“I am without words for about three weeks now,” he wrote. “I usually have too many. The closest thing I ever had to a big brother left this world on Sept. 1. I’ve been comforted by so many beautiful tributes and am grateful for them. It is my intent to offer comfort and tribute in words and music for the rest of my life. I’m just slow getting up to speed. Jimmy would be laughing at me (or IS laughing) for dragging my feet.

“What I can say in lieu of the right words that continue to evade is what an honor it is and has been to ride shotgun with a one man fountain of positive energy that saw fit to take me under his wing forty some odd years ago,” McAnally continued. “And to the folks who only knew him from the stage or through the speakers I can tell you he was the same fellow in person that you saw and heard. Trying to help everyone he crossed paths with have the best day possible. Rich folks, poor folks, strangers and friends. Blue and white collars, all religions and political camps. He saw life as a gift to enjoy and his calling was to spread that joy. I’ve never seen anybody do it better.”

AL.com has an article: Mac McAnally on Jimmy Buffett: ‘He saw life as a gift to enjoy’

Mac McAnally, an Alabama native who was one of Jimmy Buffett’s closest musical allies, said that the “right words” still fail him three weeks after Buffett’s passing.

McAnally, who’s originally from Red Bay, is an accomplished songwriter, performer and producer who has earned considerable acclaim for his own work, including a run from 2010 to 2018 when he won the Country Music Association’s Musician of the Year award eight times out of nine years. He also has worked extensively with Buffett in his songwriting, in the studio and on stage with the Coral Reefer Band.

Buffett passed on Sept. 1 after several years grappling with aggressive skin cancer. McAnally has performed since then; in a Sept. 7 appearance in Nashville, Ind., he said that “one week ago tonight, I had the privilege to go say goodbye to my buddy. And we got to say the things that we already knew but still wanted to say. There’s no conveyin’ what it means, and I ran out of words and I was about to just bawl like a three-year-old. So I picked up the guitar and I played him this.”

He followed with a rendition of “It’s My Job,” one of his songs that Buffett recorded. Afterward, as the audience applauded, he pointed skyward. He then played Buffett’s “A Pirate Looks at 40.”

McAnally contributed to Buffett’s last studio album, “Equal Strain on All Parts,” which is slated for Nov. 3 release.

Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band along with the Zac Brown Band perform the following songs:

1) Toes
2) Son of a Son of a Sailor
3) Chicken Fried
4) A Pirate Looks at Forty
5) Free / Into the Mystic
6) Nobody from Nowhere
7) Margaritaville

Paul McCartney has called “Bubbles Up” a particular favorite among the tracks on Jimmy Buffett’s last studio album, and said he thinks it’s probably the best vocal his friend ever sang. A Rolling Stone writer said its reassuring, uplifting message “takes on new meaning” after Buffett’s death.

None of that was a given when Buffett shared the idea for the song with longtime co-writer Will Kimbrough. But Kimbrough said he had an instinctive feeling what the song needed, and it was something that he later worried might keep Buffett from releasing it. For its sense of salvation to work, it needed some danger. For its sense of uplift to work, it needed some darkness. To be reassuring, it needed to touch on real fears.

Twenty years of collaboration with Buffett influenced Kimbrough’s thinking, as you’d expect. But so did something you might not expect: Years of helping people battered by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – soldiers and first responders – by teaching them to use songwriting as an outlet for their grief, depression and anger.

That’s why, on one of Jimmy Buffett’s last songs, you find him singing simply and sincerely, and not just sticking to the friendly image of bubbles dancing upward to the light of the surface. “We’re just treading water each day,” he sings at one point. “Sometimes living’s a struggle,” he says at another.

imbrough hails from Mobile, the same city where Buffett grew up. He’s a Nashville journeyman whose many outlets include songwriting, guitar playing and producing. Aside from his solo work, he’s an accomplished sideman who appeared as an honorary member of Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band, and who regularly tours with Alabama native Emmylou Harris (who has performed “Bubbles Up” as a tribute to Buffett.)

