New Jimmy Buffett album to include unreleased songs

From Billboard: 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 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.

“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.”