Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band return to New England this week for two Boston area shows. We’ve heard from a few Mansfield area parrotheads that the parking lot at the Comcast Center at Great Woods will not open until 3:00 pm this Thursday and noon on Saturday.

From the Parrothead Club of Eastern Massachusetts (via urlcenter):

We have been working to confirm the parking lot details and were hoping to actually have them bend the rules and let us in earlier than the posted times. That is NOT going to happen. They are serious about the 3pm Thursday and noon Saturday opening times. In addition, we understand that Mansfield and surrounding Police will be patrolling local parking lots and hotels and disbanding any groups they find loitering there.

Read more in a discussion on our forum.

(H/T urlcenter)

In town already for his Thursday and Saturday shows in Mansfield, Jimmy Buffett attended game 5 of the NBA Finals in Boston on Sunday night:

Making his way all the way from “Margaritaville’’ was singer Jimmy Buffett, who plays at the Comcast Center Thursday and Saturday.

Buffett is a big NBA fan and can often be seen at Miami Heat home games. In 2001, Buffett was ejected from a Heat game for yelling obscenities at a referee. Read about the incident here.

An article in the Pensacola Business Journal discusses the new Margaritaville Beach Hotel in the Florida panhandle, plus plans for the future:

The much-anticipated opening of Jimmy Buffett’s first Margaritaville Beach Hotel is set for the first of July, said Jim Wiseman, the singer-songwriter’s development partner.

The Pensacola Beach Gulf-front hotel, developed by Marilyn Hess’ Little Sabine Inc., plans to start taking reservations June 17.

“July 1 looks good for an opening,” Wiseman said. “We want to make sure we’re open for July 4 weekend.”

The $50 million, 162-room hotel is the first of three planned for the franchise, Wiseman said.

Wiseman is working on development of a second Margaritaville Beach Hotel in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and the third planned for Hollywood in South Florida.

Buffett’s original plans were to open the first hotel in Hollywood, but changed his mind after a rapid-fire round of negotiations with Hess this spring.

You can request a reservation now for the Pensacola hotel here.

The Boston Globe has an interview with Buffett where they discuss the oil spill, his Buffet Hotel and Encores albums, and a new project that will be coming out:

Q. You have the public image of a free-for-all party guy and surfer, but weren’t you just down in Haiti helping out earthquake victims? And you’re going down to the Gulf Coast to lend a hand; what are your thoughts on the oil spill?

A. You have to figure out what to do instead of just bitching about it. One thing is that we have partnered with a little boat company and we’re building these small skimmer boats that can go into shallow water and actually help with the cleanup. Having grown up on the Gulf Coast, I don’t do this for headlines, but just because I want to give back. . . . We’re about to open our [Margaritaville Hotel] in Pensacola Beach, which is right at ground zero. We had a job fair there for 40 jobs — and 1,000 people showed up.

Q. You also just put out the double-CD “Encores,’’ taken from the acoustic encores you’ve done the last two years. It gave you a way to revisit some of your more obscure tunes and to show your roots by covering songs by Jesse Winchester, John Prine, and Bob Dylan.

A. On tour we have a 17-piece band that works people into a frenzy, but as big as this thing has gotten, I never want to forget being a folk singer, because that’s what I grew out of. I want to keep the roots alive of just me and a guitar since I spent so many years doing that. By ending the shows that way feels like a nightcap. It feels good.

Q. Any other recording projects?

A. Twenty years ago I ran away to Tahiti and wrote the song “One Particular Harbour.’’ I went back to Tahiti not long ago and did an acoustic version of the whole “One Particular Harbour’’ album in a bar called Bloody Mary’s where I first played — it fits about 80 people. So we’ll put that out.

Buffett is playing two shows next weekend just outside of Boston at Mansfield’s Comcast Center.

A couple weeks ago Jimmy Buffett spoke at the Lawrenceville School, a private boarding school near Princeton, New Jersey:

The Lawrenceville School’s gift to students in the days before their summer break quite literally arrived on the Kirby Arts Center stage yesterday with a gift-wrapped box on his head. A more appropriate present there never was, for beneath the festive packaging was famed singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett, a fellow who knows how to start a summer off right. Buffett entertained the whooping, cheering crowd with hilarious anecdotes of his life on the road — and also delivered on his promise to tell a story or two that would make his daughter’s face “as red as her shirt.”

“Fun has to be a part of life,” he said in his iconic drawl. “And I’m fortunate to have made a career out of it.”

As a young man, Buffett took a little while to figure out what he wanted to do with his life, “But I did know that I wanted to get the hell out of Mobile, Alabama.” He learned a few guitar chords in college (to impress girls) and, after some ups and downs, this “child of Mardi Gras” established himself a fun-loving performer that knew how to make audiences walk away happy. “Your relationship with the audience is about what they want to hear, not about what you want to play,” he told the students. “There are eight or nine songs I have to play or they’ll kill me.”

He urged the crowd to live life to its fullest and see the world in person rather than through the glow of a computer monitor. Then, after a lively Q&A that riffed on everything from buying a boat in lieu of an insurance policy to his relationship with Santa Claus, Buffett, launched into a rousing rendition of a few of his iconic songs.

Mac McAnally also joined Buffett for a couple songs.

Check out a photo gallery from the appearance on Lawrenceville School’s Facebook page.