Kimbrough recently dedicated an episode of his “Super Service” podcast to the backstory of “Bubbles Up.” In a subsequent interview with AL.com, he dove even deeper.

On the phone, Kimbrough adds that the biggest thing he learned from Buffett was to trust himself. Trust was a lesson that Buffett taught by example. He trusted Kimbrough enough to send him unfinished songs, and ideas for songs that hadn’t even been started. When the recording sessions began in January for the album “Equal Strain On All Parts,” he wasn’t there on the first day. He let longtime collaborators Mac McAnally and Michael Utley start setting things up.

“I cannot underline more heavily the trust involved in the process,” Kimbrough said. “Jimmy trusted the Coral Reefer Band and he trusted his producers and bandleaders. And he trusted his co-writers. He trusted me a lot as it turned out, and I’ll never forget that. And in the most positive way I’ll never get over that, I will treasure that, that trust that was given to me by this guy, this kind of giant of entertainment, this successful mogul running an empire [who] reached out to me and trusted me. And that has taught me to trust myself more than I did before.”

“None of this is going to make me rich,” Kimbrough said. “But it makes me rich in a better way. Which is, I’ve learned to listen to myself and trust myself. When someone asks me for something, and I’m interested in the project, I can give 100% of myself without fear. I trust myself and my ideas. I know they aren’t the best ideas, they’re just my ideas. My voice is not the best voice, but it’s my voice. … That’s a great place to be.”

Kimbrough said he knew, over the last few years, that Buffett was being treated for some kind of serious health concern. He’d make occasional references to traveling to Boston or Houston to get “zapped,” and sometimes sessions would be scheduled around these appointments. But Kimbrough didn’t push for details.

As that situation developed, and especially once the pandemic began to interfere with in-person get-togethers, Buffett honed his system of songwriting collaboration. He’d send notes, outlines, even impressionistic sketches to convey how a song should feel. Kimbrough said it was like receiving “storyboards of songs.” And it worked, he said, because Buffett was “a great communicator.”

“I’m perfectly comfortable with that because I live on the move,” said Kimbrough. “I have for 40 years. I trust my co-writers. If I don’t, then why would I write with them? I don’t have to be in the same room to make sure they don’t mess up my song.”

That “storyboard” process is how the idea for “Bubbles Up” first came to Kimbrough. Buffett had latched onto a technique that novice divers learn. Being submerged in a dark environment can produce profound disorientation: A person might literally lose track of which way is up. But if they watch which way their air bubbles go, they can reorient themselves. Buffett saw a song in that.

All Kimbrough had to do was turn the notion into a song. And he knew that whatever Parrotheads might want from their favorite troubadour, that song had to touch on trauma.

‘Pralines on My Pillow’

Over the last five or six years, Kimbrough has become increasingly involved in programs that teach people suffering from PTSD to use songwriting as an outlet. One is called “Songwriting With: Soldiers.” The other is the Warrior PATHH program, which incorporates songwriting sessions as an element of an approach called Post-Traumatic Growth. He was leading sessions and workshops before COVID-19 hit but committed more time to it during the pandemic.

“Writing ‘Bubbles Up’ had to be linked to my work with combat veterans and first responders struggling with post-traumatic stress, because I do it twice a month, almost every month of the year,” he said. “So it’s constantly in my life. What it mainly does to me, it makes me have perspective. It makes me have a new perspective on everybody I’m with.”

“It’s not that I’m teaching them to write a song,” he said. “You can’t teach somebody how to write a song, because everybody in the world already knows. Everybody’s already made up a song when they were a little kid. You just bury that freedom under your duty, obligation, shame, shyness, whatever it is. So I try to bring that back out in people and remind them that their everyday language is a like treat for me. … The everyday language of someone telling me their own truth.”

“That kind of work gets under your skin,” Kimbrough said. “You’re being gifted with people’s stories. Not that that’s why I do it, but in the end, that’s what you get. You do it because you’re interested in the process, then you fall in love with the people. You fall in love with the veterans, you fall in love with the first responders.”

