According to the Edmonton Sun, the first Margaritaville restaurant in Canada will open next year in Edmonton:

Look for a Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville Cafe to open in west-end Edmonton next year, full of boats and planes and the Key West atmosphere so celebrated in Jimmy’s tunes. It’s a happening chain stateside.

Jimmy Buffett has several Margaritaville locations in the US as well as locations in the Caribbean and Mexico.

Jimmy Buffett and Mac McAnally will take part in a benefit for wounded soldiers on Monday night in Washington, DC:

Show Dog Records artist Mac McAnally will be joining other stars including hosts Amy Grant and Vince Gill at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC to play a show which will honor our wounded soldiers. The artist/writer will be playing solo that night as well as being joined by Jimmy Buffett.

The event honors wounded veterans and marks the launch of the nationwide “CHALLENGE AMERICA” initiative and will be held on Monday, June 8th at 8p (ET).”CHALLENGE AMERICA” will work with communities across AMERICA to support the development of recreational and occupational programs for returning injured military and their families. The initiative is an outgrowth of CHALLENGE ASPEN, a non-profit organization that has provided adaptive recreation for people with disabilities since 1995.

Click here for ticket purchase info.

We told you about this in March and wanted to bring it back to your attention since the drawing is coming up quickly (June 20th).

Save Our Cats and Kittens, Inc., a non-profit, no-kill cat shelter in Fort Walton Beach, FL, is having a fundraiser where you could win a guitar autographed by Jimmy Buffett!

The $3,000 first prize package includes:

• Sunburst Eleca Acoustic Guitar autographed by Jimmy Buffett
• 3 day/3 night stay at Emerald Grande Resort in Destin, Florida
• Gift bucket from Cheeseburger in Paradise of Destin

Other winners may receive a gift basket from Coppertone, or a copy of Jimmy Buffett’s latest book “Swine Not.”

Visit www.saveourcatsandkittens.com for all the details and to purchase your raffle tickets.

Former Coral Reefer Band member Roger Bartlett has a great video up on YouTube of Jimmy Buffett and the band in 1975. It’s a homemade video of the guys on the road:

(hat tip to Ken for passing this along!)

The Honolulu Star Bulletin has an article on the Honolulu Surfing Museum, which was bankrolled by Buffett and is located adjacent to Jimmy Buffett’s At The Beachcomber restaurant in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The term “museum” is stretched pretty thin these days – a traditional museum is a hallowed, hushed sanctuary of artifacts, a library of reality, where you go to learn, to experience the real thing firsthand.

The Honolulu Surfing Museum, on the other hand, “isn’t so much about scholarship,” explains curator Mark Fragale. “We’re about fun!”

Being “about fun” pretty much sums up Jimmy Buffett’s entire business philosophy, and the parrothead entertainer bankrolled the site as an adjacent attraction to his Jimmy Buffett’s Restaurant at the Beachcomber Hotel in Waikiki.

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“Everything in here is from the personal collection of Mr. Buffett’s,” explained Fragale, a well-known surfing collector himself. “It began when he acquired the original surfboard used by Robert Duvall in ‘Apocalypse Now,’ and the owner had connections to the Santa Barbara Surfing Museum in California. Buffett also picked up the original balsa surfboard broken up in ‘Ride the Wild Surf’ and many other things from Santa Barbara. Jimmy Buffett has an incredible affinity for surfing and Hawaii culture, and he bought everything needed for the museum is one swell foop.”

Read the full article here and check out the official site for the Honolulu Surfing Museum at www.honolulusurfmuseum.com.