Margaritaville.com has a behind-the-scenes video slideshow for “Buffet Hotel”, the new album from Jimmy Buffett. It contains exclusive photos from the overseas trips that inspired the new songs.

Watch here

“Buffet Hotel” will be released this Tuesday. Order now from Amazon for $7.99.

Also check out Amazon MP3 Daily Deals on Monday for a special deal on “Buffet Hotel.”

Jimmy Buffett’s motivation for making records isn’t about getting on the radio, it’s about putting out songs for Parrotheads:

“Thinking of getting on the radio, that’s way in the past for me,” Buffett says. “Making something that people who like what I do can add to their collection is all I’m doing these days. I write for that live, paying audience; it’s like writing on assignment, and I think it works pretty successfully.”

“Buffet Hotel” hits stores on Tuesday. Order now from Amazon for $7.99.

Jimmy Buffett will personally preview his brand new CD “Buffet Hotel”, with stories about each song on Radio Margaritaville!

Tune in Monday December 7 at 11am ET, or catch the replays: December 7 at 11pm ET, December 8 at 5pm ET, December 11 at 9pm ET and December 12 at 11am ET.

Buffett did a similar Radio Margaritaville special when his last album “Take The Weather With You” hit stores.

“Buffet Hotel” will be released Tuesday, December 8th. Pre-order now from Amazon for only $7.99.

Billboard has an interview with Jimmy Buffett that discusses the new album “Buffet Hotel”, next year’s tour, and two new books that he’s working on.

“Buffet Hotel”

Jimmy Buffett says he felt a greater level of engagement on his new album, “Buffet Hotel,” than he has on many of his other recent efforts.

“With a band this good and with people this good around you, you kind of get in a routine,” Buffett tells Billboard.com, acknowledging that previous “listening and fixing” was done primarily by Coral Reefer Band collaborators Mike Utley and Mac McAnally. But on “Buffet Hotel,” Buffett says that “we got back to doing things like we did in the old days. Instead of doing it in the afternoon, I said, ‘Let’s go back like we did in the old days and do those red wine and reefer vocals…at midnight.’ I’d get a little buzz on red wine and get my singing chops, get in that mood, and then I’d send ’em over the Internet to Utley and Mac and say, ‘Alright, I know they were midnight. You got red wine vocals there. You can throw ’em away or tell me what you think,’ and they’d go, ‘Do more of those!’ ”

Buffett and company previewed several of the songs during his 2009 concerts, notably “Summerzcool” and “Surfing in a Hurricane,” the first surf rock song he’s ever written.

“Mac told me on the last night of the tour we’d done seven of the new songs off the album over the summer, and I’d never done that before,” Buffett recalls. “Usually you’re lucky to get one or two songs from a new album into the show, so it was a complete reversal.”

2010 Tour

Buffett is planning a full-scale “Buffet Hotel” tour for 2010 and intends to start the year in Australia and the Pacific Rim. He’s toying with the idea of playing entire albums next year and hopes to play 1983’s “One Particular Harbor” in Tahiti. He’s also putting into motion into a special performance at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival with “Buffet Hotel” guests Sonny Landreth and Toumani Diabate.

Film and Books

And while he says that he’s “out of the movie business” at the moment, Buffett is working on a documentary about his trip to Mali with director Margaret Brown.

Buffett also has two books in the works, a collection of short stories set in the Pacific and “a rock ‘n’ roll novel” called “Mudbath” that is “based on a real-life adventure, but hopefully you won’t recognize any of the characters.”

Read the full article here.

New York Magazine has an article that goes into detail on how Jimmy Buffett discovered Ilo Ferreira.

On November 23, Freston and his friend Jimmy Buffett, 62, were there to support Ilo at his sold-out show at Joe’s Pub and his appearance later that night on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, which they’d helped engineer.

“Hopefully, lightning strikes and he gets a musical career,” says Freston. “We’re just trying to give him some exposure.”

How’d they get to know, and fund, him? “It was an amazing set of circumstances,” Buffett says backstage at Joe’s. “Freston gets fired and he doesn’t have his plane and he’s got me all fired up to go to the Festival in the Desert,” in Africa. So they have to take Buffett’s jet. The route to Mali “is from San Juan to Cape Verde,” where they stopped to refuel. Buffett thought, why not check out the local music scene while they were stopping through. “I went, ‘Let’s see if Cesaria Evora is playing; I’ve always been a fan.’”

Also with them was MTV Networks editorial director Bill Flanagan, 54. That night, the Cape Verde culture ministry hosted for Buffett and his traveling companions to showcase performances by the best local musicians, including Ilo. After seeing him play, they all “just looked at each other and said, ‘Man.’ I mean, you see a lot of people, but very few people you think have it,” says Buffett.

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(photo C. Taylor Crothers/FilmMagic)