Jimmy Buffett performed on Tuesday night at the Belly Up in Solano Beach outside of San Diego, California. The show served as a warm up for Buffett’s 2017 tour that kicks off on Saturday in Las Vegas.

The San Diego Union Tribune reviewed the show:

n’t know what tour this is,” Jimmy Buffett said after he walked on stage Tuesday night at the Belly Up Tavern with his band, the Coral Reefers. “But we’re starting here.”

Buffett is, of course, no stranger to San Diego or the intimate Belly Up.

He and his seven-man, two-woman group performed at the same Solana Beach nightclub in 2013. And, back in the early 1980s — before he became an American pop-culture institution for a generation that favors tropical cocktails and attire — he sometimes sat in at the Belly Up with the band Billy & The Beaters.

During that same time period back then, Buffett periodically would sing, unannounced, at such North County nightspots as the Albatross and the Triton (now the Beach House). Richard Davis, his audio engineer for the past quarter-century, used to be the sound mixer at the Belly Up.

After performing a tender version of “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” Buffet said: “It’s a big honor to be doing a musical. I had the thought: ‘If you’re going to do a musical, you should probably do songs people know.’ I’m not giving away secrets, but this is in the show.” With that, be broke into the wistful ballad “Come Monday,” adding the line “at the Belly Up.”

Read the full review.

Jimmy Buffett played one of the final shows at the Irvine Meadows amphitheater on Saturday night.

Such a time was definitely this weekend when Jimmy Buffett and his Coral Reefer Band played their 33rd and final show at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre.

Buffett and his band have headlined the Orange County venue more often – by far – than anywhere else in Southern California, and the chance to celebrate the singer’s beach-inspired bachanalia brought out a capacity crowd of 16,000. Buffett’s fans, known as Parrotheads, were suitably attired in aloha shirts and other tropical finery.

Near the start of his set, Buffett acknowledged the amphitheater’s impending closure and warned, “We ain’t going quietly.” Throughout the show, which hit staples of his catalog such as “Pencil Thin Mustache,” “Fins,” “Cheeseburger in Paradise” and, of course, “Margaritaville,” old photos and videos of fans partying in the Irvine Meadows parking lot were shown on the high-definition screen behind the band.

View the set list from the show here.

Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band played a show in Bangor, Maine for the first time on Thursday night.

The Bangor Daily News has a review of the show:

Buffett, who turns 70 this year, played a two-hour-plus set crammed with hits, fan favorites and a few deep cuts from his 27 albums. From radio standards such as “Margaritaville” and “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” to stripped down acoustic versions of songs such as “Delaney Talks to Statues” and the jaunty “Pencil Thin Mustache,” Buffett is the consummate showman.

Though this was the first time Buffett and his 11-piece Coral Reefer Band have played in Bangor, the singer is no stranger to the state — he’s visited many times on his own, and he has had boats built at Hinckley in Southwest Harbor. From the stage, Buffett remarked that he finally got to play a show in Bangor, and that the seafaring culture in Maine fits right in with his beach-friendly music.

“We finally made it!” said Buffett, early on in his set. “I’ve built boats here, I’ve had fun here, and now finally get to come play here in ‘Bangah.’”

More than 15,000 people crowded into the Darling’s Waterfront Pavilion, with big lines at the gates, at the T-shirt stand and at the frozen margarita booth — a new addition to the venue for 2016, and likely much appreciated by Parrotheads.

Read the full review and see photos from the show at BangorDailyNews.com.

Jimmy makes his annual trek to Mansfield, MA on Saturday and then plays shows next week in Pittsburgh, Wantagh NY, Camden NJ. Buffett will also play shows in September in Omaha, East Troy WI, and Paris.

There’s still time to get tickets to see Jimmy this year. Find tickets now.

Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band are back on the road for the I Don’t Know Tour with a show on Saturday night on the beach in Atlantic City.

Philly.com has a review of the show:

If entertaining Jersey Shore crowds without relying on gambling is key to A.C.’s future success, then who better to kick off such proceedings than the man behind “Margaritaville” and his Parrothead following?

On Saturday afternoon, the deeply tanned, humorous, 69-year-old Buffett, his Coral Reefer Band, and his opening act (onetime Philadelphians G. Love & Special Sauce) sold out the Atlantic City beach for the first concert of its season. Spanning from Missouri Avenue on the Boardwalk to Indiana Avenue and MLK Boulevard, an estimated 20,000 people were in attendance, many of whom seemed to know Buffett’s every lyric and between-song banter.

Read the full article.

Jimmy Buffett kicked off his new I Don’t Know Tour on Monday night in Austin, Texas as part of Austin City Limits Live.

There were a few rare songs played (see set list below).

From the Austin Chronicle:

Five consecutive years of summer tour warm-ups in Austin during May yielded a first at the Moody Theater Monday: Jimmy Buffett wore a blazer.

“Manuel’s [American Designs] in Nashville,” announced the cult leader two tunes into a nearly two-hour, 21-song set last night at the home of Austin City Limits, while stroking a lapel. “This was on a mannequin.”

For starters, the bandleader of 11 group members began the show with an extended rap about some eight years of tour fine-tuning in the capital city. (Wait, and only five shows!?) Paying tribute to his local mentor Jerry Jeff Walker, who opens his Frisco show on Saturday in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, Willie Nelson’s statue out front (“Since he’s still alive, I wonder how Willie feels about that”), and Austin itself, Buffett uncharacteristically went on at length before ever playing a note.

In fact, the fiesta got off to a slow start. The frontman explained that this year’s I Don’t Know tour sought to revive songs the traveling tiki carnival hadn’t performed in a decade or more. “Presents to Send You,” “Migration,” “Cowboy in the Jungle”? No such luck. Instead, nostalgia only went back as far as 2009 and 1996 respectively on the one-two of openers “Summerzcool” and “Only Time Will Tell.”

Before long, however, the band was functioning at 80-proof, Floridays’ “Meet Me in Memphis” cruising its namesake’s Beale Street, and tour moniker “I Don’t Know (Spicoli’s Theme)” reviving 1982 teen film yuks Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Who recalls that the first name of Sean Penn’s titular stoner was Jeff? For “Margaritaville,” the host welcomed Hollywood mega-producer Frank Marshall onstage to play guitar and sing harmonies with second lieutenant Mac McAnally.

McAnally’s solo turn on the only song Duane Allman wrote by himself, instrumental “Little Martha,” segued the band out of Caribbean bar band mode – congas, steel drums, trumpet, back-up singers – into a bluegrass cluster at one end of the wide stage. Six string-benders, from mandolin to Temple native Doyle Grisham’s acoustic slide, and one accordionist picked as Buffett sang to the lords of Easter Island (“Delaney Talks to Statues”) and then honored his onetime neighbor Glenn Frey with their co-write “Gypsies in the Palace,” about a friend of theirs who impersonated the the king parrothead in order to stuff a couple of girls into the singer’s Porsche, which ended up in a creek.

Read more about the show at Austin Chronicle.

1. Summerzcool
2. Only Time Will Tell
3. Volcano
4. Meet Me in Memphis
5. Pencil Thin Mustache
6. Son of a Son of a Sailor
7. Come Monday
8. Cheeseburger in Paradise
9. I Don’t Know (Spicoli’s Theme)
10. Changes in Attitudes, Changes in Latitudes
11. Margaritaville
12. Fins
13. Little Martha
14. Delaney Talks to Statues
15. Gypsies in the Palace
16. Take It Easy
17. Barometer Soup
18. It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere
19. A Pirate Looks at 40
20. Southern Cross

Encore (solo acoustic)

21. Railroad Lady