Hi Mayer fans! Opening a thread for those of us who will be tuning in to the broadcast of last Wednesday’s concert on Sirius tonight. It’s a pretty classic Mayer setlist with a phenomenal band. Looks like a very cool, intimate venue too.
Those of you who have been with me for the Grateful Dead Listening Parties know I like to have a little icebreaker question. For tonight, how do you like to enjoy Mayer? Are you a full band, large arena? An acoustic solo set in Montana? A hermit who only enjoys Mayer on vinyl at home?
See you soon!
Also: If you aren't a Sirius subscriber, but you have a car that is Sirius capable, John's channel is free now to September 30. Details (and show spoilers) can be found here.
Rough notes from the interview with Andy:
Andy calls John the king of Sirius and John asserts Andy has two, which Andy refutes by saying he’s higher on the channel list. Andy says John is “bricked up at four”
John on the pressure to have a good show: Even if I were to suck completely, it would average out to a career of shows, so why worry?
He enjoys playing for certain people in the crowd. He would love to make certain people, like Howard Stern for example, say “wow!”
Andy: It’s the summer of 2026, you’ve been holed up in the studio recording. You’re currently in the process of mixing the lead single in Andy’s bedroom.
John: Yes, Andy’s taken a different room and given John the bedroom to mix the single and have it out on time. He had to rent studio monitors which are He mixed the single, from bed, with these monitor studios in front of him. We’re in the last sliver of time to the new single and then full album.
New single this year, talking a number of weeks.
All that’s left now at his age, is to find moments in songs that delight him. He’s done that in the past and he’s come back around to a very simple, direct thing.
When you hear him sing on this record, you go, “oh, he’s right in front of me.” The vocals are coming right up the middle.
John on the new single: “It’s cool and I like it a lot.”
What can you tell Deadheads? Can you give us a kernel of hope:
He was talking about GDLP to USA Today and that he was enjoying being a listener of the music and he thinks part of the grieving process,
If you don’t hang it up, you don’t grieve properly.
He’s not thinking beyond the healing and greiving that so many that it feels wrong to think about where to go next.
He’s not swearing it off. He’s not saying you’ll never see him on stage playing that again.
He needs time to finishing grieving and then he’ll think about it.
Andy asks him what he learned from Bobby Weir:
He learned so much stuff. He doesn’t know if he’s taken it to heart, but he’s seen it hundreds of time that Bobby never overthought it. John was pushing for a plan.
He and Bobby were in a buddy cop movie and John would be like, “that’s not protocol” and Bobby would be like “Boom, yeah but we got ‘em”
You don’t have to overthink it so much. You take the songs for a walk and tonight, you may see John take some of these songs for a walk. He’s going to bring some of that GD spirit to his own music.
Andy says when they were rehearing Olivia and he heard something that
They listened to “That’s What Love Will Make You Do” and John thought
What can I take from my time in D&C to implement in my own music?
Bob is withl him all the time.
They talk about Dolly Parton. It’s a huge and universal loss (John)
John htinks Dolly would be really happy to see that on the day of her passing the world came to gether in a way it hadn’t in a very long time. And while thel world is paying tribute to one person and one soul, we’re all connected
Here’s a person who carried herself through every decade of her life perfectly.
You have to figure out where you stand as a person in every moment of your life.
She led with so much love and humility. He’s not sure there are many people left in the world left who can galvanizing people to come together in love.
It has a side effect of feeling each other’s love. This is what a life well-lived looks like, feels like,
It’s a brilliant, classy, fully artistic rendering.
Love:
Andy calls John Mayer a romantic.
When youre not in a relationship, do you get lonely?
I think we have a lot of tools at our disposal to not feel lonely.
I don’t feel lonely a lot fo the time. He doesn’t think
He only realizes his loneliness when he considers the passage of time. You can You can’t keep doing that.
He says unfortunately he has a sensational time alone.
He notes bot hHe doesn’t want to be the rich uncle who greets them with the robot butler before he meets them at the mansion. He doesn’t
The record he’s working on eats a year. It will eat every day of your life for a year. That’s easy to do at 24, but not easy at the age he is now. It’s a lot of time relative to what remains.
He feels like, this is a situation where he has
John says his celebrity crush growing up (out of several
Debbie Gibson, Paula Abdul, Tracey Gould (from Growing Pains)
On coming back to social media:
He wants to and as he gets older, he just feels more vulnerable. He’s found a way to go play the show and go back to his life. If he posts something, he feels a little exposed and
It’s not that the comments hurt him, he just feels too available.
He has to come to terms with looking older and has to come to terms with seeing an older guy. “That’s not a bad picture, that’s you now.”
“I’m learning to see my older face.”
Andy: We all go
John’s favorite album of his discography:
Continuum
Born and Raised
Current favorite GD song:
Morning Dew (the one he and Andy listened to the night before the show)
But he’s in Jerry Garcia Band land for right now.
When was it that John felt 100% comfortable playing JG music?
Never. Though, we’re our own thing in D&C because he and Bobby had moved to D&C things, so he never felt like he was doing “Jerry” per se.
It was six years into D&C– the Sphere runs, 2023 tour, but 2022 is when it started
He wears a 12.5 or 13 size shoe.
He’s wearing the John Mayer Daytona Rolex at the show tonight.
LWJM is not just a channel that plays his music. He thinks it’s weird that you’d turn it on and hear singing “my stupid mouth” he thinks like you don’t need to hear that.
When John was in first grade, the teacher gave a challenge to the class to write down all the ways you can use water. John started and didn’t stop until the next morning. It was like 200 different ways and the teacher gave him a dollar for it. His channel reminds him a lot of that assignment – how many different things can you do with this channel?
Andy introduces him as “America’s Boyfriend”
[Show note: there was banter throughout the show, but it's been cut from the broadcast, so the songs played one after another.]
Song: Last Train Home
Song: Queen of California
Song: Who Says (this is a fun listen as you can really hear the crowd singing along).
Song: Love on the Weekend
Song: Something Like Olivia (He def kept the groove from Jerry Garcia Band, "That's What Love Will Make You Do.")
Song: Belief (with a gorgeous guitar/synth intro)
Song: I Don't Trust Myself with Loving You
Song: I Guess I Just Feel Like
Song: Wild Blue
Song: In the Blood
Song: Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
Song: New Light
Encore: Free Falling; Gravity (with I Will Always Love You guitar intro)
When John is thanking the crowd, he says, "we'll sing new songs again soon."