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John Mayer showcases his musical evolution at the Wells Fargo Center | Concert review

It only took five songs for the common refrain often heard from rock concert seats to reach the ears of John Mayer on the Wells Fargo Center stage on Monday night: “Play Free Bird.”

Singer-songwriter John Mayer performs at the Wells Fargo Center in South Philadelphia on Monday, July 22, 2019.
Singer-songwriter John Mayer performs at the Wells Fargo Center in South Philadelphia on Monday, July 22, 2019.Read moreYONG KIM / Staff Photographer

It took only five songs for the common refrain often heard from rock concert seats to reach the ears of John Mayer on the Wells Fargo Center stage Monday night: “Play Free Bird.”

Mayer didn’t oblige, but instead turned to his band, shouted out a key, and started singing a Jimmy Buffett-style ballad about the “Free Bird Guy," improvising about how every concert has one and no one knows why.

The lighthearted tune was emblematic of Mayer’s night in Philadelphia, the third stop on his 2019 summer tour, which runs through September. Picking up a few tricks of the trade from his side hustle playing guitar for Grateful Dead offshoot Dead & Company, the 41-year-old singer-songwriter has gone without an opening act for the summer.

The result is a more spaced-out set, giving Mayer the freedom to string out songs while he takes lengthy guitar solos and jams with his nine-piece band. It also allows him to balance the variety of his discography, mixing in funky tunes with his classic singer-songwriter numbers, all while leaning on the guitar-hero persona that helped raise him to prominence.

In baggy gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt, Mayer shuffled onto the stage as his band played the intro to “Still Feel Like Your Man," a funky pop song off his latest album.

Mayer’s longtime bassist, Pino Palladino, wearing sunglasses and a stone face, chugged along next to one of the two drummers on stage. Perhaps he was blinded by the rose gold guitar Mayer chose for the beginning of the set.

Mayer used his time to weave in and out of eras of his music — playing as many songs from 2006′s Continuum as he did from 2017′s The Search for Everything — following guitar-driven tracks from his early albums with his more recent pop songs, and breaking out a harmonica for some of his acoustic, stripped-down pieces.

His rendition of “Helpless” toward the end of the first set heavily featured backup singer Tiffany Palmer and ended with a blaring solo, but Mayer came back from intermission with the harmonica strapped to the back of his neck for a brief solo acoustic set.

As band members filed back to their places, Mayer heard some words of encouragement from a man in the crowd.

“It used to be women screaming when I was a younger guy,” he said, laughing.

The higher-pitched cheers Mayer may have hoped for came soon enough, though, after he started strumming the familiar cover of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’.”

For the encore, Mayer played “Gravity,” and for the first time that night, he unveiled a guitar as familiar as the song — the worn black Fender that he recorded most of his mid-2000s work on. He finished his return to the stage with “New Light,” again showcasing the evolution of his music with his transitions from rhythm and blues to pop.

Set List

Set 1

Still Feel Like Your Man

Why Georgia

Love on the Weekend

Something Like Olivia

Whiskey, Whiskey, Whiskey

Vultures

Who Says

Helpless

Changing

Edge of Desire

Set 2

Emoji of a Wave

In Your Atmosphere

Free Fallin’ (Tom Petty cover)

Belief

Moving On and Getting Over

Waiting on the Day

Rosie

Stop This Train

The Beautiful Ones (Prince cover)

Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

In the Blood

Waiting on the World to Change

Dear Marie