“I Actually Look Forward to the Joy of Reopening That Box”: Mac McAnally Confirms There Will Be More Posthumous Jimmy Buffett Music

During his conversation with Holler, Mac McAnally has delved into his long-time friendship with Jimmy Buffett, his work with Kenny Chesney his creative process and more.

While reminiscing on his work on Buffett's posthumous album, Equal Strain On All Parts, McAnally made an exciting revelation - there's more to come from the ‘Come Monday’ crooner.

McAnally confirms there is around an album's worth of unreleased material in the late Gulf and Western trailblazer's vault, which will most likely be shared with fans next year.

He reveals, “We do have some unreleased Jimmy stuff that we plan to finish up - there'll be some more Jimmy music”, before setting fans’ expectations, “There's nothing like the backlog that they speak of with Prince, where he just had hundreds of tracks, or anything like that...We wouldn't have more than one project's worth of extra stuff to release of Jimmy's. But he was such a charming guy. We'd cut songs, and he'd say, ‘Well, you know, this is enough for this album’”.

He expands, “So I've got to go back through and make sure that we worked on these things enough to where he would have been happy with them. I haven't really assessed them in that way. Once he decided it's not for this release, we sort of left them to the side. But I actually look forward to the joy of reopening that box and seeing what we have in there. I know a few things are different, but it's definitely lovely. So I'm excited about that. That'll probably come about next year”.

Mac McAnally, who has co-written iconic Jimmy Buffett anthems such as ’Changing Channels’ and ’Bubbles Up’, goes on to reflect on the importance of continuing Buffett's legacy by touring across North America as part of his Coral Reefer Band.

The Alabama native muses, “You don't know how much a Jimmy Buffett show without Jimmy Buffett can succeed, but the ones we've done so far have been really successful. We just finished a ten-show run with the Doobie Brothers, and we've got 10 of those shows left in September, and they've gone great. The Doobies are fabulous people - they're one of the best American Rock n’ Roll bands ever, and the fact that we get to run around with them is a wonderful leg up towards standing on our own legs as a touring act. So they're very gracious to help us do that, and it's been very well received...It's easy to tell the two fanbases apart - there's people standing up with Hawaiian shirts that are Jimmy fans, and there's people sitting down with black T shirts that are Doobie Brothers fans...! By the end, everybody's getting along, but it's a nice visual from the beginning - you can tell who's there for who. I'm just grateful we're there together”.

Elsewhere during our conversation, McAnally paid homage to his beloved ‘big brother’, Jimmy, by underlining how he taught him to try and bring light to listeners’ lives through music, “I've always been attracted to humor in songs...All these years of playing with Jimmy Buffett, he's someone who made everybody smile, and there is definitely a value in that, and particularly in today's world - you don't always necessarily find a smile when you turn on the news in the morning”.

He warmly concludes, “So if music can provide that for you, it's a great thing. Having seen Jimmy do it so well for so many years, I think it made me chase those ideas a little bit more than perhaps I did earlier. I went through two or three years of your regular ‘angry young man’ songwriter thing, but I didn't make a very good angry young man. So I bailed on it about the second verse. I could stay angry for about a verse and a chorus - then I started laughing again, you know?”

This innate levity and joie-de-vivre radiates throughout both Mac McAnally's solo material, and the plethora of songs he's worked on alongside his buddy Jimmy Buffett.

Given how wonderfully eclectic, joyful and philosophical 2023's Equal Strain On All Parts was, with ‘Bubbles Up’ in particular serving as a pertinent gem from the ’Margaritaville’ icon, we can't wait to hear more from the late Tropical Country legend.

And if we had to choose anyone to take the helm for Jimmy Buffett's next posthumous body of work, it's hard to think of anyone more suited to this task than Mac McAnally, who is not only one of the most important country songwriters of the past few decades, but also a man that knew Buffett better than most.

Read Holler's full interview with Mac McAnally here.

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Featured photo by David McClister