Jimmy Buffett drops in at Sag Harbor's WLNG, premieres new song on air

Jimmy Buffett, a North Haven resident and forever the mayor of “Margaritaville,” came over the causeway Sunday morning to Sag Harbor’s classic-rock WLNG/92.1 FM, dropping the world premiere of his new song on “Lunch on the Deck with Bill Evans & Jessica Ambrose.”

“I’ve had this love of this station since I lived across the street from it,” the 76-year-old music legend, originally from Mississippi, explained on air before playing the new “My Gummy Just Kicked In.” “We lived at 10 Redwood Rd. before we moved down the street. We lived there for about five years.”

“It was an honor for us,” former WABC-TV/7 meteorologist Evans, 63, the program director and station co-owner, told Newsday Monday. “A small radio station in eastern Long Island — he could have gone to [media giant] iHeart and launched his song, but he picked us. … He calls us his hometown radio station.”

The appearance came out of a chance meeting June 11, when one of Buffett’s longtime Coral Reefer Band guitarists, Peter Mayer, was playing Amagansett’s the Stephen Talkhouse with his musician son, Brendan Mayer. Ambrose was there “and briefly talked with him and asked him to be on the show and he said he’ll think about it.” Buffett, he says, played five songs that night but not the new one, which he had substantially written while hospitalized in Boston in May but still was unfinished.

Sometime later, Buffett, who had appeared previously on a WLNG Sunday-evening music show, “asked his people to call Jessica and make the arrangements,” Evans said. The co-host’s lighthearted radio patter about having run into Buffett around Sag Harbor notwithstanding, the appearance was anything but impromptu. “He called in all his people — his videographer came up from North Carolina!”

Buffett originally was set for the show’s regular Saturday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. slot, but when his own schedule changed the musician asked if he could appear Sunday instead. “I said yes, and we’ll have coffee and breakfast for you,” a delighted Evans recalled.

No less rock royalty than Paul McCartney plays bass on the new song. Buffett “had been working on a new album and so he had a dinner at his house” to play some of its songs for friends, Evans said, reiterating an anecdote the star had related. “They had a dinner for about 20 people and at one end of the table was Jimmy sitting next to Paul McCartney’s wife, Nancy [Shevell]. Paul McCartney is at the other end next to Jimmy’s wife, Janey [Slagsvol]. So Nancy, going to her chair, trips and Jimmy grabs her and asks, ‘Are you all right?’ and helps her to the chair. And she says, ‘My [marijuana] gummy just kicked in.’ Jimmy, he's no dummy — he’s a songwriter always looking for a line — and he says, ‘Hey, you mind if I use that for a song?’ ”

Sometime later, Buffett was in California working on a new album, and McCartney happened to be at the same studio. They spoke about the gummy song “and months later Paul calls up and says, ‘I think your idea is so great I want to play bass on your song.’ ”

The new song, Evans said, “is very good. It has Jimmy Buffett all over it — steel drum, it’s cute, the lyrics are great, it’s in the Jimmy Buffett wheelhouse. They’re looking at remastering it before officially releasing it in two weeks.”

Buffett’s representative did not respond to a Newsday request for comment.