John Mayer brilliant in tour opener
Nearly 20 years into his career, John Mayer could rest on his laurels as one of the best pop singer-songwriters of his era, play a couple hot licks here and there to highlight his guitar hero credentials and coast for the foreseeable future. But, as his Friday night concert at the Times Union Center highlighted, Mayer is still a prodigiously gifted, highly motivated musical force.
The return to the Capital Region for Mayer, coming nearly a month after his SPAC appearance with Dead and Company, marked the opening night of his 2019 world tour. It was the second time in three years he’s opened a tour from the confines of the TU Center, having launched his tour in support of his “The Search for Everything” LP at the venue in March 2017.
On Friday night, Mayer offered up a much different show than that March evening two years ago.
Borrowing an idea from his part-time bandmates in the Grateful Dead offshoot, Mayer eschewed an opening act for the first time in his career and instead split his 2½-hour performance into two sets. In that time frame and with the help of his lights-out eight-piece band, he showcased the full range of his musical gifts and ability to continue incorporating new sounds and styles into his repertoire.
Take “Helpless,” which came about four songs into the evening. The studio take, recorded a couple years ago, is a gem. It’s a dance jam, one of the funkiest numbers in Mayer’s oeuvre and punctuated by some torrid lead work.
As a live vehicle, Mayer and his band took it to another level. His solo on the tune was explosive, making an already enthusiastic near-sellout crowd lose its collective mind.
The rendition was stunning, one of the best single-song performances I’ve witnessed this year.
Songs like “Something Like Olivia” and “Edge of Desire” showcased Mayer’s classicist pop-rock and blues tendencies. The former is a ‘70s-inspired, groove-laden, rock ‘n’ soul number. The latter is an example of Mayer’s ability to craft a tune and harness a dramatic musical arc. It builds and builds, the band rising in intensity, culminating in a red-hot Mayer solo.
The first set ended with a version of “I Guess I Just Feel Like” that ended with some lethal lead guitar work by Mayer that had bassist Pino Palladino standing behind him smiling broadly.
After a 30-minute break, Mayer returned for a solo acoustic turn that was highlighted by a crowd-pleasing “Daughters.”
The full band returned after a handful of songs for “Still Feel Like Your Man” that nicely used Mayer’s falsetto and featured a little bit of finger-tapping on the solo.
“Why Georgia” and “In the Blood” both prompted massive audience participation, while “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room” and main set-ender “Gravity” served as blues guitar expositions.
“Slow Dancing” had two solos. The first was tasteful and brief. The second was absolutely lethal and earned some of the biggest cheers of the night. “Gravity” closed out with a similarly incendiary outro but also gave some love to Mayer’s two back-up singers, who beautifully vamped on a partial cover of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember.”
The encore was two songs. For the first, Mayer grabbed an acoustic and strapped on a mouth harp for the roots-rocker “Born and Raised.” After noting just how much the pop culture landscape has shifted since he first broke into the mainstream, Mayer thanked the audience for still caring and maintaining an investment in him and his new work. He then closed with his latest single, “New Light.”
The bouncy disco-rock tune was one of the shortest songs of the evening, but it provided a fun and energetic capper on a consistently strong, entertaining performance.
Jim Shahen Jr. is a frequent contributor to the Times Union.