TRY! Live in Concert - John Mayer (2005)

John Mayer was very suddenly thrust into the spotlight in the early 2000s because of a couple of massive hits from his second record, Room For Squares. I originally had that one on my listen list for today, but honestly it’s a pretty tepid record. The reason I find Mayer interesting is that he kept moving forward.

I like the line from Allmusic’s review of his previous live album, which says (among some other misogynistic dudebro bullshit I won’t reproduce here) that it:

[…]succeeds, but it does so because Mayer’s music is an unthreatening mixture of college rock and wide-eyed adolescent lyricism. Like [Dave] Matthews, Mayer makes music that is creatively bland. It appeals to everyone, goes great with beer, and can be played with relative ease by any college town cover band.

But Mayer was not a one-trick pony. He was a highly accomplished guitarist and songwriter. And with this release, he showed some of that talent separate from the twee acoustic pop of his earlier records.

This set features a trio of Steve Jordan (drummer for the Blues Brothers as well as about a million other blues and soul records) and bassist Pino Palladino (O_o)

We’ll forgive him for his reverent take on Stevie Ray.