“Our thing is to try to make the crowd happy, make ’em smile for five minutes, or a set, or an evening …”
This is how Tropical Soul’s Dennis McCaughey sees his job as a performer. He and partner Randy Zimmerman have crafted a career out of giving local ParrotHeads what they want, and what they want is Trop Rock. Pennsylvania may not seem the obvious place to throw on the jumbo-print Hawaiian shirt and break out the steel drums, but, it turns out, there are plenty of people whose idea of leisure time involves sand, water and sea breezes.Fortunately for them, Tropical Soul is more than willing to pack up the beach and bring it to a deck or a bar a bit closer to home.
McCaughey describes Tropical Soul’s “gospel” of Trop Rock as “a little bit country, a little bit of Caribbean, and a lyric that relates to a laid-back lifestyle. That’s what it all comes down to in a nutshell, that laid-back lifestyle – enjoying the water and the ocean and maybe a cocktail or two and some nice music. That’s really what we ride on.”
By now, the picture is probably emerging of a certain obscenely successful, graying, parrot-loving, professional chiller-outer who’s missing a salt shaker. This is no accident. When asked directly how important Jimmy Buffett’s revolution of relaxation is to Tropical Soul, McCaughey unashamedly replies, “It’s very important. I don’t think we would be able to do Tropical Soul as it is without the whole Jimmy Buffett connection.”
McCaughey formed Tropical Soul after noticing a gap in the market in the local scene in 1998. (Any successful venture requires a bit of capitalistic instinct, even if it does have an El Duderino facade.) McCaughey recalls, “I started to realize that there’s enough people out there that identify with the music and the message of [Trop Rock]. I thought, ‘You know, this could be a really cool niche to go out there and explore this theme … and just ride that wave.’”
Some combination of marketing, creating a demand and then supplying that demand has been in play for Tropical Soul since the band’s inception, as its 11 years have been a steady climb. McCaughey started the project with a partner who has since moved on, playing 40 or so shows a year. He then found Zimmerman on the Internet, and the two quickly discovered that they lived eight doors down from one another. McCaughey says, “We started playing together and things really clicked. Before you know it, things had taken off and we started doing 60, 70 gigs a year, and we’ve been doing that ever since.” McCaughey and Zimmerman will perform about 135 times in 2009, and McCaughey will do another 30 or so shows by himself. This is beginning to sound suspiciously like work.
The coup d’etat for McCaughey, however, is that over a year ago he was able to quit working for the man. He chillaxed his way into the one thing most local musicians only dream of: music as full-time employment. I was curious what a typical day looks like for someone dedicated to leisure, but shrewd enough to make a living out of music. McCaughey says,  “Today, I got up and worked on my music a little bit, practicing some songs that I’ve been working on. I went out and spent some time on my boat late this morning, out on the Susquehanna River. I had a little lunch out there, floated around for a while, enjoyed the sun.  Tonight I’ll work on music a little more.
“Sounds like a Tropical Soul kind of life to me,” he adds, pleased with his realization.
Pick a cover band out of a backwards baseball hat and you’ll find a group of guys that know “Margaritaville,” but few are devoted wholly to the ethos of chillaxing tropical-style as McCaughey and Zimmerman.  They seek to dial in just the right balance of covers and originals to suit an audience. “There are a lot of people that would like to hear a lot of the Jimmy Buffett stuff, which is very popular, so we certainly do our share of Buffett songs,” McCaughey explains. “We just try to sprinkle enough of our own stuff in there to showcase it, making sure people understand the type of message that we like to put across.”
McCaughey says Tropical Soul broadens the covers to perfectly create that niche, adding songs by Bob Marley, Kenny Chesney, Beach Boys and other artists who “fit in that same broad tropical, beach-type music category.”  The band’s overall message has a bit more in common with Corona advertising than “Buffalo Soldier,” but who says the two can’t co-exist?
While Tropical Soul is by nature a live, audience-participation experience, the group has released a few albums as well. The most recent was 2008’s We’re all Here Come Hell or Highwater, a live album that featured guest guitar work from the sacred ParrotHead source: Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band. McCaughey looks forward to recording another album, but seems to be in no hurry, as Tropical Soul is staying plenty busy.
“We’ve done a fair amount of traveling over the last few years,” he says. “This year alone, along with PA, of course, we’ve played in Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, Delaware, Ohio …”
What perhaps best illustrates Tropical Soul’s importance to the ParrotHead community is the fact that the group has been invited for the 11th time to perform at ParrotHeads in Paradise Meeting of the Minds, the massive annual Jimmy Buffett fan gathering in Key West, Florida.
McCaughey adds that the group has also “played a week in Key West down at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville restaurant, we played Sarasota, Palm Beach, just took our first trip to Ontario, Canada, about a week ago …”
When asked what the long-term goals are for Tropical Soul, McCaughey says simply,  “Keep expanding our horizons, keep recording and just continue to spread that Trop Rock music around.
“It’s been amazing. I don’t see it winding down,” he adds. “I don’t see people losing interest in this. People still identify with the whole lifestyle and the message of the music, and it just makes people feel good.  There’s nothing better than that for me.”