Posthumous Jimmy Buffett Album to Include Songs ‘That Have Never Been Out,’ Says Coral Reefer Band
Categoria: Musica
Mac McAnally also talks about the future of Shrimp Boat Sound Studio in Florida.
Por Billboard | 20/07/2026
Nearly three years after Jimmy Buffett’s death , his legacy endures — and continues to expand. His Coral Reefer Band continues to help Parrotheads waste away in Margaritaville (and across the country) to the old hits, and there’s more music on the way. Buffett chief lieutenants Mac McAnally and Michael Utley — who co-produced Buffett’s final album, Equal Strain on All Parts , released just two months after his passing in 2023 – have put the finishing touches on a posthumous album that McAnally tells Billboard “is, for the most part, things that have never been out.” Or if they were released, they were “cut for a one-off purpose, a TV episode or a movie. The oldest of these tracks is, like, 2003, and the newest is maybe four years ago or so. None of those things have ever been on a Jimmy Buffett album. We’re pretty excited.” The Coral Reefers are even playing one of the tracks, “Workin’ n’ Playin’,” which was written as the title song for Buffett’s 2015-2016 tours, in its concerts this summer. “(Buffett) and I used to talk about the fact that our work is playing, and our play is work…and we wrote that song the year we had a tour called Workin’ n’ Playin’,” McAnally says. “It’s really good, so it’s on this album and we do it now as sort of a duet between the band and Jimmy.” The set also includes an outtake song from the 2017 Escape to Margaritaville stage musical; a piece that accompanied Buffett’s recurring character (Frank Bama) on the CBS’ Hawaii Five-O reboot during the 2010s; and another tune that was heard for just a few seconds during Buffett’s cameo as a bartender in 2015’s Jurassic World . The album has no title or release date yet, but McAnally says, “we’re done with the music, and it’s really good. It’s a good hodgepodge. When you hear Jimmy sing you can tell that he’s smiling; you can hear that smile, and I’ve been listening to that smile for three months finishing this record, so I’m almost sore from smiling — but I ain’t gonna quit.” Additional good news for Buffett fans was a recent decision in Key West to permit Buffett’s Shrimp Boat Sound Studio in the Historic Seaport to operate as a tourist destination as well as a commercial recording studio. “It’s a little concrete block building where shrimp boats used to dump shrimp, that for some reason or another good things happen in,” says McAnally, who was in Key West on his birthday last week to help push the measure through. “We want it to be a studio, but when it’s not booked people are going to be able to go in there and tour it, the same way they’re managing Muscle Shoals Sound and Fame [in Alabama]. That can generate not only income but also generate continued interest in the history of what’s happ