Buffett’s interview with WLNG, premieres new song

Jimmy Buffett did an interview on WLNG in Sag Harbor with Bill Evans and Jessica Ambrose.

“From Newsday: “Jimmy Buffett drops in at Sag Harbor’s WLNG, premieres new song on air“

Jimmy Buffett, a North Haven resident and forever the mayor of “Margaritaville,” came over the causeway Sunday morning to Sag Harbor’s classic-rock WLNG-FM/92.1, dropping the world premiere of his new song on “Lunch on the Deck with Bill Evans & Jessica Ambrose.”

“I’ve had this love of this station since I lived across the street from it,” the 76-year-old music legend, originally from Mississippi, explained on air before playing the new “My Gummy Just Kicked In.” “We lived at 10 Redwood Road before we moved down the street. We lived there for about five years.”

“It was an honor for us,” former WABC-TV/7 meteorologist Evans, 63, the program director and station co-owner, told Newsday Monday. “A small radio station in Eastern Long Island — he could have gone to [media giant] iHeart and launched his song, but he picked us. … He calls us his hometown radio station.”

The appearance came out of a chance meeting June 11 when one of Buffett’s longtime Coral Reefer Band guitarists, Peter Mayer, was playing Amagansett’s The Stephen Talkhouse with his musician son, Brendan Mayer. Ambrose was there “and briefly talked with him and asked him to be on the show and he said he’ll think about it.” Buffett, he says, played five songs that night but not the new one, which he had substantially written while hospitalized in Boston in May but still was unfinished.

Sometime later, Buffett, who had appeared previously on a WLNG Sunday-evening music show, “asked his people to call Jessica and make the arrangements,” Evans said. The co-host’s lighthearted radio patter about having run into Buffett around Sag Harbor notwithstanding, the appearance was anything but impromptu. “He called in all his people — his videographer came up from North Carolina!”

Buffett originally was set for the show’s regular Saturday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. slot, but when his own schedule changed Buffett asked if he could appear Sunday instead. “I said yes, and we’ll have coffee and breakfast for you,” a delighted Evans recalled.

No less rock royalty than Paul McCartney plays bass on the new song. Buffett “had been working on a new album and so he had a dinner at his house” to play somer of its songs for friends, Evans said, reiterating an anecdote the star had related. “They had a dinner for about 20 people and at one end of the table was Jimmy sitting next to Paul McCartney’s wife Nancy [Shevell]. Paul McCartney is at other end next to Jimmy’s wife Janey [Slagsvol]. So Nancy, going to her chair, trips and Jimmy grabs her and asks, ‘Are you all right?’ and helps her to the chair. And she says, ‘My [marijuana] gummy just kicked in.’ Jimmy, he’s no dummy — he’s a songwriter always looking for a line — and he says, ‘Hey, you mind if I use that for a song?’”