geared toward experiences that I felt like we're worth commemorating in a song, you know, and when I was doing that they came pretty fast and easy, so there are several songs on that album that I wrote while I was out traveling on the boat.

How long were you on the sailboat and where were you?

Five years. I left from Racine, Wisconsin, and went out through the Great Lakes to the Erie Canal to the Hudson out New York City that way and then went down the coast. Spent that first winter in the Bahamas.

Came back, and then I would just kind of run north and south, trying to avoid cold weather and hurricanes, basically met a lot of really nice people, had a lot of fun experiences, that kind of thing, and again, it was a kind of a lifestyle that kind of lent itself to songwriting. It really was, you know, kind of a rich pool to draw from, let's put it that way, and I wrote a lot of songs while I was doing it.

So during those five years, were you basically taking a break from performing?

Part of the year, I still probably played, oh, 30-40 years shows a year with the band, with the Boat Drunks. I come back, some of the people that were putting them on would actually pay me to fly in and join them just for the gig. And, you know, that made it easier, but then you know in the summertime I would come home and house sit for some friends and play with the guys all summer long and then go back to the boat, that kind of thing. So I was kind of in and out, even then.

What made you decide to go on a sailboat for five years?

It's something that actually came to me when we were playing one of our earlier Parrothead events at a place called Put-In-Bay, which is an island in Lake Erie, and it was a Parrothead event called Phlocking of the Phaithful, and the weekend that we played there they had the venue of Mr. Ed’s, one of the bigger bars in that area but it was still open to the public even though they were having the Parrothead event there, so a lot of people came in who were part of this big sailing regatta that stopped there that weekend, so I got to meet a lot of people that lived and traveled on their sailboats half the year. They would spend the summers on their boats and then put them in storage and then live in their house in the winter time. And they invited me out, and I got to visit them on the boat and stuff, and, you know, started thinking, you know, I'm gonna be retiring in a few, years, and I'm gonna have to live somewhere, maybe living somewhere I can take with me is not a bad idea. So. I, started taking sailing lessons and reading about it, and learning all I could, and ended up buying a boat, and I moved aboard in 2008 and took off, and it was a lot of fun.

Did you write a song about that?

Not specifically um, but again, there are a lot of songs that came up because of it.

You mentioned your battle with cancer. What years did that occur, and how did the Trop Rock community come to your assistance?

It happened in 2017. I was starting to get really easily winded, and I knew there was something wrong. And it turned out I had blood cancer and it was a very high risk form of what they call myelodysplastic syndrome, and the doctor told me at the time, he said the only long term cure for this is a bone marrow transplant. And I didn't have health insurance at the time. When I retired I couldn't get any private company to insure me. It was before they were not able to hold pre-existing conditions against you. Since I had been hospitalized once, they all just turned me down, so I couldn't get health insurance for a long time. And then this hit, and it's at a minimum a million dollar operation, so you're not just gonna find somebody say, oh, we'll just do it, you know, that kind of thing. So I went to see my old oncologist in Charleston, South Carolina, and he basically, you know, confirmed, you know, the diagnosis, and said, you know, I really wish there was something I could do.

And a friend of mine, whose name is Vicky Scoma, she's a cancer survivor, she sent me a list of some clinical trials that were up in NIH in Bethesda, and I was literally walking out of his exam room and I mentioned that, and he goes do you have the link to those trials, and I said, well, right here on my phone.

And I gave him to him, and, and he looked it up, and he said, there's three or four here I could put you in for if you are interested.

Of course I said yes, and he did, and they accepted me and I went out to Bethesda and got all that done for free because I was part of this clinical trial for a drug they were testing, and the Parrothead community, like when I first announced my diagnosis that very first weekend, there were guys that were donating their tips to my cause, that kind of thing.

And so it was the money that they raised that allowed me to have an apartment out there, because I had to stay there for eight months, and my brother had to come and leave his home and stay with me that time because I had to have someone there.

And so it was the Parrothead community that really stepped up and basically made it all possible um. There were like five or six amazing things that all had to happen in the right order, and they did, so I'm a very fortunate guy, that's for sure.