“They’re the ones who make it powerful. I just scoop up the words” and show them how to transform those into lyrics, he said. “I can’t not use that, because it’s such a part of me now. I do way more of that than I do co-writing in Nashville trying to get a cut. I’ve never had a Nashville cut, not one. And I’m not bitter about it, I’m just telling you that I guess I’m not that kind of writer anymore.”

The aquatic concept of “Bubbles Up” dovetailed with that. “I have worked with a lot of people who felt like they were drowning in the effects of post-traumatic stress,” said Kimbrough.

“When I sat down to write, I had just come back from a Post Traumatic Growth songwriting workshop with combat veterans and first responders,” he said. “So I had been with people who had experienced great trauma and were struggling with it in their lives, often on a life-and-death basis, whether it was suicide attempts [or] the wreck and ruin of their careers and families. It’s a very sensitive work but I’ve learned how to do it. I also was sort of reeling from the news of the child of some friends who had died at a very young age. So those things were on my mind. I also knew that Jimmy had been receiving treatments for his illness, at that point, for three, three-and-a-half years.”

All that went into it, more by instinct than by calculation. That’s why you get a Jimmy Buffett tune that runs some risk. That line about treading water is going to hit a little close to home for some. The same with admitting that life is a struggle, and not making a joke of it.

Read the entire article at AL.com: ‘Bubbles Up:’ For Jimmy Buffett co-writer Will Kimbrough, work with veterans inspired lyrics

Someday, in the not-so distant future, you may find yourself in the presence of Jimmy Buffett as soon as your plane touches down at Key West International Airport.

Following the Sept. 1 death of the musician who helped put the Florida Keys into the public imagination, multiple Key West and Monroe County natives are signing a petition to rename the airport to Jimmy Buffett International Airport.

Key West would inspire Buffett’s 1974 album “A1A,” named for the highway that connects them to the Florida mainland, and his enterprise, which emulated the coastal tropical vibes of Florida’s southernmost point.

Later in life, after earning millions through his songs, his restaurants and resorts named after his hit “Margaritaville” and merchandise, in 2011 Buffett purchased a home in Palm Beach, which he would later sell in 2020.

The petition was started by Brad Russell on Sept. 4 and has already garnered about 21, 200 signatures. It has also led to a viral photo where one Key West resident decided to take matters into his own hands by placing hand-cut vinyl letters onto the existing airport sign, titling it “Key West-Jimmy Buffett International Airport.”

There’s a lot of traction, of course. … I went to talk to our county commissioner,” said Menta. “He was explaining to me that this is trademark-heavy stuff and a lot of the time there are royalties involved. He said then we need our constituents to approve.”

Craig Cates is a Monroe County commissioner and also served as the mayor of Key West from 2009 to 2018. He got to know Buffett personally while serving as mayor, with Buffett visiting his office, attending local events, and even working together to promote the Coffee Butler amphitheater, which looks out on the Gulf of Mexico near Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park.

He said that despite the traction of the petition and his personal feelings, a lot needs to be done before the name can be changed on the airport, which has served nearly 1 million passengers already this year.

“We also are respectful of the family, you know. They’re mourning their loss, and so we have to be respectful of that,” he says. “Then the other part with the Federal Aviation Administration. We’re making sure that we’d be allowed to change the name, which we probably will but that’s still a process.”

Cates said that for now the county is in the preliminary steps of the move.

“Our attorney is reaching out to the CEO of Margaritaville Enterprises,” says Cates. The rights of the Buffett name need to be taken into account before the airport can be renamed. There is also the question of costs, and legal issues that he says the county needs to take into account.

After this is done, the name change would go to the people of the county to decide upon. The name change will be made into a resolution that the commission will vote on and this will allow residents to have their voices heard outside of the petition.

Buffett’s three newly released songs reach the chart following their Sept. 8 premieres, a week after his death.

