John Mayer on Late Night with Conan O'brien

[Blaze]

It s 23:30 east, Mayer trio is on Conan Obrien later on the show

[sunvalleylaw]

I am all set to watch. Let's see, went on great bike ride earlier? check. Ate dinner? Check. Deschutes Brewing beverage at the ready? Check. I am all set! :beer: I also need to check out Conan in his new role. Thanks for the heads up.

[Lev]

Wow, Kinda good :bravo:

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[Jimi75]

Excellent version. Man these poor kids behind the plexiglass :bravo:

Mayer is awesome, but he must developp new phrasing for his singing to prevent running in circles with his vocals.

[duhvoodooman]

That video got me looking at couple of the related ones, and I came across this version of the Hendrix classic Wait til Tomorrow. Amazing rhythm work by Mayer, and when he gets to the solo near the end, the tone is pure SRV. Sounds so much like Stevie's playing in several places that it's kind of spooky.

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[Blaze]

Cool performance indeed with the Plexi_Glass Children_Choir ..


Found this cool slow blues , Mayer very subtle and nuanced here..


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[Lev]

the tone is pure SRV. Sounds so much like Stevie's playing in several places that it's kind of spooky.


I'm actually a relatively recent convert to SRV (I know shame on me) but I was already a big mayer fan before I started listening closely to SRV. I also found it spooky the similarities in phrasing and tone - I think it's fair to say that JM borrows quite a bit from Stevie. But to be fair to him you can hear Hendrix, BB, Clapton and many others in his playing too.

[duhvoodooman]

I'm actually a relatively recent convert to SRV (I know shame on me) but I was already a big mayer fan before I started listening closely to SRV. I also found it spooky the similarities in phrasing and tone - I think it's fair to say that JM borrows quite a bit from Stevie. But to be fair to him you can hear Hendrix, BB, Clapton and many others in his playing too.
Mayer is very upfront about his admiration for Stevie Ray, as well as Hendrix. And of course SRV was a HUGE Hendrix fan and covered several of his songs. So I suspect the SRV licks & tone in that solo were very much intentional, tying the two influences together in one tune. Kind of Mayer-does-Hendrix followed by Mayer-does-SRV-doing-Hendrix!

[marnold]

If I would have been one of the kids singing, I would have had some problems with the harmony. Some of the chords he chose were almost . . . atonal. I don't know if that's the right word, but a couple of chords sounded like they weren't in key. But he played them the same way each time through the verse, so it was clearly intentional. Still, if I could hear that John Mayer all the time, I'd listen to him more often.

[birv2]

I love that song in any version. The kids sounded great, his vocals were great, and most of the playing was very good. I agree with the Rev about some of those chords, though. My grasp of music theory isn't very good, so maybe I'm wrong about that. But something didn't sound quite right there.

Still, kudos to him for taking a classic and rocking it up!

[vroomery]

From the video it looks like he's playing an Abmaj9 chord fretted from E to e, 4/6/5/3/x/x...possibly 4/6/5/3/3/x adding in the aug 4th. Its hard to tell form the sound of the chord though. Something is definitely a little off and it might be the aug4 if thats in there. It sounds like it's in the lower 2 strings though so i don't know.

[Robert]

What chord do you mean, that one right before the V chord? It has a Lydian sound to it, to my ears. Nothing wrong with that necessarily, it's still in the same scale but it sounds somewhat different. There are no augmented or altered notes in that chord. Like playing a B triad with the A in the bass - cool chord.

[djmcconnell]

I agree it sounded a little "experimental." I guess he was just playing WAY outside the chord.

I'm a big fan of Mayer's playing -- this is actually the first time I've not appreciated what he did.

[aeolian]

I think John Mayer is channelling Hendrix's "All Along The Watchtower" to play "California Dreaming." I knew the riff sounded familiar, and then it dawned on me what it was. Nothing wrong with it, actually it sounded quite alright.