From AL.com: Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band sets sail in search of its future: ‘We found it in the songs’
It’s 3 p.m. on a blistering hot August Thursday in Orange Beach, Alabama. In the outlying parking lots of the entertainment-shopping-dining-lodging complex called The Wharf, small clusters of diehards are forming. At one of them, a middle-aged man has already got on his coconut bra and is tying on his grass skirt.
This is a good omen.
Inside the Wharf Amphitheater, half an hour later, Mac McAnally picks up an acoustic guitar and begins playing a fingerstyle melody that fills the empty 10,000-seat venue. He begins singing “Changing Channels,” a song he co-wrote with Jimmy Buffett in the late ‘80s.
On the one hand, this is all exactly as it should be. The members of the Coral Reefer Band were handpicked by Jimmy Buffett to play his songs, and they’ve been doing it for years. They can reasonably expect that the guy who showed up to tie on his grass skirt five hours before showtime, and the more than 5,000 others who’ll soon join him, are here for a good time. They know the songs, they know the band. They all want this to work.
On the other hand, nothing can be taken for granted. Jimmy Buffett died nearly a year ago, and this show is one of a handful that will help determine what kind of a future the Coral Reefer Band will have.
After rehearsals are done everyone retreats to air-conditioned backstage facilities, where some of them take time to speak to a reporter.
“After he died I was kind of lost for two weeks,” says guitarist Peter Mayer, brother to bassist Jim. What snapped things into focus for him, he says, is when a couple of fans implored him, “please don’t stop this music.”
As seems to be the case for everyone who’s been a friend of Buffett over the years, it’s personal for Mayer. He recalls their first meeting, when he, his brother and Guth were booked for recording sessions for the 1989 Buffett album “Off to See the Lizard.”
“The first words that were spoken between us were said by Jimmy,” said Mayer. “He said, ‘So this is my new band.’ We kinda looked at him like, ‘Shoot, we’re here for a session.’”
Mayer says he came to believe that was Buffett’s attitude toward life, as if he woke up every day and said to himself, “So this is my new world.” Another facet of Buffett’s personality that made a deep impression on Mayer was the attentiveness and generosity he showed when Mayer got “a touch of cancer” a decade ago.
That element of human connection, as much as the songs, is something he hopes to keep going via the shows, Mayer says.
“A lot of people assumed it would just be this natural superhighway, we’d just go out and play,” says Mayer. “But of course our lighthouse in the center of the stage has left, physically. And so we had to dig deep into this music to keep us tethered. It was natural for people to vie for space. The band had to find its light center. And we found it in the songs.”
“It’s really an honor to be here doing it. It doesn’t happen without some stretching and groaning and growing. No one sang like Jimmy, no one introduced songs like Jimmy,” says Mayer, praising the talents of McAnally, singer-songwriter Will Kimbrough and other bandmates. “He will be missed. What we’re trying to do is not make the mistake of trying to be Jimmy, but just trying to celebrate him.”
Kimbrough is a Mobile native who, somewhere in the process of carving out a multifaceted independent career in Nashville, crossed paths with Buffett. As with Mayer, Buffett saw someone he liked and made him a longtime running partner. Kimbrough played guitar on Buffett’s 2004 country crossover album “License to Chill,” and Buffett included one of Kimbrough’s songs, “Piece of Work.” He and Buffett continued to write and record together right up until Buffett’s last studio album, “Equal Strain on All Parts,” which was posthumously released in late 2023. Kimbrough co-wrote several of the songs on it, including one that took on a special significance after Buffett’s death, the uplifting “Bubbles Up.”
When it comes to climbing that learning curve, McAnally seems to be the chief mountaineer. But considering that he has won the Country Music Association’s “Musician of the Year” award so many times that they probably should have just named it for him by now, he appears to approach his bandleader role with a conspicuous lack of ego. From his low-key direction during the soundcheck to his willingness – or maybe eagerness – to step out of the spotlight on stage, it’s very clear that he does not want this to become the Mac McAnally Show.
As with Peter Mayer, that seems to come directly from the desire to preserve elements of Buffett’s spirit: His willingness to step back and let others take the mic, his generosity in relationships.
“I’ve always bragged on Jimmy,” says McAnally. “He took me under his wing before I had any faith in myself.”
Told the soundcheck appeared to be a smooth process, he frets. “It’s a new ritual,” he says. “Honestly it’s not yet a well-oiled machine. We’ll bat for average.”
But he knows what he wants out of it.
“In the worst-case scenario, if we only get to do these three shows, it’s a family reunion,” he says. “That’s a great worst-case scenario.”
It’s not just about the band coming together, or about people coming to see the band, he says. It’s about people coming to see each other. It’s about people remembering the joy they felt at Buffett’s shows, and getting a chance to feel it again.
“There was so much joy,” he said. “And it meant so much to folks that, that, you know, that may have thought that wasn’t ever going to get to happen again. It made us all think that it’s possible to keep celebrating and, for so many of his fans that come every year and tailgate, it’s a chance for them to come and have a reunion with the folks that they meet up with out in the parking lot and come in and, you know, sing and be joyous together. There’s no better joyful noise than Jimmy Buffett.”
Now, here in Orange Beach, one of McAnally’s tasks is to grapple with the simple physics of the set list. So many favorite songs, so little time. “He always said there’s 13 there’ll be a riot if we don’t play,” he says.
It brings back memories. Buffett simply loved what he did, McAnally says. At every show, he was the happiest person in the building. Despite his laid-back persona, he sweated the small stuff when it came to the shows. “I’ve probably got 4 or 5 setlists for every show we did, the last few years,” McAnally says.
He also had a rare ability, as a bandleader, to shift from Plan A to Plan D. “One thing Jimmy loved about this band,” McAnally says. “He could change gears really hard.”
“The first half of last year, we worked really hard, but nobody worked harder than Jimmy on what was going to be the last record,” he says. “We probably didn’t know it was going to be, he probably did know, and I know for a fact he worked as hard as I’ve ever seen him work, and he wrote some unbelievably good songs.”
Read the entire article at AL.com: Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band sets sail in search of its future: ‘We found it in the songs’