When the volcano blows: Keith Sykes to play St. Pete show

When John Prine started his own label, Oh Boy! Records, the first artist he signed was Memphis singer/songwriter Keith Sykes.

Sykes, who’ll play a solo show May 10 at Noisemakers in St. Petersburg, collaborated often with Prine. “No Ordinary Blue,” on Prine’s final album (in 2018), was a co-write.

“We were best friends from the time we met – not THE best, but best friends,” Sykes reports. “Within a year of meeting. We just got to know each other and enjoyed hanging out. We enjoyed it so much that it was 15 years before it dawned on us to write a song.” (That was 1986’s “Love, Love, Love.”)

Of their songwriting collaborations, Sykes says he’s most proud of “You Got Gold,” 1981. “That’s just a marvelous little entity, you know?”

Sykes is part of a fraternity of exceptionally literate songwriters who became lifelong friends, recorded each other’s songs, penned a few together and shared a lot of laughs, a lot of bottles and many road miles over the years.

Jerry Jeff Walker was the first to break out, in the early 1970s.

“I went to Key West,” Sykes recalls, “and I called Jerry Jeff to see if he could introduce me to some people or somethin.’ And he wasn’t even there. The girl he was living with at the time was there. She said ‘go to this particular corner, on Caroline Street, and that’s where you’ll meet all the people you need to meet in Key West.’

“So I did. And that’s where I met Jimmy Buffett.

“I remembered that Jerry Jeff had told me that when they did gigs together, they’d put his name out front – and people would come in looking for a buffet. A big spread of food. And when it wasn’t there, they’d all take off. And they’d keep on looking for food.

“So when we met, I had that in the back of my mind. I don’t know what Jerry Jeff told Buffett about me when they were touring, but when we met he said ‘Keith Sykes – I’ve heard of you.’ I said ‘I’ve heard of you too.’ He wasn’t a star or anything yet.”

Buffett and his Coral Reefer Band cut a handful of Sykes originals, including “Train to Dixie,” “Coast of Marseilles” and “The Last Line.” In 1979 Buffett invited Sykes to become a member of the band as a singer and guitarist. Decamping to the Caribbean Island of Montserrat to record at George Martin’s AIR Studios, Sykes, with an eye raised to the island’s then-dormant Soufrière Hills volcano, was hit with a flash of geological inspiration.

I don’t know where I’m a-gonna go when the volcano blows.

“‘Volcano’ is a super song,” Sykes says. “Even if I didn’t have anything to do with it I would think that. But since I did get to be involved in that in a major way, it’s very much a point of pride that it’s done so well and so many people enjoy it. I have a lot in that song – it’s my melody, and he and I wrote the lyrics. Jimmy made it be fun.”

(“Volcano” is also credited to Coral Reefer bassist Harry Dailey, who had a home on Madeira Beach at the time.)

He traveled the world with Buffett. “Talk about a wild time,” Sykes writes on his website. “Everywhere we went, we went first class, and every night we had a packed house. Jimmy was the best person in the world to work for, and was always very caring when it came to the band and crew.”

But his solo career beckoned. His own independently-recorded and released album I’m Not Strange, I’m Just Like You was picked up by MCA Records. Sykes and his band performed on Saturday Night Live.

The album, and its followup It Don’t Hurt to Flirt, failed to catch the world on fire.

Sykes the songwriter, however, was hot stuff in the ‘80s. Rodney Crowell, Rosanne Cash, Guy Clark, Jerry Jeff Walker and John Prine – all part of that circle of like-minded friends – continued to cut his tunes.

“When you look at as a whole it’s like wow, that is an amazing thing, that all this happened,” he says. “Because we came from all over the place and wound up being friends with each other. It’s really cool – and it’s a pretty good-sized community, when you think about it.

“We all looked at ourselves when Jimmy went through the roof: ‘Damn, man! Good work, brother.’”

Sykes says he never silently fumed with jealousy. “I just thought congratulations were in order.”

(Soufrière Hills finally blew in 1996 – AIR Studios did not survive.)

He and Jerene, his wife of many years, live just outside of Memphis. Sykes tours frequently, playing club dates and house concerts, and hosts a Songwriters Weekend Festival every autumn in Stephenville, Texas.

“I don’t have a lot of fall back on. I never made it huge like some people. To me, Prine is plenty huge. That’s wonderfully huge. Although he’s not like Jimmy was, or Taylor Swift is – swallowing the entire whale, rather than being swallowed.

“But when you get to make a living doing this for 50-something years, it’s pretty cool, even if you’re not … I would just call myself a workin’ man. I’m just a workin’ man in this stuff. The big guys are the big guys, and that’s all well and good. I’m just lucky that a lot of the big guys thought what I was doing was big enough to say something about.”

Oh, and one more thing, if you don’t mind: “I’d like to get a little more money each time I play. Does that ever stop? Just because you got married doesn’t mean you don’t like lookin’ at girls.”

Keith Sykes in concert at 7 p.m. Friday, May 10 at Noisemakers, 2616 Emerson Avenue South, St. Petersburg. Find tickets here.