Jimmy Buffett’s posthumously released single “Bubbles Up” debuts at No. 1 on Billboard’s Rock Digital Song Sales chart with 8,000 downloads sold in the U.S. Sept. 8-14, according to Luminate.

Buffett, who died Sept. 1 at age 76, replaces himself atop Rock Digital Song Sales, where his signature song, 1977’s “Margaritaville,” led the Sept. 16-dated ranking (16,000 sold, up 8,415%, Sept. 1-7). The latter ranks at No. 3 on the latest list with 3,000 sold.

“Bubbles Up” is Buffett’s second career No. 1 on a Billboard songs chart as the only credited artist on a newly released song: “Margaritaville” led the Adult Contemporary chart dated May 28, 1977. He last topped Billboard album charts with new music thanks to his most recent LP, Life on the Flip Side, in 2020.

“Bubbles Up” is joined by “My Gummie Just Kicked In” (No. 5; 3,000 sold) and “Like My Dog” (No. 6; 2,000) as new Buffett tunes on Rock Digital Song Sales. All three songs arrived Sept. 8 and are set to be on Equal Strain on All Parts, Buffett’s 32nd studio album, due Nov. 3.

Buffett music accounts for eight of the Rock Digital Song Sales chart’s 25 positions. In addition to the four tunes noted above, classics “A Pirate Looks at Forty” (No. 12; 1,400 sold), “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” (No. 16; 1,100), “Cheeseburger in Paradise” (No. 18; 1,000) and “Son of a Son of a Sailor” (No. 22; 1,000) also place on the Sept. 23 tally.

“Bubbles Up” additionally begins at No. 2 on Country Digital Song Sales and No. 4 on the all-format Digital Song Sales chart, while its sales and 908,000 official U.S. streams send it to a No. 47 debut on the multi-metric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs survey.

Fans flocked to the icon’s trademark feel-good sound following his passing of complications from skin cancer. In the Sept. 1-7 tracking week, his song catalog surged by 1,476% to 78.6 million official on-demand streams and 7,022% to 103,000 paid downloads in the U.S.

Back in 2011 the comic strip included a reference to Jimmy Buffett falling off the stage in Sydney Australia

Music legend Jimmy Buffett was beloved for his tunes about beachside escapism, but his real estate ventures made him a true mogul. According to Forbes, Buffett’s music and businesses cemented his billionaire status at the time of his passing.

He was also a savvy businessman, with an empire that was built on licensing those song titles. Hotels, restaurants, and bars bear the Margaritaville name, while consumers can also buy beverages, furniture, and apparel with Buffett’s imprint. He even licensed his name to a number of 55-and-older beach communities known as Latitude Margaritaville.

Beyond his penchant for large-scale, themed communities, Buffett was active in residential real estate. His portfolio included private residences in Beverly Hills, Palm Beach, West Palm Beach, Daytona Beach, and New York’s Sag Harbor.

We decided to take a look at some of the many properties where the singer-songwriter might have been found nibblin’ on spongecake or watchin’ the sun bake. After an extensive search of real estate records and news clips, we found that the crooner had whittled down his lavish collection of homes over the past several years.

But he held on to a range of properties, from multimillion-dollar mansions to sweet cottages. Some of them he’d owned for decades, and all of them proved to be excellent investments. Let’s take a look!

Beverly Hills, CA
Purchased in 2014 for $8,250,000

Built in 1963, this four-bedroom, midcentury modern home was remodeled shortly before Buffett bought it. Much of its period style remained intact.

The single-story, 4,300-square-foot residence has a wide-open floor plan, with a living room, family room, kitchen, and dining room that open to the outdoors via glass walls and floor-to-ceiling sliders.

The backyard features a saltwater pool and spa, plus a generous patio with a four-stool wet bar that can easily accommodate multiple blenders.

Sag Harbor, NY

This is one of Buffett’s most private properties, located on exclusive Actors Colony Road, where compounds come with multimillion dollar price tags.

