By Char Mone<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clad in a cozy \u201cpurple cow print\u201d 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 \u201csolo\u201d style, reprising his 2023-24 tour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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, \u201cSlow Dancing in a Burning Room\u201d off of his acclaimed 2006 record Continuum<\/em>, performing a stripped-down version of the song with just an acoustic guitar. Even as a huge Mayer fan, I must be honest \u2013 the performance wasn\u2019t my favorite. But true to his word, he followed up with \u201cXO,\u201d a warm, mellow Beyonc\u00e9 cover, embellished beautifully with a harmonica introduction and outro. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u2013 and Mayer himself, I\u2019m sure \u2013 as we watched a young, ambitious, and extremely confident 24-year-old realize that he\u2019d changed his life and launched a long, successful career. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/em>, Mayer turned to some of his best ever songwriting, silencing the crowd with a cutting performance of \u201cWho Says,\u201d a ballad about personal freedom and uncertainty from his 2009 record Battle Studies<\/em>. He then switched guitars \u2013 perhaps for the fifth time that evening \u2013 and built up suspense with a long, acoustic introduction. Real fans, though, knew that he was about to break into \u201cNeon,\u201d his self-proclaimed \u201cshow-off\u201d guitar song from Room for Squares<\/em>. After delivering a masterclass in rhythm and finger-picking, Mayer followed up \u201cNeon\u201d with a crowd favorite. The introductory notes of \u201cIn Your Atmosphere\u201d 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My highlight of the night, however, was when Mayer brought out his resonator \u2013 a metal-based acoustic guitar \u2013 and played one of his most underrated songs, \u201cWalt Grace\u2019s Submarine Test, January 1967.\u201d The ballad, from his 2012 record Born and Raised<\/em>, describes the unrelenting ambition of a middle-aged man and his journey to set off in a \u201chomemade, fan-blade\/One-man submarine ride.\u201d As Mayer has remarked in radio interviews, \u201cWalt Grace\u201d 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<\/em> might just be his best record. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He closed the main set with another one of my favorites from Born and Raised,<\/em> \u201cIf I Ever Get Around to Living,\u201d using a double-necked guitar to play both that and \u201cEdge of Desire,\u201d a fan favorite from Battle Studies<\/em>. Those back-to-back performances closed out the show with a masterful display of what musicians like to call \u201cthe pocket\u201d \u2013 the sweet spot in music where rhythm, melody, and harmony seem to groove effortlessly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mayer returned to the stage to cheers for a two-song encore, playing his hit song \u201cGravity\u201d from Continuum<\/em> with a rare sighting of his electric guitar, and closing out the evening with \u201cFree Fallin\u2019,\u201d another unreleased cover from Where the Light Is<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I left the arena with a feeling that every musician wills their audience to have: wanting more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And lucky for me and the rest of his listeners, \u201cmore\u201d is what he seems set to deliver. A couple of days after the show, Mayer announced his new solo single, \u201cTom and Jerry,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Char Mone Clad in a cozy \u201cpurple cow print\u201d 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 \u201csolo\u201d style, reprising […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetownradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetownradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetownradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetownradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetownradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetownradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":324,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetownradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions\/324"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetownradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetownradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetownradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetownradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}