John Mayer Tour 2010-2011

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John Mayer Tickets

Setlist

Heartbreak Warfare
Crossroads (Robert Johnson cover)
Vultures
Perfectly Lonely
Assassin
Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
Belief
Free Fallin' (Tom Petty cover)
Steve Jordan drum solo
Waiting on the World to Change
Something's Missing
Half of My Heart / Dreams (Fleetwood Mac cover)
No Such Thing
Why Georgia
Gravity
Encore:
Who Says
Friends, Lovers or Nothing

Review: Philadelphia Inquirer
by Dan DeLuca

John Mayer should let his music do the talking

Considering he's such an obviously talented musician, it's startling just how tone deaf John Mayer can be. Does he realize how extraordinarily stupid the words that come out of his mouth actually sound?

The evidence of the 32-year-old guitarist's impressive musicianship could be heard throughout his two-hour show at the Wachovia Center on Sunday night. Sure, his songwriting tends towards the blandly vanilla, and while the former Berklee College of Music student is a more than competent vocalist, his singing lacks the requisite character of an artist who at least partly aspires to be a legitimate bluesman.

But there's no question that the guy can play guitar. It's not for nothing that such revered ax men as B.B. King and Eric Clapton have given Mayer their imprimatur.

After opening up with "Heartbreak Warfare," the lead cut from his recent album Battle Studies, which was inspired by his failed romance with Jennifer Aniston, Mayer and his seven-piece backing unit (which included master drummer Steve Jordan and guitar player Robbie McIntosh, formerly with Paul McCartney and the Pretenders) moved on to a cover of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads."

Sorry to disappoint you, but it didn't suck.

Overlaying a Stevie Wonder "Superstitious" funk vamp with Clapton and Cream's version of Johnson's song about exchanging his soul with the devil, it showed how good Mayer can be when he's taking the advice of the fan whose sign instructed him to "Shut Up and Play." No matter what you think about how appropriate it is for a rich white guy from Connecticut to sing the Delta blues - particularly after his recent remarks - Mayer has the skills to make it work on purely musical terms.

It's not music, of course, that has put Mayer in the news. In an interview in the current issue of Playboy, Mayer dropped the N-word while expanding on the idea that he has a " 'hood pass" granting him acceptance in the African American community. (If that's the case, not many African Americans have gone so far as to attend his concerts: The audience, two-thirds female, was overwhelmingly white.)

Mayer said a whole lot of other jaw-dropping things in Playboy, from referring to Jessica Simpson as "sexual napalm" to talking about how he's not attracted to black women (saying he has a "David Duke" penis) to saying, "My biggest dream is to write pornography."

He blamed his breakup with Aniston on his addiction to Twitter, and when it came to apologizing for his Playboy interview, he took to the micro-blogging site and tweeted: "I should have never said the word, and I will never say it again." And he sounded suitably shattered when he wrote, "I just wanted to play guitar for people. Everything else just sort of popped up and I improvised and kept doubling down on it. . . ."

Mayer has been largely silent on Twitter for the last couple of weeks, no doubt hoping the storm will pass. He did jump in, however, in the wee hours yesterday morning, to tweet: "8 out of 8 band members agree, Philly is always an awesome show."

I wouldn't go that far, but Mayer is a whole lot more likable on stage than he is either on record or in print. His brilliant move was bringing a blond kid from the front row named Austin who looked to be 12 or 13 on stage to play guitar on "Belief" as part of an acoustic set that included a by-request "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room." The kid nailed it, and Mayer gave him the electric guitar he played to keep. Now that's some good public relations.

Mayer also did well by "trying to throw as much music at myself as I can," as he put it. He never made a move to further apologize for his published remarks, but profusely thanked his fans for standing by him: "They used to be just tickets, then life happened," he said. "So thanks for making me your ace in the hole." He paused, and couldn't resist a joke, which was punctuated by a rim shot: "That's why some people call me ace hole."

He offered multiple thanks to Jordan, one of five African American members of the seven-person band. The drummer's extended solo led into a full-band, itchy James Brown funk workout that was one of the show's clear highlights.

Unfortunately, it gave way to the distressingly vague pseudo-political "Waiting for the World to Change," which sounds particularly hollow coming from Mayer these days.

Mayer's best blues-playing was on the set-closer, "Gravity," which ended with him on his knees, playing a roiling solo on a guitar he took off his back and laid flat on the ground. There were also some nice pure pop moments, including a bouncy take on Tom Petty's "Free Fallin' " and his own "Half of My Heart," which led into a smidgen of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams."

The strength of the covers that Mayer performed too often pointed up the weakness of his own material, however, and made you wonder how somebody who has so many obnoxious headline-grabbing things to say can make music that so often is merely pleasant and uninvolving.