I met Jimmy Buffett several times over the years. A future Weather Report will get into those stories. What matters here is the music and the way it shaped the way I see the world.

I’ve loved Buffett’s music for as long as I can remember—but not just the party songs. It was the deep cuts that pulled me in. The reflective ones. The songs that felt like quiet observations about life, time, and the strange, funny and clever ways people find their way through the world.

Buffett will probably always be remembered by many people as the guy who wrote the ultimate party soundtrack. But there was always much more going on underneath. Take Margaritaville. Over the years it has turned into a full-blown party anthem. But if you go back to the original recording and really listen, there’s a deeper story there—about drifting, mistakes, self-awareness, and the humor we use to make sense of and navigate our own lives.

That depth—the observation and reflection that felt like it came from real lived experience—was what resonated with me. Buffett didn’t just write songs. He created a world. A place built from adventure, escapism, humor, and reflection. And he offered a mindset about how to move through life: follow curiosity, keep your sense of humor, and chart your own course.

For me, that worldview became a kind of compass.

Years later, that influence came full circle in a way I never could have planned.

My friend Whitney Lester and I wrote a song called Hippie from Mississippi. The idea for the song - and the title - actually had come to me in a dream and it wasn’t intended as a tribute at all. It was simply a song chronicling Jimmy’s life and journey—the unlikely path of a wandering songwriter who built his own universe. 

At the time we wrote it I didn’t even realize he was ill.

When Jimmy unexpectedly passed away, the song suddenly carried a different weight. I recorded it and released it on his birthday as a gesture of gratitude—for the joy, the optimism, and the spirit of adventure his music had brought into my life and into the lives of millions of others.

The song found an audience on trop-rock internet radio and eventually caught the ear of Doyle Grisham, Jimmy’s longtime pedal steel player whose work I had admired for decades.

Through a mind-blowing sequence of events suddenly Doyle was playing a pedal steel track on Hippie from Mississippi !

The original version of Hippie from Mississippi was something I recorded entirely on my own in my home studio.  But with Doyle now playing on the track it was clear that the song needed full-band treatment so we re-recorded it from the ground up with New Orleans' finest musicians and gave it a new title: “King of the Coast.”

It now sits at the center of Make Your Own Weather.

Doyle’s playing brought something to the song that only he could bring—the unmistakable sound of the Coral Reefer spirit woven through the track. Hearing that pushed me to raise my own game as a songwriter and storyteller.

I still can't believe a Coral Reefer is playing on this song. It brings so many things full circle and in a way, the song’s journey mirrors Jimmy’s philosophy: follow the current, trust the adventure, and see where the wind takes you.