The Parrot Head community, or the trop rock community, is a special community of artists and fans, and you probably experienced that in many different ways, not just this.

Absolutely, and if you listen to the lyrics of Together We Fly I talk about that. It talks about like minded strangers who open their hearts and their homes. When I was off doing solo shows, there were people who I literally never met that put me up at their homes, you know, to come and play in their town.

And Pege Wright, Miss Pege, she lived in a beautiful home in Texas there and she just sent me the code to their garage door said we won't be home just let yourself in and we'll see you when we get home from work, kind of thing, and that's to a person we, again, never met personally. She knew who I was, but people like that, there are people like that all over the Parrothead community, they just, they're all willing to, you know, take you at face value and, you're their friend until you prove otherwise.

That's kind of rare these days, I think, and they're just a very special bunch of people, they really are.

Together We Fly by Mike Miller, a tribute and a thank you to the Parrothead and Trop Rock / Island Music Community for supporting him through a very challenging time in his life. Mike is feeling better and back to performing but he’s still recovering from his cancer treatment.

You know again if I hadn't had all that done I wouldn't still be here. My bone marrow transplant, it attacked my kidneys because sometimes these new immune systems don't recognize your body as being friendly, and so it caused kidney damage, so I'm dealing with that.

It’s just barely a matter of you know them balancing medications and things like that. I don't have nearly the energy I used to, or anything like that. I'm kind of dealing with with that kind of stuff. But again, in the big scheme of things, you know, as far as I know, it beats being dead, so I'm pretty pleased with how everything's turned out. I can't complain at all, you know.

And you're performing on a regular basis?

Yeah, I am, um, as you noticed the other night, I sit down now (while performing). I'm hoping to be able to get my energy built up again where I can play a whole show standing up, but again it's just, you know that everything that you go through with cancer and stuff it takes a toll on your body. I mean even if you outlive the cancer your body gets pretty beat up, you know, and mine was and is. But I still love to play, and the guys are, you know, they take good care of me and they pick up the slack and I couldn't ask for a better group of people to be doing it with, and I'm very grateful that they continue to have me with them, and that the people are willing to come and see us.

So, tell me a little bit about the Boat Drunks, how did you guys get started, and a little bit of the history from that point to now.

I go back to beforehand, like in the mid nineties, my best friend from high school talked me into going to see Jimmy Buffett in Indiana. And I was familiar with Jimmy Buffett, I mean I knew of his songs I knew, you know, the ones that everybody knows from the radio. And so I was a little skeptical, but, okay, I went and I had a blast, and I was just, you know really stunned by what a party atmosphere they put on, so we kept going back to see him different places and I started buying his records and really going back and listening to him, you know, the songs that weren't so popular, you know, and realized what an amazing songwriter he was and performer.

And then I was playing in a classic rock band in 1999, and we were going through some personnel changes, and there was a music store in town that used to keep a loose leaf notebook at the front desk there that had a section for bands looking for players, and players looking for bands. So I was putting in an ad for the people we were wanting to add, and I saw an ad in there from Jake Tatar wanting to start a Buffet tribute band.

Now, by that time, I'd been following Jimmy Buffet for about five years, and I thought, you know what, he only comes up in this area in the summertime and so all winter long people in the Midwest, you know, they're stuck either traveling to go see him or they have to, you know, just wait, that kind of thing. So I thought, well, you know, if you did this well, you could probably stay pretty busy, you know, if you were true to the music and made it worth coming to see. And so I answered the ad and went and talked to Jake and brought my guitar over, and we sat and played guitars together for about five hours, and at the end of that time he joined the band I was in as our new front man, and he and I started doing the Buffet thing as a duo on the side called Captain and the Kid, and with him being twelve years younger than me, it was pretty easy to decide who was who, so I was Captain, he was the kid, and we did that for about a year. And then, in March of 2001, the Boat Drunks played their first show, and it's gone on ever since.

