Lending a Name

It’s a "License to Chill" — and to print money — for this circle of buds.

Three out of four peddle an almost identical dream: lazy toes in white sand, crystal waters, sailboats, girls in bikinis and lots and lots of beer and tequila.

Three of the four — Jimmy Buffett, Sammy Hagar and Toby Keith — also sell plenty of those frosty libations at their own name-branded restaurants in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe. Buffett’s Margaritaville is said to be the top-grossing restaurant in the country.

The fourth, Kenny Chesney, so far does not have a restaurant, but does bring his Corona beer-sponsored "Poets and Pirates Tour" to the MGM Grand Garden today. In honor of that, we recap the history of the Buffett-Hagar-Keith-Chesney School of Business.

• 1996: Buffett brings his Parrot Head thing to the MGM Grand Garden for the first time. "The MGM people told us that after (that) concert, there wasn’t a drop of tequila left in the whole hotel," local restaurateur Tommy Rocker later noted.

• 2000: The MGM’s Buffett concerts in April introduce a new twist: the introduction of Margaritaville brand tequila at $5 per pop.

In June, Hagar rocks the annual JuneFest concert near Sam Boyd Stadium while Keith plays the nearby Sunset Station amphitheater. The two are introduced by Don Marrandino, who then ran Sunset Station.

"We got a bus or something, and any place there was a stage we pulled up and they got out and played," he recalls.

Hagar followed the success of his six-year-old Cabo Wabo Cantina in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, by partnering with a small distillery to make Cabo Wabo Tequila.

"I’ve sold damn near the same amount of bottles of tequila as I have of my new record," he told the Review-Journal in 1999, proud of what then seemed an impressive 230,000 bottles.

Marrandino spends much of the year lobbying Hagar to open an offshoot of his cantina at Sunset Station, but "we never pulled the trigger on it."

• 2004: Cabo Wabo goes north instead, opening at Harvey’s in Lake Tahoe, following Marrandino, who oversees it. "We took a restaurant that was doing about $1.6 million (annually) and turned it into a restaurant-club that’s doing $5 million plus," Marrandino says.

In Las Vegas, Buffett kicks off 2004 with a poolside concert in January to launch the new Margaritaville restaurant at the Flamingo Las Vegas. The 27,000-square-foot facility seats 650 people and grosses $44 million per year.

• 2005: Marrandino is back in Southern Nevada, where Keith gets his first I Love This Bar & Grill! at Harrah’s Las Vegas. "I remember calling him up one day: ‘I know you’ve thought about opening a restaurant.’

"He said, ‘No, I haven’t.’ Now there’s four (around the country)."

The restaurant grosses at least $1 million per month.

• 2006: "Jimmy Buffett invented everything that I’m trying to do, except maybe I came up with (marketing) tequila before he did," Hagar says. By now, he sells a million bottles of tequila each year. Margaritaville at the Flamingo ordered 45 cases of Hagar’s brand in just one month, he says.

• 2007: Buffett blows the crowd a kiss. Except he’s just an image on a video screen at Kenny Chesney’s concert at Mandalay Bay. The first song is "Beer in Mexico," not to be confused with Keith’s "Stays in Mexico" or James Taylor’s "Mexico," often covered by Buffett.

The Review-Journal’s Jason Bracelin notes the concert’s "boozy escapism," the musical equivalent of "one of those sun-baked Corona beer commercials, where everyone has their toes in the sand and the biggest concern is falling coconuts."

• 2008: Corona debuts its beer commercial featuring Chesney with his toes in the sand. "Corona’s image of sun and beach is a natural complement with the persona and essence of Kenny Chesney," a Corona marketing executive says in a press release.

And last weekend, Marrandino was off to see Chesney at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., where Hagar was one of the opening acts (here it’s LeAnn Rimes; Hagar is only on the stadium dates).

Can Chesney’s restaurant be far behind?

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.