John Mayer Finds the Pocket at Mohegan Sun

By Char Mone

Clad in a cozy “purple cow print” sweater and some baggy pants, a very casual John Mayer took the stage last Friday, October 9, at Mohegan Sun in front of a sold-out crowd. With no opening acts, band, or backup singers, Mayer played a twenty-song setlist in his signature “solo” style, reprising his 2023-24 tour. 

I remember once hearing Mayer claim that the crowd had virtually no effect upon him as a performer, but that he typically sheds all nervousness after the first song and gradually grows into the show. That phenomenon was exactly what I witnessed. He opened the concert with one of his biggest hits, “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room” off of his acclaimed 2006 record Continuum, performing a stripped-down version of the song with just an acoustic guitar. Even as a huge Mayer fan, I must be honest – the performance wasn’t my favorite. But true to his word, he followed up with “XO,” a warm, mellow Beyoncé cover, embellished beautifully with a harmonica introduction and outro.  

After a couple more songs, he took a quick break to screen a short interview on the big screen, bringing the audience back to the very beginning of his career. A wave of nostalgia hit most of the crowd – and Mayer himself, I’m sure – as we watched a young, ambitious, and extremely confident 24-year-old realize that he’d changed his life and launched a long, successful career. 

The middle of the setlist is where he ramped it up. After a folky version of Last Train Home, the lead single from his latest album, Sob Rock, Mayer turned to some of his best ever songwriting, silencing the crowd with a cutting performance of “Who Says,” a ballad about personal freedom and uncertainty from his 2009 record Battle Studies. He then switched guitars – perhaps for the fifth time that evening – and built up suspense with a long, acoustic introduction. Real fans, though, knew that he was about to break into “Neon,” his self-proclaimed “show-off” guitar song from Room for Squares. After delivering a masterclass in rhythm and finger-picking, Mayer followed up “Neon” with a crowd favorite. The introductory notes of “In Your Atmosphere” incited instantaneous cheers from the audience, and for good reason. Though the song is not part of any of his studio releases, it is unambiguously one of his greatest songs, blending a full, open-tuning sound on the guitar with gutwrenchingly vulnerable lyrics. 

My highlight of the night, however, was when Mayer brought out his resonator – a metal-based acoustic guitar – and played one of his most underrated songs, “Walt Grace’s Submarine Test, January 1967.” The ballad, from his 2012 record Born and Raised, describes the unrelenting ambition of a middle-aged man and his journey to set off in a “homemade, fan-blade/One-man submarine ride.” As Mayer has remarked in radio interviews, “Walt Grace” is the kind of song one can write only once in a lifetime; his unexpected rendition of it at Mohegan Sun gave me chills from start to finish, reaffirming my belief that Born and Raised might just be his best record. 

He closed the main set with another one of my favorites from Born and Raised, “If I Ever Get Around to Living,” using a double-necked guitar to play both that and “Edge of Desire,” a fan favorite from Battle Studies. Those back-to-back performances closed out the show with a masterful display of what musicians like to call “the pocket” – the sweet spot in music where rhythm, melody, and harmony seem to groove effortlessly. 

Mayer returned to the stage to cheers for a two-song encore, playing his hit song “Gravity” from Continuum with a rare sighting of his electric guitar, and closing out the evening with “Free Fallin’,” another unreleased cover from Where the Light Is. 

I left the arena with a feeling that every musician wills their audience to have: wanting more. 

And lucky for me and the rest of his listeners, “more” is what he seems set to deliver. A couple of days after the show, Mayer announced his new solo single, “Tom and Jerry,” set to be released on October 23, 2026. With new music and a twenty-one show residency at the Sphere on the horizon, just like his 24-year-old self, John Mayer seems set on sticking around.