And that very first rehearsal that we had with Howie and Andy and our original drummer Brendan, I knew we had something special because there was just something about the way that Jake and Howie and my voices blended together. Andy could play anything that was on a Buffet record, if it was horns, if it was keyboards, if it was steel pans, whatever it was, Andy our keyboard player nailed It. And again Jake had the vocals down and Howie, you know, one man that plays harmonica, percussion and sings as well as Howie does, I mean that takes up three people right there, so we had, we had a good thing going right from the beginning and, and it's worked out great.

Have you had any turnover over the years or have you had the core group of guys sticking together.

We've, had, a, few. Jake, in order to be able to spend more time, you know, he had young children growing up at the time, and so he left the band. We went through four drummers our first year, but we ended up with Larry, and Larry's been with us ever since.

Andy was in for most of the time and then was out for a few years, again, family obligations and such, but now Andy's back in. And then the other guys even will come and go like when we do reunion shows or things like that, I mean we're all still on good terms and they're all, you know, welcome any time, that kind of thing.

We're lucky, you know. We were fortunate that we came upon the right mix of people at the right time in our lives, and it's, you know, we added Dyke about five years into, and he's been with us ever since, and he's a phenomenal steel player and guitar player and all around musician, so we've been fortunate. But, yeah, the basic core of it has been there mostly all along, me and Howie and Andy and off and on Jake.

And you you've had a period or two where you've taken a break from the band yourself.

Oh, just, just when I was on the boat. And then in 2013 it was offered for me to come back full time and, you know, the music business being what it is if you disappear too long you know people forget all about you, and I was still playing with them enough that people still knew who I was and I thought, you know, maybe I should come back and now it would be a good time to do this because, you know, who knows how long, you know, you have to do things, and so I came back in 2013 and rejoined the band full time and I have been with them full time ever since.

So in the 20 plus years that you've been doing this, are there maybe a couple things that stand out for you as highlights, either writing a song or performing, or something that happened on stage?

Yeah, early on, fairly early on, we got to open for Jimmy at Alpine Valley, and he came out before the show and met us, and we had about a 25 minute conversation with him, and he was just as, you know, laid back and friendly and humble as you would hope he would be. He was just a great guy. I mean that meant a lot that we got to meet him. In fact even after he left, I turned to Jake and I said, you know, what would we do now if he was a jerk? (laughing) You know, we're gonna start a Bon Jovi tribute band or something? (laughing) But he was great, it was fantastic. And then that led to us being able to perform with different members of his band over the years. We played a few dozen shows with the Nadirah and Doyle and T.C. and Amy, and they've all become, you know, friends. And so those kind of things stand out for sure.

Another show too that really stood out for me was right after Radio Margaritaville went from being strictly an internet radio station to actually becoming satellite radio, our songs that were still in rotation on there got a lot more exposure.

And we went and played an event in Ocean City, Maryland, and we'd never been to that part of the country before, and played at a place called Secrets, a big, you know, tourist bar, and it was packed and the people were singing along with our songs, which just blew me away. That's the first time that it happened, you know, in an event that was that far from home, you know, so clearly, it was getting listened to, which was kind of an eye opener for me, you know, and that continued for quite a while, so that was a nice thing.

And now we have all these trop rock online streaming stations, and that's probably been helpful to the band too.

It has, and it's good that the music's getting out there and getting played. The whole recording industry, and music industry has changed so much in the last 20 years, you know, with MP3s and Spotify and downloads and things like that that if Donald Fagen can’t live on his royalties then none of us stand a chance, and he's even said that that's why he still tours. He said, my royalties have shrunk to nothing because you don't get the same pay out of a download as you do an album or a CD or things like that, and it's, you know, technology changes and things change.

I still love playing live and I love to go see the people and you know we travel around the different parts of the country and when we're in certain areas that's when you expect to see you know your friends from that area. And we're in Texas I know who I'm gonna see there, or Louisiana or North Carolina or South Carolina. You know it’s always fun to see those people again. And so I never really get tired of that. I love going out and it's like I said it's the only time we see them, you know, a lot of times so it’s good to, good to reconnect.

