“I understand this is a very hot ticket,” John Mayer said early in his set at the annual SiriusXM concert in Amagansett, where hundreds of lucky fans and SiriusXM satellite radio subscribers were gathered under a large tent behind the Stephen Talkhouse on Wednesday night.
Indeed, it was. A crowd descending on downtown Amagansett swelled as the venue's 6 p.m. opening approached, this audience far more colorfully attired than the black-clad fans of Metallica who'd similarly gathered one year ago, reflecting the contrast between Mayer's catalogue of mostly unhurried, singalong pop and Metallica's high-speed and higher-volume heavy metal.
The seven-time Grammy Award-winning artist carried on a conversation with the densely-packed audience throughout a 14-song set that was attended by celebrities including Paul McCartney and his daughter, the fashion designer Stella McCartney; Howard Stern, Neil Patrick Harris, Brooke Shields, Michael J. Fox, Marcus King, Katie Couric, and Christie Brinkley and her daughter Sailor Brinkley Cook. "How many people are in here because they wrote a very clever email?" he joked.
Wednesday's SiriusXM concert was the 10th held at the Talkhouse, a series that has brought Coldplay, Dwight Yoakam, the Killers, Mumford & Sons, Dave Matthews, Shaggy, Brandi Carlile, Ed Sheeran, Jelly Roll, and Metallica to Amagansett. It will be broadcast on SiriusXM's Life with John Mayer channel, for which the artist serves as curator and on-air voice, on Saturday at 8 p.m. An interview with the artist, conducted by Andy Cohen, will air on SiriusXM's Radio Andy channel on Friday at 10 a.m.
Moments before Mayer and his band took the stage, Scott Greenstein, SiriusXM's president and chief content officer, addressed the audience. "We were always looking for a small venue to do a series like this," Greenstein, who owns a house in the hamlet, said.
The Talkhouse management, he said, "were not only trying to keep live music alive, they were . . . taking most of their profits to help wounded warriors," referring to Soldier Ride, the annual fund-raiser conceived at the Talkhouse that supports the Wounded Warrior Project. "With that in mind, it was a pretty obvious choice where we wanted to build the series."
Backed by his tight band including the keyboardist Greg Phillinganes, the guitarists Isaiah Sharkey and David Ryan Harris, and the percussionist Lenny Castro, Mayer punctuated his songs with superlative guitar work, fluidly alternating between vocals and bluesy licks and a few longer runs including, just prior to the encore, a tribute to the late Dolly Parton with a minute-long instrumental take on her hit song "I Will Always Love You."
Earlier, he had seemed to playfully incorporate the lead guitar in the Eagles' "I Can't Tell You Why" into one of his own songs. "I do love performing," he told the crowd gathered for his only performance of the summer. "It's a fun job."
The career-spanning set opened with "Last Train Home" from 2021's "Sob Rock," Mayer's most recent album. Later, he thanked the audience "for having so much excitement and enthusiasm for coming to see me play" despite the five and a half years since his last release. "It really surprises me deeply, and breaks my brain in terms of what I would have expected this to be like in my career. . . . In the time since I last put music out, it seems to have become even more involved in your life. . . . Thank you for keeping this music going."
"Queen of California," from 2012's "Born and Raised" was next, followed by "Who Says" from 2009's "Battle Studies." "Love on the Weekend," from 2017's "The Search for Everything," followed. He then returned to "Born and Raised" for the upbeat "Something Like Olivia." "I feel like we’re off to a good start," Mayer said.
The 2006 album "Continuum" was a breakthrough of sorts, featuring both the politically-minded hit "Waiting on the World to Change" and a reverent cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Bold as Love" that showcased his guitar chops. These were bypassed on Wednesday, however, in favor of that album's "Belief" and "I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)."
He returned to "Sob Rock" for "I Guess I Just Feel Like" and "Wild Blue," the latter evoking the laid-back groove of the late J.J. Cale. "In the Blood" from "The Search for Everything" was next, before Mayer returned to "Continuum" for "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room." He and his band played "New Light," another "Sob Rock" track, before leaving the stage.
Mayer was not finished, of course, returning solo and accompanying himself on acoustic guitar for a surprise encore, Tom Petty's "Free Falling." Finally, with the band once again behind him, he gave fans what they seemed to most crave, a long and languid rendition of the soulful ballad "Gravity," another track from "Continuum," preceded by the aforementioned tribute to Parton, the country music icon who died on Tuesday.
"Sing it with me," he urged the crowd, which happily accommodated him. "Gravity / Is working against me," performer and audience sang as one. "Oh, twice as much ain't twice as good / And can't sustain like one half could / It's wanting more that's gonna send me to my knees."
