Jimmy Buffett pulled in some country-music ringers for the horribly titled License To Chill 

Buffett’s new sound was dubbed “gulf and western,” and it would be extremely good to him, even after his records stopped selling in the ’80s. By then, Buffett realized that he was selling a lifestyle as much as songs, and he branched out to writing books and, in 1985, his chain of Margaritaville restaurants (which has since expanded to retail stores, hotels, and casinos). There were also his annual tours, which emerged as the conservative and more corporate-friendly alternative to Deadhead culture. Going to a Jimmy Buffett show is like checking into to an all-inclusive resort for two hours: You get the sun and the buzz of a tropical retreat with none of the risk.

By the early ’00s, Buffett was one-quarter musician, three-quarters brand. It’s not that his music was unimportant to the overall experience, just that new music was no longer vital to Buffett’s bottom line. Buffett’s ’70s material had serious legs: With the emergence of Kenny Chesney, the biggest male country singer of the 21st century, Buffett’s vaunted place in modern country could not be denied. While Chesney’s music was a product of the Nashville mainstream, it was equally based in the easygoing mythology of sand and bland that Buffett popularized. Fittingly, Chesney is featured on License To Chill’s title track, a shopping-mall-blues number that repeats its wincing title far too many times. Chesney also pops up on the album-opening cover of Hank Williams’ “Hey Good Lookin’”—which offers everything bad about Buffett condensed down to three minutes and three seconds: the faux-reggae-isms, the “who gives a shit?” vocal delivery, the coked-up studio-hack instrumentation, and the emotional impact of a Corona Light.

What’s surprising about License To Chill is that once you get beyond the opening songs, it turns into a solid, even traditional country record. One of my favorite tracks is the pretty “Someone I Used To Love,” a duet with the eternally lovely Nanci Griffith, a singer-songwriter whose cult status suggests that Buffett’s grasp of this music isn’t just skin-deep. The Martina McBride duet on the jangly “Trip Around The Sun” is also nice, demonstrating a level of tenderness and nuance that Buffett has largely set aside as his image has become broader and more beer commercial-like in his later years.

I don’t want to give License To Chill too much credit. (It is a record named License To Chill after all.) It’s still a transparently opportunistic attempt to capitalize on the fame of Buffett’s co-stars. But it appears that Buffett at least tried to re-engage with the music he started out his career playing, and he does successfully work some of those old, un-used muscles again. I wish his collaboration with George Strait on the standard “Sea Of Heartbreak” kicked a little more ass (a la Johnny Cash’s version with Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers on 1996’s Unchained), and the jokey “Simply Complicated” leans on Jerry Springer references that were dated even in 2004. But there are large swaths of License To Chill that are pretty tolerable, particularly the pleasant likes of “Coast Of Carolina” and “Window On The World.”

Purists might scoff at the idea that Buffett has become as much a touchstone for new country singers as Johnny Cash. But with License To Chill, Buffett pretty much made his case. Not only was the album his biggest hit in years, it attracted three other country artists—Chesney, Jackson, and Strait—who also had No. 1 albums in 2004. In his own way, Buffett personifies all the old clichés about country legends: He’s been around forever, he sings a lot about drinking, and he’s stubbornly forged his own path, living the kind of life that most people only dream about—or turn to country songs to live vicariously. Buffett came to Nashville as an outsider, but more than 30 years later he had become a paragon of the establishment.

Coming up: Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road