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Cayamo: A Journey Through Song, was a six-day Caribbean cruise in early February 2008, featuring many acclaimed songwriters including Lyle Lovett, Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin, John Hiatt, Buddy Miller, Brandi Carlile, Ari Hest, The Duhks & Patrick Davis. From the perspective of our correspondent, everything revolved around one musician--Buddy Miller--the irrepressible sideman who could easily steal a show, if it weren't for so many fans and artists just handing him accolades. A string of award-winning solo albums and a successful partnership with his wife, Julie Miller, will do that to an artist.

For everyone not quite at the cruise stage of life, we give you a first-hand report.

By Jim McKelvey

I honestly don't know where to begin talking about the Cayamo cruise. Just drove my son to school and he had a blast with his three older brothers all week. I had the time of my life on the Cayamo cruise.

Was trying to think how many hours of shows I heard with Buddy Miller since last Wednesday. Am certain it is over 10 (and maybe 15) hours. There was a couple next to us at the Patti Griffin show who said they would buy a Buddy Miller action figure if it was available.Almost every time you walked into the concert hall Buddy's guitars would be set up on the left side of the stage waiting for him to guest or play an entire set with the headliner.

Since we booked the first week you where allowed we got second row seats on the aisle for all of the big shows and sat with the same incredible bunch of people each night for the early show. I had a much better vantage point than the official photographers for the cruise and can't tell you how happy I was about that.

Buddy and his band played a general admission show on the Lido deck (the 13th floor on the top of 'ship') and I think they had the most people there of any show they did the whole week. It was wall to wall people who just love the man. I'm having a little trouble writing this. I'm Irish and we get misty eyed sometimes.

We got a really good seat about an hour before the show so we got to hear them do the soundcheck, too.

Everybody knew the Buddy show was going to be special and then during the soundcheck Emmylou and her mother sat down to the left side of the stage. Almost every artist had their parents along who sat in a reserved section in the first three rows (and yes, having the artists' mom or dad at a show does make for a very special show). There were two chairs behind Emmylou and, of course, Patti Griffin and Shawn Colvin filled those in short order. They all four had a glow about them in the sunset light and clearly were also having a mighty fine time on the cruise.

Later Shawn Colvin told Buddy onstage during her show in the Caribbean Lounge that she was sorry but when he is playing that good she is just drawn to the stage to play with him. Shawn played Buddy's white electric guitar during the Lido show and cranked it up.

Frankly, looking around on the Lido deck it seemed like every artist on the cruise was somewhere sitting on a deck chair or standing.

So, that Lido set turned out to be a reunion of the "Three Girls and Their Buddy" only this was no simple acoustic set. They rocked the boat!!! I mean, they ROCKED THE BOAT for about 75 minutes.

At other shows Brandi Carlile became sort of the fourth member of the "Three Girls and Their Buddy" band. Brandi also rocked my world during her shows and whenever she was a guest (which was often) at other shows.

I had chosen the Buddy Miller "workshop" and had told him in Chapel Hill, North Carolina backstage that I was so exited to take a songwriter workshop with him. They billed it that way back in June but he didn't know it.

So he opened the packed workshop, with maybe five hundred people filling the Adriatic Lounge, by saying someone had told him this was a writer workshop and he wasn't the writer in the family. Julie is the writer in the family. He said he even called the production company, Sixthman, to make sure he could just invite some friends (Emmylou) and just play a set. Then he asked is the guy I talked to in the audience? I raised my hand, got up on the stage and tried to give him a little erasable board to write on but Buddy would have none of that pushing the board away and the crowd just roared in laughter.

So, for his second song he said, "This is a song the band doesn't usually do but we had a request and we're happy to do it. This is for Jan and Jim on their 30th anniversary." I kissed my wife in the front row and everyone around us asked if we were Jan and Jim? Then, Buddy did the most heartfelt version of "That's How Strong My Love Is" that I've ever heard him do and it was the first time for my wife to hear it. Yep, I'm getting misty again.

Was thinking I really shouldn't request any more songs because of everything he had already done. In Chapel Hill I had asked him to do "Shelter Me" when he couldn't figure out which song to do first and he had done it on the spot with Patti Griffin wailing behind him. Of course, at the workshop I kept my mouth shut but he did "Shelter Me" for his third song and I turned to my wife and she just shook her head in disbelief. We were having a really good day.

After the show Bryan Owings' wife came up to me and said when she got married that was the song that Buddy sang and that Buddy had done the wedding vows with Phil.

She also asked me to send her some pictures of her husband because she had seen that I had the best seats to get good shots of him. Told her I'd be happy to do that and we exchanged ways to get in touch with each other.

So, this story gets better (for me at least).

After a very late night Shawn Mullins set that same day I went up to the Lido deck again for some desert. My wife was already in bed and I also really wanted to see the stars. It had been one of those days where I wanted to just thank God I was on this planet and the Lido deck at the hour is very quiet.

Everyone hangs in the Casino for some reason?

When I got some desert Buddy Miller walked up behind me I guess with the same idea. There was nobody else up there. Told him how much it meant to my wife and I to have him play the song for us and we shook hands. He then said he was sorry he made a joke about the songwriting workshop at my expense and hoped I wasn't upset about it. Told him I'd be his straight man anytime and thought it was so funny, too. We talked about the Owings wedding a bit and then I wished him well on the "big" tour with T-Bone Burnett. When you look up kindness in the dictionary there should be at least a picture of Buddy Miller. Julie should just be so proud of him.

What an end to an amazing day...please feel free to pass this around to other lists. It was the best week of my life and people should start to save for next year. Just an incredible amount of memories that were so special pretty much each day...

P.S. Yes, I'm going to post pictures in the next couple of days.

Photos here