Richard Gere once owned a neighboring property that he sold to Matt Lauer for $36.5 million in 2016. Buffett was reported to own two large, adjacent lots nearby

This serene spot in the Hamptons is where he chose to spend his final days. According to his official website, he was “surrounded by his family, friends, music, and dogs” at the time of his death.

Palm Beach, FL
Purchased in 2002 for $802,000

Not much is known about this small abode in one of Florida’s most exclusive neighborhoods. It had three bedrooms and 3.5 baths spread across 2,007 square feet when Buffett purchased it two decades ago. At one time, the property was used as a duplex.

Something tells us it has been spiffed up and expanded over the past 20 years. A Google Maps street view photo reveals that the residence is surrounded by a cute little white picket fence with a robin’s egg blue gates and plenty of lush landscaping for privacy. Situated just a couple of blocks north of the historic hotel, The Breakers, the house also offers easy toes-in-the-sand access.

Daytona Beach, FL
Purchased July 2018 for $427,850

Buffett owned another small bungalow, this one in Latitude Margaritaville, one of the 55-and-older communities dedicated of the laid-back tropical lifestyle he sang about, according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

The two-bedroom, 2.5-bath, tropical cottage measures 2,522 square feet. This single-story concrete-block and stucco house has an asphalt-shingle roof, a finished three-car garage, and cozy front porch. Covered with shiplap siding, the home has complementary aqua shutters.

The News-Journal reports that upon hearing about Buffett’s death, community residents gathered outside the singer’s home and created a makeshift memorial, complete with surfboard, flip flops, a straw hat, bottles of tequila and beer, beach balls, and a shaker of salt.

303 Sunset Rd, West Palm Beach, FL
Purchased in March 2012 for $560,000

Currently estimated to be worth more than $3 million, this dwelling was a solid investment for Buffett.

The two-story, three-bedroom, 2,070-square-foot home in the El Cid Historical District was originally built in 1935. Completely remodeled in 1995, it’s several blocks from the beach and even closer to Palm Beach restaurants and shops.

Former homes:

Buffett was born in Pascagoula, MS, and received a BA from the University of Southern Mississippi. He had an affinity for the Palm Beach area, where he bought and sold several homes. In reviewing the places he unloaded prior to his death, one thing stands out: Buffett had a knack for buying low and selling at the top of the market.

Palm Beach, FL
Purchased in December 2011, for $4,950,000

Sold in November 2020, for $6,909,000

This contemporary, 4,783-square-foot home features three bedrooms. Built in 2003, it had been substantially updated with a “Zen-like retreat feeling,” according to listing details.

Some of the home’s finer features include soaring ceilings and massive, mahogany-framed, glass doors and windows that fill the home with natural light and views of the garden and pool from every room. The home is ideal for entertaining—it has deeded beach access and a guest suite above the two-car garage.

Palm Beach, FL

Sold in 2010 for $18,500,000

The grandest of them all, this trophy property on esteemed Ocean Avenue boasts 300 feet of ocean frontage. It’s reported that Buffett actually lived in this eight-bedroom, 12,241-square-foot mansion for a time.

After he let go of the place, the home’s new owner sold the property in 2014 as part of a $43 million package that included two other Palm Beach properties

A nice rendition of Margaritaville performed by Jake:

From Will: It is with great love that I post this podcast. I wrote with Jimmy Buffett over the last 20 years. We recorded 7 albums together. When we wrote “Bubbles Up”, I knew he was dealing with illness. I knew it was a good song. I had no idea Jimmy was in his last months on this earth. Nor did I know that the song would be released and Paul McCartney would be talking about how much he loved the song, especially Jimmy’s soulful vocal. So here’s to Bubba. The Navigator. The Storyteller. We will never forget the way you lit up a room with that twinkle in your eye, that smile, that poet’s eye for a line.

“Bubbles Up” is on Jimmy Buffett’s new album “Equal Strain on All Parts”

He is on the cover of US Weekly Magazine (September 12th issue) and also Life Magazine which is a reissue of special issue from December 2021.