{"id":389171,"date":"2026-07-28T14:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T14:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/389171\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T14:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T14:55:09","slug":"coral-reefer-band-review-keeping-jimmy-buffetts-spirit-alive-in-aust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/389171\/","title":{"rendered":"Coral Reefer Band review: Keeping Jimmy Buffett’s spirit alive in Aust"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday night at Austin<\/a>\u2019s Moody Amphitheater, that feeling hung over the band\u2019s <\/a>\u201cKeep the Party Going\u201d tour as the sun set over a rowdy group of Parrotheads. The last time I saw the Coral Reefer Band, Buffett stood at center stage. This time, a microphone stood empty where he normally would have been.<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s sprawling 30-song set balanced celebration with remembrance. Hits like \u201cChanges in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,\u201d \u201cCome Monday\u201d and \u201cCheeseburger in Paradise\u201d mixed with deeper cuts including \u201cThe Wino and I Know\u201d and \u201cGrapefruit\u2014Juicy Fruit.\u201d At times, the show felt like a tribute concert. At others, it resembled the happiest wake you\u2019ve ever attended.<\/p>\n

Mac McAnally, Buffett\u2019s longtime friend and bandmate, guided a sweaty, Hawaiian-shirt-clad crowd through favorites, several covers \u2014 including a gut-wrenching rendition of Crosby, Stills & Nash\u2019s \u201cSouthern Cross\u201d\u00a0\u2014 and stories about the man who made it all possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be on this or any other stage if not for Jimmy,\u201d McAnally told the crowd. Later, he remembered Buffett\u2019s smile as being \u201cwider than his head.\u201d<\/p>\n

The little details made Buffett\u2019s absence impossible to ignore. Some band members played barefoot, as Buffett always did. The bassist wore a neck fan to battle the Texas heat. Fans settled for buckets of Bud Light because, unfortunately, Moody Amphitheater doesn\u2019t sell LandShark.<\/p>\n

Austin has long occupied a special place in Buffett lore. The last time he played the city, he joked from the stage that he wrote \u201cMargaritaville\u201d in a \u201clittle tequila bar\u201d here. The crowd was smaller than when Buffett played Moody Center in 2022, but even a few hundred Parrotheads know how to throw a party.<\/p>\n

Despite the photos and videos of Buffett playing onscreen throughout the evening, the night never lingered in grief for long\u00a0\u2014 because who can be sad when you\u2019re listening to Jimmy Buffett?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Coral Reefer Band isn\u2019t trying to answer the impossible question of what a Jimmy Buffett concert looks like without the man himself.<\/p>\n

Instead, they\u2019re answering a much simpler one:<\/p>\n

How do you keep the party going?<\/p>\n

By remembering Buffett the way friends do: Telling stories, singing songs, laughing and raising a drink.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thursday night at Austin\u2019s Moody Amphitheater, that feeling hung over the band\u2019s \u201cKeep the Party Going\u201d tour as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-389171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}