St. Louis Post-Dispatch Article on Coral Reefers

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has an article on Coral Reefer Band members Roger Guth, Peter Mayer, and Jim Mayer: “Former St. Louisan backs up Jimmy Buffett, keeps own career going”

“We walked out on stage for the first time, and it looked like a Fellini casting call,” says former St. Louisan Peter Mayer, lead guitarist for Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band since 1989. “I mean, it was strange costumes. You had lawyers in parrot outfits and doctors with shark fins on their heads. And of course, we were dressed in kind of late ’80s, early ’90s garb from the Thompson Twins to Peter Gabriel.”

“We” refers to Mayer and the Coral Reefer rhythm section: fellow former St. Louisans Jim Mayer (bass) and Roger Guth (drums). Jim, Peter Mayer’s brother, reports on Buffett’s margaritaville.com website that he almost couldn’t play that first show in San Diego because he was laughing so hard at “a giant conga line wearing enough grass skirts to cover the set of South Pacific.”

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For the Mayer brothers and Guth, who were a Warner Bros. recording act called PM, the Parrothead phenomenon was a surprise even after they were first hired to play on Buffett’s 1989 album, “Off to See the Lizard.”

”We knew who Jimmy Buffett was, but we had no idea how popular he was or what kind of crowd came to the shows,” Peter Mayer said by phone a couple of weeks ago before appearing with his band at Blueberry Hill’s Duck Room. ”And he had actually instructed his crew not to tell us what was going on.”

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With Buffett, Mayer has been amazed at how much hard work goes into making it all look so easy and laid back.

”It’s a real gift,” Mayer says. ”I know it is, because I’ve been a performer for many years and never found it that easy.

”Jimmy is an entertainer. I asked him once when we were really new to the group, because we were kind of floored with the audience and all that, and said, ‘What’s the deal with this whole thing? How did you get into this?’

“And he said, ‘Well, you know, Pete, I’m not a very good guitar player, and other people can out-sing me, but I’m a damn good Jimmy Buffett.”’

Read the entire article here.

Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band perform at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in St. Louis this coming Thursday. Get your tickets now!