While chatting to Holler about everything from his stellar solo career to his storied track record of collaborations, songwriting legend Mac McAnally delved into his close friendship over the years with the late great Gulf and Western icon, Jimmy Buffett.

McAnally remains one of the most prominent members of Buffett's Coral Reefer Band, with the duo first crossing paths in 1997, after Buffett wrote McAnally a letter expressing how he felt the two Mississippi natives would make good friends.

McAnally still leads the Coral Reefer Band on their numerous North America tours, with the ‘Down the Road’ singer-songwriter sharing with Holler that he soon plans to look through Buffett's collection of unreleased material for a forthcoming project.

Elsewhere during the conversation, McAnally touches on one of the key lessons he learnt from Buffett, who was renowned for his perennially sunny, uplifting disposition.

This spirit of joie-de-vivre is laced into McAnally's own discography, epitomised by the playful optimism and jubilation of ‘Once in a Lifetime’ and ‘Almost All Good’.

McAnally candidly muses, “I think I've always been attracted to humor in songs...All these years of playing with Jimmy Buffett, he's someone who made everybody smile, and there is definitely a value in that, and particularly in today's world - you don't always necessarily find a smile when you turn on the news in the morning”.

The prolific writer fondly goes on, “So if music can provide that for you, it's a great thing. Having seen Jimmy do it so well for so many years, I think it made me chase those ideas a little bit more than perhaps I did earlier. I went through two or three years of your regular ‘angry young man’ songwriter thing, but I didn't make a very good angry young man. So I bailed on it about the second verse. I could stay angry for about a verse and a chorus - then I started laughing again, you know?”

Buffett remains a touchstone for island-inspired, sun-soaked music, but as well as painting vivid and endlessly enchanting portraits of beachside bars and nautical adventures, the ‘Margaritaville’ hitmaker infused his glass-half-full outlook into every song.

From the tongue-in-cheek frivolity of ‘Boat Drinks’ to the gentle comfort of ‘Bubbles Up’, Buffett's music has a unique capacity to spread joy and to brighten listeners’ days. We can't wait to hear what more there is to come from his catalogue of unreleased songs, but in the meantime, as the summer months roll through and the sun shines on, we'll be enjoying the sonic Vitamin D Buffett and his good buddy McAnally have always managed to imbue through their collaborations.

Read Holler's full interview with Mac McAnally here.

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