Concert review: Seriously, is John Mayer just making these things up as he goes along?
Two songs into his show in Charlotte on Monday night — some 90 minutes before he would take time out to introduce his seven band members and his two backing vocalists — John Mayer gave a special shout-out to an unsung hero.
“If you could just make as much noise as possible for my guitar tech Jeremy,” the 44-year-old singer said, appealing to the crowd of 16,000 or so that had gathered for his “Sob Rock Tour” concert at Spectrum Center. “I rip the (expletive) out of these guitars, and I don’t have to tune them. ... I just destroy these guitars. Thank you, Jeremy.”
The acknowledgment, of course, did double-duty. It was a nice nod to Jeremy Nielsen, on his first full tour since replacing Rene Martinez, the longtime tech who retired at the end of Mayer’s 2019 tour.
It was also Mayer patting himself on the back.
Because anyone who knows anything about his live performances knows that he does rip the — um, to keep things clean let’s call it stuffing — out of his guitars, be them electric ones or acoustic ones. That’s the No. 1 reason to come to his shows. To listen to him reel off dexterity-defying solo after dexterity-defying solo. To watch him employ the types of finger-gymnnastics that can give mere-mortal guitarists arthritis just from thinking about trying to replicate them.
But there’s another pretty-darn-good reason for fans of his music to try to take advantage of every opportunity to see him perform: One never truly knows exactly what Mayer is going to do, say, or play on any given night.
It’s not just that each of his setlists is different from city to city. It’s also that he seems to be working out parts of the concert in his head as he goes along, in terms of what he wants to point out about a song and how he wants to present it and have it be interpreted. In other words, you get the sense you might be seeing something new being birthed at any given show. At the same time, it’s probably just as likely everything gets mapped out in fine detail before every tour date, and that he’s simply creating the illusion of constructing his performance on the fly — which would be an impressive trick in its own right.
Or, maybe, it’s a little bit of both.
What follows is a rundown of some of the moments I enjoyed the most from Monday night’s mercifully* well-paced show (*-see footnote at end), along with a just-barely-educated guess as to whether or not these moments were unique to Charlotte.
(If you’ve seen a concert on this tour elsewhere, feel free to reach out and let me know if things went similarly or differently in your city.)
1. With Mayer on an acoustic, during the second run through the chorus of his folk-pop “Who Says” (from 2009’s “Battle Studies”), he subbed out a reference to Austin, Texas: “It’s been a long night in New York City / It’s been a long night in Charlotte too.” Upon finishing the song, he joked about how the lyric change constituted pandering to the crowd, then admitted that “For every other city I played in, I sang that city’s name.”
Unique to Charlotte? Uhhh, well, obviously not!
2. In the middle of his acoustic mini-set, Mayer picked at the strings on his acoustic to produce a super-simple riff, starting with just a couple of repeating notes and building on it to include a few more over the course of more than a minute. No one really knew where he was going with it. Then, to the crowd’s delight, he broke into the super-complex opening of the bluesy “Neon” (from 2001’s “Room for Squares”).
For portions of the song, the large video screens provided some rather-rare extended close-ups* of his jaw-dropping finger work (*-see footnote at end). And after a mesmerizing 65-second solo on the back end, he slipped seamlessly into a rendition of the chorus of The Police’s that switched up the words: “Every little thing she does is tragic (originally magic) / Everything she does just leads me on (originally turns me on) / Even though my life before was magic (originally tragic) / Still I know my love for her goes on (originally Now I know).”
Just as seamlessly, he segued back into “Neon” to a guitar-slapping climax and a literal pluck of the string with his middle finger to punctuate the last note.
Unique to Charlotte? He’s no stranger to covers of The Police songs, but if he’s added this flourish to “Neon” elsewhere on the tour, it’s not been noted in other reviews or in setlists posted online.
3. “I don’t think most people are gonna know this song, but I wrote this song a long time ago,” Mayer said as he stood alone on the stage with his acoustic guitar. He then proceeded to sing a line or two or three at a time of the haunting “Quiet” (from 1999 EP “Inside Wants Out”), pausing repeatedly to imply that even he was struggling to re-familiarize himself with the tune.
It was a little unclear what was going on, because — as he sometimes tends to do — he mumbled through parts of his banter, so I couldn’t totally follow his train of thought ... but he seemed to be suggesting he was searching for a certain basic two-chord progression. Whatever the case may have been, he interrupted the eighth line of “Quiet” with the first five chords of “Free Fallin’,” the Tom Petty song he’s been covering at live shows for nearly 15 years now.
It was a both a reflective and puzzling way to get there, but the end result was the same: an airy, breathy rendition of a classic that the crowd loved.
Unique to Charlotte? Best I can tell, that was a highly unusual way for Mayer to set up that particular staple of his concerts.
4. With less than a half an hour to go, Mayer launched into “Till the Right One Comes” with a gray and white electric blues guitar in his hands. The song is from his most recent album, 2021’s homage-to-the-’80s “Sob Rock,” and although it’s an upbeat toe-tapper, there were a noticeable number of people who left their seats during this one.
Maybe they needed a final bathroom break. Maybe they wanted to beat it home before the crowds let out.
Anyway, those who bailed missed out on a quick but fun side trip through an abbreviated cover of the always-infectious 1986 Paul Simon hit “You Can Call Me Al” — which makes a cool coupling with “Till the Right One Comes,” because of the tempo, but also because Mayer’s vocal delivery on it does have similarities to Simon’s on “Call Me Al.”
Unique to Charlotte? Not at all. He does this often. And I suspect that whenever he trots it out, it’s a highlight in particular for those who immediately are struck by memories of the original (and awesome) “You Can Call Me Al” music video.
Oh, about those footnotes(*)...
In regards to it being a mercifully well-paced show:
Last time Mayer was here, in August 2019, he played more songs (26, vs. 20 Monday night) over a longer period (2-1/2 hours, vs. just under 2 Monday night); but there was also a 30-minute intermission that took some of the momentum out of his performance.
In regards to those rather-rare extended close-ups of his finger work:
I complained after that 2019 concert that whoever was in charge of what was being shown to the audience on the screens often insisted on layering a psychedelic filter over the video images that made it hard to appreciate his talents. This time they did less of that; still, too often during solos we would get a few seconds of him working the strings and then a quick cut to another band member doing supporting work.
Look, I have nothing against his bandmates — they were uniformly excellent Monday night — and I’m all for multiple camera angles. But during guitar solos, the video feeds should stay trained on Mayer’s hands the whole time.
The only exception I’d make is if they wanted to pipe in some real-time footage of Jeremy Nielsen tuning his boss’s guitars...
John Mayer’s setlist
Full band
1. “Last Train Home”
2. “Belief”
3. “Shot in the Dark”
4. “Who Says”
5. “Something Like Olivia”
6. “Changing”
7. “Waiting on the World to Change”
Acoustic
8. “In Your Atmosphere”
9. “Neon”
10. “Free Fallin’” (Tom Petty cover)
Full Band
11. “Your Body Is a Wonderland”
12. “Wild Blue”
13. “Stop This Train”
14. “Moving On and Getting Over”
15. “The Beautiful Ones” (Prince cover by guitarist David Ryan Harris)
16. “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room”
17. “Til the Right One Comes” / “You Can Call Me Al” (Paul Simon cover)
18. “Gravity”
Encore:
19. “Dear Marie”
20. “New Light”
This story was originally published April 12, 2022 at 1:41 PM.
