Before Jimmy Buffett became synonymous with Margaritaville, Parrot Heads and an entire lifestyle industry, there was a scruffier, stranger and considerably less predictable band finding its way through the bars and back roads of Key West, Fl.
That formative era is the focus of the new documentary OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD: THE FIRST CORAL REEFERS, and ahead of its theatrical release tomorrow (Sept. 5 — a day after the annual Jimmy Buffett Day), SPIN is premiering an exclusive clip that captures some of the original Coral Reefer Band’s gloriously unvarnished spirit. In the excerpt, longtime Buffett tour/road manager Bob Liberman — better known as “Lip Balm” — recalls the late harmonica player Greg “Fingers” Taylor and his refusal to let success get in the way of a perfectly good pillowcase.
As Buffett started making more money and the band graduated to increasingly nicer hotels, Liberman says, the musicians naturally upgraded their luggage. Taylor, however, stuck with the same humble approach: a pillowcase stuffed with his clothes. The sight of the band pulling up to a Ritz-Carlton while a sharply dressed bellman waited for luggage only to be handed Taylor’s pillowcase became, in Liberman’s telling, a running source of amusement.
It’s a small, wonderfully human anecdote that gets at the larger story OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD sets out to tell: before the polished Coral Reefer Band audiences would come to know over the following decades, Buffett and his musicians were young players chasing a dream, living on the road 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 back to the 1970s and early ’80s, when Key West provided both the setting and creative catalyst for the music Buffett was building with his original band. The film draws on rare, never-before-seen archival footage and interviews with founding members, road crew, producers and other music figures, including Kenny Chesney, Mac McAnally and songwriter Keith Sykes. Academy Award-winner Jeff Bridges narrates.
The documentary premiered at the 2026 Santa Barbara International Film Festival and has since picked up accolades on the festival circuit. A U.S. and Canadian digital on-demand release is scheduled for November.
For Cunningham, preserving these stories was particularly urgent given that many of the original players are no longer around. The director, who first saw Buffett and the Coral Reefers perform in 1977 before moving to Key West the following year, describes those early musicians as living through what Taylor called the band’s “heavy artillery years” — a period defined by chaos, creativity, uncertainty and the kind of camaraderie that could produce both a signature sound and a punchline at a fancy hotel.
Buffett would ultimately record 32 studio albums, 14 live albums and 11 compilations across a five-decade career before his death in 2023, but OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD argues that much of the music that would define his concerts and enduring cultural legacy took shape during these unruly early years. As Cunningham puts it, Buffett’s final message to his friends was simple: “Keep the party going.” Indeed, OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD goes back to find out where that party began.
