Earlier than Jimmy Buffett turned synonymous with Margaritaville, Parrot Heads and a complete life-style business, there was a scruffier, stranger and significantly much less predictable band discovering its method by means of the bars and again roads of Key West, Fl.
That formative period is the main focus of the brand new documentary OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD: THE FIRST CORAL REEFERS, and forward of its theatrical launch tomorrow (Sept. 5 — a day after the annual Jimmy Buffett Day), SPIN is premiering an unique clip that captures a few of the authentic Coral Reefer Band’s gloriously unvarnished spirit. Within the excerpt, longtime Buffett tour/street supervisor Bob Liberman — higher referred to as “Lip Balm” — recollects the late harmonica participant Greg “Fingers” Taylor and his refusal to let success get in the way in which of a superbly good pillowcase.
As Buffett began making extra money and the band graduated to more and more nicer resorts, Liberman says, the musicians naturally upgraded their baggage. Taylor, nevertheless, caught with the identical humble method: a pillowcase stuffed together with his garments. The sight of the band pulling as much as a Ritz-Carlton whereas a sharply dressed bellman waited for baggage solely to be handed Taylor’s pillowcase turned, in Liberman’s telling, a working supply of amusement.
It’s a small, splendidly human anecdote that will get on the bigger story OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD units out to inform: earlier than the polished Coral Reefer Band audiences would come to know over the next a long time, Buffett and his musicians have been younger gamers chasing a dream, residing on the street and making it up as they went.
Directed and produced by John H. Cunningham and produced by Ted E. Haynes, OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD: THE FIRST CORAL REEFERS journeys again to the Seventies and early ’80s, when Key West offered each the setting and artistic catalyst for the music Buffett was constructing together with his authentic band. The movie attracts on uncommon, never-before-seen archival footage and interviews with founding members, street crew, producers and different music figures, together with Kenny Chesney, Mac McAnally and songwriter Keith Sykes. Academy Award-winner Jeff Bridges narrates.
The documentary premiered on the 2026 Santa Barbara Worldwide Movie Competition and has since picked up accolades on the competition circuit. A U.S. and Canadian digital on-demand launch is scheduled for November.
For Cunningham, preserving these tales was notably pressing on condition that lots of the authentic gamers are now not round. The director, who first noticed Buffett and the Coral Reefers carry out in 1977 earlier than transferring to Key West the next 12 months, describes these early musicians as residing by means of what Taylor referred to as the band’s “heavy artillery years” — a interval outlined by chaos, creativity, uncertainty and the sort of camaraderie that might produce each a signature sound and a punchline at a flowery lodge.
Buffett would in the end document 32 studio albums, 14 reside albums and 11 compilations throughout a five-decade profession earlier than his loss of life in 2023, however OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD argues that a lot of the music that might outline his concert events and enduring cultural legacy took form throughout these unruly early years. As Cunningham places it, Buffett’s remaining message to his buddies was easy: “Hold the celebration going.” Certainly, OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD goes again to search out out the place that celebration started.
