Owner of Portsmouth restaurant remembers Jimmy Buffett’s last live show
PORTSMOUTH, R.I. (WLNE) — “Unexpected, genuine, organic,” is how the owner of Sunset Cove in Portsmouth described Jimmy Buffett’s last ever live show.
A lifelong fan, Mike MacFarlane said Buffett’s last live performance being a surprise show at his restaurant is something he will always treasure.
He said he saw Buffett perform over 100 times over the years before the “Margaritaville” singer took the stage at his restaurant.
“We are beyond grateful that his last show was here,” he told ABC 6 News.
Staff at Sunset Cove were expecting Mac McAnally and the Coral Reefer Band on July 2.
MacFarlane said McAnally arrived with some news.
McAnally told him that he just got off FaceTime with Buffett, who was on Long Island.
Jimmy Buffett’s last live show was at Sunset Cove in Portsmouth in July. (WLNE)
“He said, ‘He looked it up, it’s about a 20 minute flight to Middletown, he’d like to join us and do a few songs, are you good with that?’ — I said, ‘Absolutely,'” MacFarlane said.
Just like that, about 400 people who bought tickets to see McAnally also saw the tropical rock legend.
It was made even more bittersweet that it all happened on MacFarlane’s 50th birthday.
Buffett’s website says that he passed away peacefully on Sept. 1. He had been going through a private battle with skin cancer.
“If anybody, being that day of my 50th birthday, if anybody over the last 30 years would’ve said, ‘Hey, Mike, if you could have anything for your 50th birthday, what would it be?’ It would have been, ‘Have Jimmy Buffett play my birthday,”‘ MacFarlane said.
MacFarlane now has a great memory to look back on his favorite artist.
“Jimmy’s got a song line out there that says, ‘Some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic’ and that song line will live with me forever now, because it’s tragic of him passing, but the magic that his last performance and his last show here, at a place called Sunset Cove, on the water, with a dock, in the Ocean State, and Jimmy wrote many songs about being on the ocean, to me, you can’t put a price on that,'” he said.
