Posthumous Jimmy Buffett Album to Include Songs ‘That Have Never Been Out,’ Says Coral Reefer Band

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 happened there and the potential of what might happen there as well.”

During his career, Buffett — a 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee — released 39 studio albums and achieved a level of large-scale cult popularity based as much on lifestyle as music. Colorful tropical apparel, coconut bras, grass skirts, shark hats and the famed “Fins” dance remain part of the Coral Reefers’ concert experience; the group toured last year opening for the Doobie Brothers and is on its own headlining trek now, which runs through Aug. 8 and wraps up in the longtime Buffett stronghold of Boston.

“We would never propose to replace Jimmy.” McAnally explains. The band is populated with Buffett veterans — with McAnally, Nadirah Shakoor, Will Kimbrough and Scotty Emerick taking lead vocals —  and includes a couple of second-generation members: Mick Utley in place of his father, who’s retired from touring; and Roger Greenidge on steel drums for his older brother Robert, who passed away earlier this year.

“We’re just literally trying to honor the guy as best we can, and we are the people he hand-selected to play with him for his adult life,” McAnally says. “And I use the word ‘adult’ in all lowercase, ’cause we all are basically just adolescents that refuse to give it up, and he was the gang leader of the ‘older but not up’ stuff.

“It’s our mission to remind people of how much joy he put into his music, and how much joy he put into coming to see them every summer. That’s what we’re doing. He never wanted to have anything to do with anybody being sad; that’s why when he was going through cancer he didn’t let anybody know, because he just wanted to continue to make people happy as long as he was walking the earth, which is what he did.”

Acknowledging that “it’s an emotional thing to be up there without him,” McAnally says, “We leave his microphone empty at the middle of the stage, and I’ve got his guitar sitting there in case he wants to show up — ’cause it wouldn’t surprise me. [Laughs] Nothing about him has surprised me in the last 25 years, so we’re ready for him if he comes. But beyond that, I feel his spirit every night, and the crowd does, too.”

The remaining dates for the Coral Reefer Band’s summer tour include:

July

21 — Walmart Amp, Rogers, Ark.

23 — Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park, Austin, Texas

24 — Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, Houston

25 — Dickies Arena, Fort Worth, Texas

29 — Ravina Festival, Highland Park, Ill.

30 — Everwise Amphitheater at White River State Park, Indianapolis

31 — Acrisure Amphitheater, Grand Rapids, Mich.

August

1 — Pine Knob Music Theatre, Independence Township, Mich.

4 — PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, N.J.

6 — Northwell at Jones Beach Theater, Wantagh, N.Y.

7 — BankNH Pavilion, Gilford, N.H.

8 — Leader Bank Pavilion, Boston