How many of the Boat Drunks original songs have been written by you, and are you still writing new music?

Well, I've hit a pretty good dry spell actually, but let's see, there was the Duval Street; Hollow Man; Wind It Up; Together We Fly; Beer, Buffett, and Baseball; so like five or six, seven of them maybe that we do regularly that I wrote or co-wrote ... Long Time No Sea, Jake and I co-wrote together. But we all kind of participate in the songwriting a little bit.

But for some reason, 2020 just took the wind out of my sails. I have not been able to write a song since then. I just got so, I don’t know how to describe it, it just kind of took a lot of my joy away, and I still haven't really recovered I guess. I try to sit down and write songs and they just don't come like they used to. I’m kind of hoping I'll get over that because, you know, sometimes I'll go through periods where I’ll write several songs, you know, but, I just haven't done anything since then just because I'm, I don't know. I’d like to get over it.

Maybe you’ll wake up in the middle of the night with a tune in your head.

I hope so. I mean, I miss it because it's fun to try out new songs and to see people's reaction to them. And I just haven't done it for a while. I'm hoping that'll change,

Every trop rock artist is unique in their own way. What would you say is unique about you that makes you stand out from the others.

I think for me, what's unique is that I've got a great band behind me. I mean, the Boat Drunks, every one of those guys could easily be a front man for a band, they're all very, very talented, they're all great guys, we get along, we like each other. I think fans can tell when bands tolerate each other and when they actually genuinely enjoy each other's company. So my secret is the band. These guys are great, and you know, we all appreciate the crowds, we all like to talk to them, we like to get to know people.

And I think that does kind of stand out a little bit. I mean there are other great bands out there, don't get me wrong. I mean Jerry Diaz always has a great band behind him, Jimmy and the Parrots, Jim Morris and the Big Bamboo Band, they were tremendous, you know, and of course they had a songwriting machine like Jim Morris behind them, they were, they were phenomenal. But I think for us, I think people generally regard us as being nice guys, and they enjoy the music because the guys play it really well you know. And it's easy to get up and do when you got a band like that behind you - you don't feel nervous at all, you know they're gonna nail it and they always do so. I say that’s our thing.

Have you noticed an evolution of trop rock music in recent years?

A little bit, but I tell you what, I’m pretty optimistic about it. I mean for awhile it seemed, like, you know, I was kind of in the mindset of, we're all getting a little longer in the tooth kind of thing, and, you know, I said we've been at this it will be in March it will start 25 years. But a lot of the new people coming up are pretty damned awesome as well I mean, Kitty Steadman and Melanie Howe and and Jonas Lorence and, you know that there's a lot of new people coming in that are just tremendous talents, and it's good to see new blood come in and people enjoying it still. And even though Jimmy’s not out there anymore, his music still speaks to people, and a lot of the Parrotheads are sticking with it because, I think, a lot of their social life really was built around being with fellow parrotheads, that's how they get out and socialize and have fun. They used to do it at Jimmy's concerts, and now they're doing it at parrothead events and other music events, but they're still seeing each other because it is like a big family. And I'm really encouraged by that. I was afraid it might dry up, but I don't think so. I think it's doing real well.

Well, it’s people like you and bands like the Boat Drunks that continue to bring them together.

Yeah, I hope so. I mean, that's certainly, our mission.

And, I’ve said, we're very lucky that we were accepted early on by the parrothead community, and we had some people go to bat for us early on when others wouldn't and we became part of the phlock, and, you know, we owe a lot of people a lot, Patti Kaley, number one, she really went up to bat for us early on and if it wasn't for her we probably wouldn't still be together. She got us into this and really was one of our best friends.

But since then there's been, you know, dozens of people now that have, have seen our worth and backed us up and it's been nice.

All right. Thank you very much again and I appreciate very much your taking the time to talk with us.

All right, Bill, appreciate it.

Congratulations, Mike, on your continued success, and we look forward to hearing a lot more music from the Boat Drunks.

Members of the Boat Drunks: