Songwriters: Glenn Lewis Frey / Jimmy Buffett / Will Jennings
Glenn Frey, Jimmy Buffett and Steve Weisberg playing with two other men in Aspen, from the Aspen Times April 1, 1976. (Photo used later in June 16, 1977.)
Legends, parties, personalities,
but above all — musical inspiration
By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com
Mad Dog Studios in Old Snowmass is two, or three parts Rock music history, mixed with multiple legends, parties, personalities — and now a preservation project restoring the storied ranch’s charm and history while
simultaneously upgrading the recording studios with state-of-the-art
equipment to help launch the next generation of
legendary musicians. Named originally for long-time owner Glenn Frey's three frollicking dogs, countless parties, and top-flight recording sessions — with new owners, it now aims to be inspiration for a new crop of music legends.
"After sitting quiet for the better part of a decade, music has returned to Mad Dog. The wooded, creekside Rocky Mountain compound was once owned by Buffett and, later, Frey, who both regularly visited Aspen for rest and artistic inspiration beginning in the late 1970s. Mad Dog’s new owner, Julie Garside, has completed an ambitious renovation of the property’s main house (where she lives), small guest cabin, and two outbuildings that Buffett and Frey used as private recording studios," wrote Sara Kuta, in 5280 magazine, Sept. 16, 2021.
“I really want to share it with everyone because it’s such an awesome place,” Garside says. “I’d like it to be a creative, inspiring, safe space for artists who come here to create and find unique inspiration, collaborative moments.”
"Buffett bought the property in 1976, then sold it to his good friend
Frey in 1990. Frey converted two log-cabin outbuildings into small
recording studios, where he recorded his album Strange Weather and mixed the Eagles’ live album Hell Freezes Over.
Buffett, too, produced some creative works here, writing the songs “Son
of a Son of a Sailor,” “Changes in Attitudes, Changes in Latitudes,”
“Gypsies in the Palace,” and two children’s books. According to Garside,
the ranch also hosted some raucous, celebrity-filled parties in its
heyday (naturally)," Kuta writes.
Garside owns a property management company and is a retired ski instructor was recovering from knee surgery in 2015 and looking for a home renovation project to pursue when stumbled upon the property in a newspaper real estate ad. Intrigued, she reached out and scheduled a showing.
Kuta reports when she arrived on-site, she immediately felt a personal connection to the lush, green property, which is surrounded by tall trees and accessible via a covered bridge that crosses Snowmass Creek.
“When I stepped foot on the property, I just felt this instant creative energy,” she says. “It just felt like it’s in the ground. I feel like the property chose me.”
Mad Dog's renovation became her her biggest project yet. “Something in me felt, I needed a change. I need to do this. This is how I need to express myself,” she told Kuta.
Garside, a fan of Buffett, Frey, and the Eagles since childhood, began negotiating with Frey’s team. She wasn’t the highest bidder, she closed the deal because she planned to bring the property back to life, she thinks. The contract contract was signed in January of 2016, two days before Frey died of complications related to rheumatoid arthritis.
Renovated the guest cabin and the main house throughout 2017 and 2018, Garside also set up some older equipment in two, empty on-site recording studios. In 2019, she began hosting a few private events, songwriter retreats, and recording sessions.
With the pandemic hit. Garside saw a major uptick in requests for private events and individual parties, but she also used it as an opportunity to modernize the recording studios’ equipment and bring onboard Marc Meeker, a sound and recording engineer of 17 years who’s worked with the likes of the Rascal Flatts and Keith Urban.
Meeker, living in Nashville at the time, moved to Colorado to become Mad Dog’s engineer.
“There really is some magic in the studio and in the property
itself,” Meeker says. “Creative types are inherently very sensitive to
their environment. When you are coming in to try to reveal your most
sensitive feelings or create that moment, the environment and the
atmosphere means everything to them. Because if they don’t feel like
it’s a safe place where they can be comfortable and create, the magic
doesn’t happen,” quotes Kuta.
Jimmy Buffett fondly recalled his first meeting with Glenn Frey and their decades-long friendship in a touching tribute to the Eagles guitarist and co-founder upon Frey's death, according to a piece in Rolling Stone by Jon Blistien. Jan. 21, 2016.
The two musicians first met backstage at a concert at the Columbia Coliseum in South Carolina in August 1975: Buffett and his Coral Reefer Band had been tapped to open for the Eagles — “the best American band of my generation and many to follow,” the musician declared — and were well aware how important a gig like this was to their burgeoning career. After watching the Eagles soundcheck, Buffett told his band, “That is the kind of band we want to become."
“Waiting to go on that night seemed like an eternity,” Buffett continued. “Mixed emotions were flowing, fear, excitement, and a lot of ‘what if’s’ were running through my head, when the door suddenly opened and in walked Glenn Frey. That was the first time we met. He greeted me and the band warmly, thanked us for being there (duh?) and said to me how much he loved ‘A Pirate Looks at 40.’ He wished us luck and then went back out the door. That was the beginning of a long and lovely friendship.”
Buffett credits Frey and Don Henley for playing a huge role in his rise, including linking him with their manager, Irving Azoff, and asking him to serve as opener on the Eagles’ Hotel California tour.
Later, Frey and Buffett became neighbors in Aspen and frequent collaborators, and when the Eagles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Buffett was asked to deliver the induction speech.
“Glenn was a true friend, a true professional, an inspiration and sometimes could be a handful,” Buffett wrote. “I cherish great memories of our time spent together and will never forget his kindness that first night and our friendship for all these years.”
Jimmy Buffett’s Statement on Glenn Frey Death:
In August of 1975, I was sitting in a dressing room in the Columbia Coliseum in South Carolina, about ready to go onstage. It wasn’t your ordinary gig by any stretch of the imagination, and still gives me “chicken skin” as I write about this morning. We were opening for the Eagles, the best American band of my generation and many to follow. Any band worth their salt started out as an opener for somebody. Opening for the right band at the right time, could be your stairway to heaven.
Jimmy Buffett’s closing set at the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Labor Day Experience on Sunday marked the music legend’s first Jazz Aspen show, but it continues a relationship with Aspen that goes back nearly 50 years, says Andrew Travers, Aspen-based freelance journalist, and former Aspen Times writer in Sep 5, 2021.
"Though South Florida beaches and boats and sunny celebrations of the good life are the mainstay of the persona he’s created in song and on stage since the early 1970s, Buffett has also more quietly embraced mountain living and skiing here."
Buffett’s time in Aspen goes back to summer 1972, according to interviews with local media over the years, when the young Mississippi-bred singer-songwriter had just one album, 1970’s “Down to Earth.”
"He spent the following three summers here as his star rose and his songs made their first appearances on the charts — including “Why Don’t We Get Drunk (and Screw)” in 1973. After those initial summer stays, Buffett bought a house, stayed for the winter of 1975-76 and learned to ski," Travers writes.
"At the time, he was intent on splitting his time — or non-touring time, at least, as he was playing about 150 nights per year back then as his profile was growing — between the Florida Keys and Aspen, both still wild counterculture outposts at the time."
“I have the best of both worlds,” he told Aspen Magazine in the February-March 1976 issue. “I have the mountains and the ocean — the Florida Keys and Aspen. I don’t believe in waiting until you’re 55 to enjoy your times.”
Jimmy Buffett performing at the Aspen Club in September 1984.
He was then 29 years old and between the releases of his film and soundtrack “Ranch Deluxe” and his 1976 album “Havana Daydreamin’.”
The house he bought was a rustic creekside two-building property in Old Snowmass that Buffett would later sell to The Eagles’ Glenn Frey, who would convert Buffett’s log-built garage and office into the famed Mad Dog Ranch Studios in 1986.
"Buffett was among a bumper crop of shaggy young musicians here playing to the hippie ski bum masses and après-ski crowds in the ’70s, including The Eagles and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, many of them lured to town by the influential manager Irving Azoff, an Aspen regular and avid skier."
Buffett formed a long-running softball team in the Aspen rec league, called the Downvalley Doughboys, and landed a Corona beer sponsorship for the team. Tim Mooney, a J-Bar bartender at the time, recalled that the Doughboys got a four-case beer allotment per game and that Buffett once flew New York Yankees third baseman Craig Nettles to town to play as a Doughboy for a championship game. Their primary rival was Frey’s team, the Werewolves.
An August 1976 edition of the magazine Snowmass Affairs, previewing Buffett’s appearance at that year’s Snowmass Summer Festival — which also featured Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris and the Dirt Band — colorfully described Buffett’s on-stage presence at his early local shows: “Buffett bounces on stage like a hobo surfer healthy enough to do an orange juice commercial with his fun-tan and straw-colored hat.”
Buffett’s local backing band then, as now, was billed as the Coral Reefer Band, though with different personnel. Aspen Mountain ski instructor Mike Mooney — Tim’s brother — signed on as Buffett’s tour manager in those early days and remains so today.
Buffett’s breakthrough to super-stardom came in 1977 with the release of the platinum-selling album “’Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” and the anthem “Margaritaville.” That summer Buffett married his wife, Jane, at the Redstone Castle — renting the entire property for a three-day party. Their first child, Savannah Jane Buffett, was born at Aspen Valley Hospital in June 1979.
John Denver and Jimmy Buffett photographed for The Aspen Times at a Windstar Foundation auction hosted by Buffett on Dec. 23, 1982. (Aspen Historical Society/Cassatt Collection)
"Though his boozy, free-living beach-bound lifestyle was intertwined with his songs, Buffett said back then that he wasn’t interested in writing about Aspen, thus differentiating himself from another local friend who happened to be the most popular singer-songwriter in the world at that moment: John Denver"
“The things I write about are people I’ve seen, places I’ve been and experiences I’ve had,” Buffett said in the Aspen Magazine interview. “But I can experience and not feel that I have to reflect about it. I wrote a song once about how all my friends are writing about Colorado, I don’t like to write about feeling free with nature. I am in Aspen to enjoy it. I feel really nice rushes on the slopes, but I don’t have to make a song about it.”
An exception to that rule would come in 1985, when he and Glenn Frey memorialized the wild caretakers’ parties at Mad Dog Ranch in their co-written “Gypsies in the Palace.”
Along with finding an enduring public friendship here with the late Frey, Buffett bonded in Aspen with locally based cultural figures like the “60 Minutes” journalist Ed Bradley, actor Jack Nicholson and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” author Hunter S. Thompson, who Buffett recalled meeting in the mid-1970s.
Jimmy Buffett, Sen. Gary Hart and actor Jack Nicholson at a fundraiser for Hart’s presidential campaign at the Aspen Meadows on Aug. 25, 1983. Aspen Historical Society/Aspen Times Collection
“I lived downvalley and, through a mutual friend, I got invited over to Hunter’s house — of course I was a huge fan — and then he came down and saw my show in Denver with a bunch of guys from Aspen,” Buffett recalled in the 2007 oral biography “Gonzo,” “and we just immediately locked in.”
In 1977, Buffett, Thompson and Frey teamed for an event in the Aspen High School auditorium. Filmed by Grassroots TV — and now viewable on YouTube — the event included a Q&A by with Thompson followed by a concert performance by Buffett and Frey (which boasts an early rendition of “Margaritaville.”)
Along with playing the high school gym, Buffett performed in innumerable local venues and small festivals in those early years, known to sit in occasionally with Dirt Band member Jimmy Ibbotson at the Aspen Inn or with touring musicians including Willie Nelson at the Holiday Inn at Buttermilk.
After he became an international star, Buffett continued playing the Aspen area and remained a regular at benefit concerts like the Deaf Camp Picnic in Snowmass, at events like Aspen Junior Golf’s High Country Shootout, Windstar Foundation events and one-off fundraisers like a 1983 concert for Colorado Senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart at Aspen Meadows.
In more recent years, he took to occasionally playing small clubs like the Double Diamond and Belly Up Aspen under the pseudonym Freddy and the Fishsticks, including New Year’s week shows in both 2005 and 2006 that raised funds for local charities.
After selling the Old Snowmass house, Buffett didn’t buy another permanent home here but came back frequently for extended stays in in rented properties in all seasons and skiing with the Mooneys each winter. Annually on Christmas night, from the mid-70s on, Buffett was part of the tight-knit group that would celebrate the holiday at actor Jack Nicholson’s home in the West End. Those gatherings — including a mix of locals along with Thompson, Bradley, Henley and visitors like Paul Simon — continued until about a decade ago when Nicholson sold the house.
Most recently, during spring 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic, Buffett sent a special message and song via video to Aspen High School’s graduating class as students could not have a traditional graduation ceremony.
Referring to himself as “a child of the ’60s,” he called on the graduates to improve on his generation’s work making the world a better place.
“It’s your world out there ahead,” he told the young people, “and I have great confidence in the kids that I know and the kids that come to the shows, kids that I meet in Aspen when I’m out there, that you understand this better than we did.”
"If you visited the Mad Dog Ranch & Studios circa the 1980s, here’s what you’d most likely walk in on: a rowdy pig roast attended by famous musicians, local raconteurs and a mannequin in red-kitten heels resembling Glenn Frey’s ex-wife. You’d also find Jimmy Buffett’s bathtub in the backyard and two pristine recording studios where legendary songs were co-created with Colorado’s evocative nature," says a Dec. 16, 2022 story by Erin Lentz in the Aspen Daily News.
"Today, while the mannequin took its final bow along with stimulant-induced all-nighters, the rebel and creative spirit of this legendary property remains, thanks to visionary local owner Julie Garside, the new Inspire Aspen Foundation and Forum Phi Architects. The retreat has had a major face lift and its stewards are ensuring Aspen’s long-standing affair with music in the mountains. And while the property’s infamous studios now draw the likes of Coldplay’s Chris Martin and local students hoping to hit the big time, music remains the muse, " Lentz writes.
"Jimmy Buffett, a longtime fan of the Aspen area, discovered and purchased the Old Snowmass property in 1986. The initial entice? Its original covered bridge over Snowmass Creek, which today still lassoes oohs and ahhs from first-time visitors. In a 1981 Colorado Homes & Lifestyles article, Buffett stated: “The first thing I saw was the covered bridge taking you across the river to the log house. It wasn’t much, but there was potential.” That potential became a custom-built 2,900-square-foot home on 6.5 acres of wilderness. The escape inspired Buffett’s hit “Gypsies in the Palace,” which he recounted while headlining Jazz Aspen Snowmass’ 2021 Labor Day Festival, telling the tale of his former property manager: While Buffett was away on tour, the manager impersonated him at the Hotel Jerome, picked up two young ladies, brought them back to the ranch to party and drove Buffett’s Porsche into the river. Oops.
Buffett was known to throw legendary gatherings himself, often attended by the Eagles and longtime friend Glenn Frey. Frey liked the place so much that in 1990, Buffett sold the property to him. He quickly named the area Mad Dog Ranch because he had three dogs that frolicked along its grounds. Most notably, he reimagined the two log-cabin outbuildings into small recording studios designed by Frank Comentale of the famous Hit Factory in New York City. In these small yet mighty spaces he created his album Strange Weather (inspired by Colorado’s finicky forecast) and mixed the Eagles' live album Hell Freezes Over.
In 2016, longtime local Julie Garside spied a property listing in the local paper. “I used to bike by it all the time and had no idea it was Frey’s,” says Garside. Working with friend and realtor Tami Word, Garside acquired the ranch with a vision to perpetuate a community hub. “When we first looked at the property, it was in shambles,” she says. “No one had stayed in it for six years. Glenn had poured his money into the studio.”
Realizing the property required a major renovation, Garside enlisted Forum Phi Architects. Working with principal Ryan Lee, the team first tackled the guest house, located just 15 feet from the river. Standing among its newly constructed wood beams and modern kitchenette—a copy of Buffett’s book “A Pirate’s Look at Fifty” adorning the coffee table—Lee explains the location of the property’s buildings (the main cabin and guest house are in the 100-year floodplain) are integral to its unique DNA. “With today’s restrictions, this can never be done again—having a building so close to the river—which makes it special,” he says. “Julie wanted to bring this property back to life, getting people to record music in this serene setting once again as Frey and Buffett previously did. The remodel allowed us to get creative with the existing elements found throughout the house, keeping much of the original footprint and design elements implemented in the ‘70s and ‘80s.”
The main cabin was lifted 16 feet for a new foundation and the upstairs was completely renovated, creating new spaces for a guest bedroom and master suite. “Many of the existing features of the home were reused such as the fireplace, hand-carved wood door, and the original log structure,” says Lee. The curvilinear staircase remains, too, featuring handcrafted wood from Buffett’s boat, Euphoria. “We combined the new and old with similar synergy,” Garside told reporters.
"While the rest of the property required heavy lifting, its two recording studios—Studio A and Studio B—only needed a fresh coat of paint and new flooring. The cozy Studio B is considered a songwriting room, while the techy Studio A is a sound engineer’s dream, nicknamed The Rocketship, given its ready-for-lift-off acoustics. To position the studios (which can be integrated into one large space) for its next community phase, Garside enlisted Marc Meeker. As the full-time studio operations manager and lead engineer, Meeker is a 20-year veteran of the Nashville music scene. Sitting at the Neve Genesys Black G32 Console of Studio A, he says, “The room is part of the instrument. Every surface serves a purpose,” wrot Lentz.
"As such, all details of the space are designed to leverage sound: Walls are insulated with sandbags, the floor is reflective, stretched fabric on the ceiling and walls were created for sound absorption, and the studio houses 4,500 feet of electrical wire. “We’re paying homage to past and present and pushing the art forward,” Meeker says.
That art includes fostering musical education, sound engineering and songwriting workshops. While playing a beautiful track by a 16-year-old Glenwood Springs student, he explains she came into Studio A expecting to cover a Michael Jackson tune yet felt inspired to write her own lyrics. Within two hours she had her first song. “Watching the young kids, seeing the light bulbs going off, nothing can compare to that,” Meeker adds. He then plays Chris Martin’s acoustic version of Coldplay’s “Higher Power,” recently recorded in Studio A. “Chris went right to the keyboard and played on his knees. I offered him a chair and he didn’t want it,” he says. “When musicians come here, it’s more laid-back. It’s not about trying to make a hit but about creating art or expressing themselves.”
To further push music forward, Garside and Tami Word co-founded the Inspire Aspen Foundation in 2021. Quickly realizing that accessing a recording studio is expensive and not easily open to members and youth of the community, Mad Dog Ranch Studios turned from an LLC to a 501(c)3. With nonprofit status, Inspire Aspen could fundraise and apply for grants, providing a free and subsidized space where young and emerging musicians can connect, play and create.
"Inspire Aspen has quickly gained attention, staging annual Aspen Rocks student competitions at the Wheeler Opera House among other immersive programs.
“There aren’t many places where students can go to a studio and learn about engineering, songwriting, recording or DJ-ing,” Word says.
The property is also a community hub, featuring a large, riverside teepee and plenty of space for hosting private parties. “Back in the day, everyone who came out here came to play music, party or both,” she says, adding that John Denver recorded his last song ever at Mad Dog, and Hall & Oates was known to visit, too. Today, that torch is carried forward via events like this past summer’s hit soirée with Texas musician Pat Greene. What’s more, a percentage of all event proceeds further fund Inspire Aspen.
“We party with a purpose,” says Word.
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