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Glenn Goodman penned a song that appears on Jimmy Buffett's latest album.
It’s a song about how the things we thought we had for ourselves — secret spots and places — are quickly disappearing.
It’s got a rock & roll feel and a Jimmy Buffett sound, of course, but the surf anthem “Hey, That’s My Wave,” originally sprang from the mind of Sag Harbor chiropractor, surfer and musician Dr. Glenn Goodman.
The song appears on Mr. Buffett’s latest album, “Life on the Flip Side,” which was released in May.
“Surf spots are filling up all over the world,” Dr. Goodman observed during an interview last week. “There are no more secret spots.”
It’s that sense of invasion, underscored in the defiant refrain, “Hey, that’s my wave,” that drove Dr. Goodman to pen the song. “Surfing’s gone hip, all over the world.”
“There was a time as a surfer you could go anywhere,” said Dr. Goodman, who has been surfing since he was 8 years old in Miami, when “all there were, were long boards.” Today he spends most of his surf days in Montauk, but has surfed all over, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, the Virgin Islands and California. “Now you have to be much more selective about finding a surf spot,” he said.
It’s a sentiment he expresses in the song’s first lyric: “It used to be so easy / Life was so well-defined / Walk to the beach and ride the ocean / Any place, any time”
It’s not hard to extend that sentiment to other aspects of life on the East End, from finding tables at a favorite restaurant, to space on a trail. Mr. Goodman is also an avid trailbiker and noted how crowded the woods have become.
“The other day, we passed 40 people and six dogs on a 16 mile ride,” he said.
While his day job is helping to heal the people of the East End, he devotes a lot of his time to songwriting and surfing. Which is how he came to know Mr. Buffett.
The two men first met when Mr. Buffett came for a treatment with Dr. Goodman’s wife, and fellow chiropractor, Dr. Suzanne Kirby. But it was waiting for a wave off the beach in Montauk when he really got to know Mr. Buffett.
“We were sitting out on the water just talking, sharing stories,” Dr. Goodman said. “And then we went to breakfast.”
The two became friends and bonded over surfing.
So it seemed a natural thing to do to share his songs, and one day Dr. Goodman handed off to Mr. Buffett a CD of six songs he had recorded at Monk Music Studios in East Hampton, including “Hey, That’s My Wave.”
“He called an hour later and said ‘Dude, we gotta do that song,” recounted Dr. Goodman. “I knew he was gonna love it.”
Mr. Buffett took the song and, according to Dr. Goodman, said he was going to “Buffett-ize” it. That is, give it a sound easily identifiable as a Jimmy Buffett song. Fans will recognize the congas, steel drums and twangy, Dick Dale-style surf guitar throughout the song.
One morning, recalled Dr. Goodman, he woke up to find an email with a video of Mr. Buffett performing, “Hey, That’s My Wave.”
“And then he says, ‘We did it!’”
The experience was an interesting one for Dr. Goodman, who noted “we actually co-created a derivative of my original song.” He added that he even got to sing on the chorus, which he recorded from vacation in Costa Rica.
“There were iguanas crawling on the roof while I was singing,” he laughed.
on Jul 8, 2020