Lennie Gallant was flown in to record his part to the song "Portugal or PEI" at Jimmy Buffett’s Shrimp Boat Sound studio in Key West, Fla.Supplied
In the fall of 2022, Acadian singer-songwriter Lennie Gallant received a phone call from his friend Jimmy Buffett. He hadn’t heard from him in more than a decade, but the billionaire balladeer wanted to write a song called Portugal or PEI and needed some help with the PEI part.
“I thought it was an odd title,” Gallant recalls, speaking recently from the province’s north shore.
The song references the historical link between Portugal and Prince Edward Island, created by hundreds of years of Portuguese fishermen frequenting the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Working remotely, Gallant collaborated on the song with the Margaritaville singer and Nashville producer/musician Will Kimbrough. Turns out Buffet and Kimbrough were both quite familiar with PEI. “I was surprised how much they knew,” Gallant says.
After the song was written, Gallant and his fiancée and musical partner, Patricia Richard, were flown in to record his part to the song at Buffett’s Shrimp Boat Sound studio in Key West, Fla. Portugal or PEI is one of 14 tracks on Buffett’s final album, Equal Strain on All Parts, released posthumously in November, 2023. Buffett died two months prior, at the age of 76.
“You would never have guessed he was ill,” Gallant says, in advance of concerts next weekend in Toronto and Owen Sound, Ont. “Jimmy always had a smile on his face, and he didn’t want to talk about it. We weren’t even sure exactly what the illness was, but we were pretty sure it was cancer.”
It was Merkel-cell carcinoma, diagnosed four years earlier.
There’s a line in Portugal or PEI, “Life is always better when you add a little island.” Buffett would know about living on the water. He had homes in Key West, Palm Beach, Fla., Sag Harbor, N.Y., and St. Bart’s, a paradise in the French West Indies. Margaritaville is a state of mind, and it was the easy-living Buffett’s mission to get his listeners there. If he couldn’t do it by himself, he called on people such as Gallant for help.
Born in Rustico, PEI, Gallant is a Juno-nominated member of the Order of Canada. His song Peter’s Dream was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019. The tune is from Gallant’s 1994 album The Open Window, a favourite of Buffett’s that also included Mademoiselle (Voulez-Vous Danser), which the Cheeseburger in Paradise star covered for his 2002 album Far Side of the World.
Over the years of their friendship, the pair exchanged countless texts and calls. “Jimmy was very intent on working on his French,” Gallant says, “and every communication had a good deal of him speaking or writing in the language.”
In 2005, Buffett invited Gallant to perform Mademoiselle with him at Toronto’s Molson Amphitheatre (now Budweiser Stage).
“It was pretty cool,” Gallant says. “I was sitting on stage on a surfboard singing my song.”
The surfboard was not strictly for show. Years later, while Gallant was living in Nova Scotia, Buffett flew up in his plane to catch high waves in the aftermath of a tropical storm. “I cooked lobster and we had a jam session,” Gallant says.
It was not Buffett’s first ramble into Canada’s East Coast, not by a long shot.
“I’ve got more family in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia than I do in the States,” Buffett told The Canadian Press in 2004. “Canada holds a special place in my heart. Most of my family’s still up there,” he explained.
His taste for adventure and island life may have passed down from his grandfather, Captain James D. Buffett Sr., a mariner from Sydney, N.S., on Cape Breton Island, who immigrated to Alabama. The accomplished seafarer was the inspiration behind the Buffett songs Son of a Son of a Sailor and The Captain and the Kid.
Over the years, Buffett’s unannounced seaplane visits to the East Coast satisfied urges for oysters, surfing, fishing and family. He frequented Cow Bay and Lawrencetown in Nova Scotia, and once dropped into Rose Blanche, N.L., to track down his family roots and anonymously play an open-mic night at a bar on George Street in St. John’s.
(Another Canadian connection: The 1969 Neve mixing console at Shrimp Boat Sound was purchased by Buffett from Gordon Lightfoot in the late 1990s.)
In addition to Portugal or PEI, Gallant also co-wrote and sang on Johnny’s Rhum, about French pop singer Johnny Hallyday. Other contributors on Buffett’s final album include Angelique Kidjo, Emmylou Harris and, on My Gummie Just Kicked In, Paul McCartney.
During Gallant’s visit to Florida, he and his wife were put up in Buffett’s beach house in Palm Beach. Because Gallant was working on his own album at the time, Buffett not only allowed him use of the house’s home studio but supplied a recording engineer and lent him a vintage Martin acoustic guitar last played by McCartney.
“I was afraid to touch it,” Gallant says.
Although Portugal or PEI references the Mi’kmaq language and the landmarks Cavendish and Malpeque Bay, Buffett apparently never set foot in the beachy province. His attempts to visit Gallant were repeatedly postponed because of his illness. As late as eight days before his death, Buffett sent a text to Gallant about making the trip.
Gallant later posted a series of videos on YouTube that serve as a what-if travelogue, titled Jimmy’s Visit to PEI – The Trip That Should Have Been.
“He really wanted to come,” Gallant says. “He was undergoing treatment and was still positive. He really believed he could get through it.”
Lennie Gallant plays Summerfolk Music Festival in Owen Sound, Ont., on Aug. 16 and 17; and Hugh’s Room Live in Toronto on Aug. 18.