Sailing along, singing songs about the coast was a fine life for twenty-something newlyweds Jim and Vicki Swinson, but the birth of their son turned the tide.

With Jake on board, the Swinsons knew it was time to stop acting their age. Jim gave up his Jimmy Buffet ambitions and charted a different course. On Earth Day 1992, he became Pamlico Joe, the "fishin' musician with a mission."

Contributed photo (ENLARGE)

Jim and Vicki Swinson, known to young audiences as Pamlico Joe and Cleanwater Flow, have been bringing their environmental message to schoolchildren along the East Coast since 1992.

"We started thinking a little bit bigger once our son was born," Jim said. "We just knew that there was something more meaningful out there that we could do with music."

He stopped playing clubs and fielding requests for "Freebird" and started performing for children, teaching them to sing along to tunes like "Be Fair to the Air." With Pamlico Joe, Jim went from crooner to crusader and from entertainer to environmentalist.

"We wanted to do something that we were proud to bring our son to," said Vicki, who joined the act as Pamlico Joe's sidekick, Cleanwater Flow.

While Jake has grown up, much of the audience has not. For more than 15 years, Pamlico Joe and Cleanwater Flow have entertained and educated elementary schoolers up and down the East Coast.

The two perform for as many as 50,000 students a year. They spend as many as 75 days a year on the road, performing 150 or more concerts at schools, libraries, museums, festivals and camps.

"This is our full-time gig," Jim said last week in a telephone interview from the couple's home on Chocowinity Bay. "We're always traveling."

Their concerts regularly take them along a circuit from Raleigh and Charlotte to Wilmington and Virginia Beach. But they've toured as far north as Washington, D.C., and as far south as Florida, where Vicki grew up and the couple met more than 20 years ago.

Jim was on spring break in Key West. The Greenville native, who played in the jazz band at J.H. Rose High School, had graduated to performing jazz, beach and rock music at clubs when he met Vicki, a former cheerleader.

"He moved down that summer," Vicki recalled. "That was all she wrote."

These days, the Swinsons write their own material for performances, including songs like "I'm a Pelecypod" (a marine or freshwater mollusk) and "Whirled Peas" (world peace).

"We didn't want to go down the 'Barney' or Disney path," Jim said. "Our concerts are from a parents' standpoint. They're not created by adults for what they think kids will like ... There's a very earthy feel to our program."

In short storytelling sessions between original songs like "Does Litter Bug You?" and classics such as "This Land is Your Land," the Swinsons emphasize concepts like recycling and the preservation of the ecosystem. The eco-friendly format has persisted through the years, even during times it wasn't easy being green.

"During that time when it was kind of quiet and there wasn't a push for environmentalism, we still kind of pushed," Vicki said. "We continued to do it even when it wasn't a popular thing to do. Now it's coming back around."

The Swinsons have performed four times at the White House. But their primary audience comes from primary grades, a fact that keeps this grass-roots group grounded.

"We played on Easter Monday at the White House," Jim said. "On the following Saturday we played at the Farmville Dogwood Festival, and we were next to the petting zoo and the face painting."

In recent years, the Swinsons have played fewer festivals, scheduling more shows in school settings.

"You go into a concert, you might have 250 or 300 kids all echoing the same song," Jim said. "It's just so rewarding.

"It's not hard to get pumped up for kids. Everybody's glad to see you. That's the really big charge for us."

Now that their son, Jake, has graduated from high school, the Swinsons could move back toward more mature music. Instead, they hope to perform for the pre-adolescent set until they retire.

"The first generation that saw us has now got kids at our program," Jim said.

"It's something we truly love."

For more information, visit www.pamlicojoe.com