Massachusetts Still Cheering for Jimmy Buffett Year After Death

It was a tribute fit for a pirate. Or a parrot.

Zac Brown Band and Kenny Chesney remembered their friend Jimmy Buffett during the second of three sold-out weekend shows at Gillette Stadium on August 24, leading the crowd in a poignant performance of "Come Monday."

It just made sense.

Headin' out to San Francisco
For the Labor Day weekend show...

Massachusetts, not California, was the setting of Buffett's legendary Labor Day concerts for many years. For a few magical hours every summer, Mansfield's Great Woods, now Xfinity Center, became a tropical party paradise with free-spirited, barefoot Buffett at the helm.

When the 76-year-old billionaire died during Labor Day weekend in 2023 after a private battle with cancer, the unexpected loss was felt far and wide -- especially in the Bay State.

Jimmy Buffett's Big Moment With Zac Brown Band

Buffett is gone, but his good-vibes spirit lives on in the music he created and his friends still on stage. Brown, who recorded the vacation anthem "Knee Deep" with Buffett in 2011, performed it for happy Foxboro crowds all weekend, keeping Buffett's voice in the second verse and showing big-screen video of the legend's smiling, mischievous face.

Fans went crazy.

Buffett and Zac Brown Band were close, often performing each other's songs and teaming up on duets, most recently "Same Boat" in 2022. After Buffett died, Brown and Buffett collaborator Mac McAnally, who performs regularly in New England, released a bittersweet tribute song, "Pirates & Parrots."

So adios, my friend
Anchor where that ocean ends
We'll pick up where you left off
Strummin' on a sailor song...

Jimmy Buffett's Massachusetts and Rhode Island Ties

Buffett and New England seemed like a perfect match. Thousands of fans, known as Parrotheads, flocked to his near-yearly appearances in Massachusetts. His songs celebrating the easy life resonated with the coastal crowd.

"This is a magic moment," he told a rowdy audience at Great Woods on Labor Day weekend in 2004, as heard on his album Live in Mansfield.

Taunton's BaHa Brothers once performed with the music icon.

Buffett's music, with its beachy feel, painted pictures of places that look a lot like Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, where the "Margaritaville" singer once crashed a plane. Sometimes his music referenced Massachusetts directly. Listen for a Buzzards Bay mention in "Volcano."

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Though his business decisions made him tremendously wealthy, he was an unassuming everyman in person. In 2019, he sat down with Fun 107 and WBSM to promote the musical Escape to Margaritaville during a stop in Providence.

"I did spend a lot of time on the Vineyard in my early days," he told us, noting he built a boat on Siasconset, Nantucket. "I loved the area."

Jimmy Buffett's Final Performance in Rhode Island

Buffett performed his last show in Mansfield in August of 2022, but that wasn't the last we'd see of him.

In July of the following year, he surprised and delighted fans when he joined McAnally on stage at Sunset Cove in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. He walked out during McAnally's cover of Alan Jackson's hit Buffett duet "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" in time to sing the bridge.

The last song he performed was "Margaritaville."

Buffett passed away two months later.

"It's not a place at all," Buffett once told Fun 107's Michael Rock of his signature song. "It's a state of mind."

One year after his death, Margaritaville is here in Massachusetts and wherever Buffett's music is played.