I’ll say it, this was the best display of pop/rock/blues music I’ve ever seen. John Mayer isn’t my favorite artist. He probably falls somewhere after Counting Crows, Ben Folds, Jason Mraz, and Jack Johnson. So he’s up there, but not at the top. After last night, I can say that nobody else I’ve seen has been better in concert. Every musician on that stage was incredible!

Before I get to John, we’ll start with Train. A little after 7 pm and out comes Pat Monahan and the guys. They open up with “Parachute” from the new CD. Not many people were around at this point, but more came as they played “Meet Virginia” and recent radio hit “If It’s Love”. Lost in the night of Mayer brilliance were Monahan’s vocals. He is an incredible singer! He proved it as they rattled through “Calling All Angels”, “When I Look to the Sky”, “Hey, Soul Sister”, and “Drops of Jupiter”. It’s really too bad that a great band like Train had to play the role of opener, they are really entertaining! Pat even walked through the audience as they played an acoustic song. After one hour, they had to go.

Then at 8:45, the main event began. John and the band walk out and start a groove with “Chest Fever” into “Vultures”. By this time, it’s already been established that every song is going to be an event with epic guitar riffs and solo work by John and his crew. Epic isn’t a good enough word to describe what happened. From there he went into hits like “No Such Thing” and “Heartbreak Warfare”. Then JM threw a curveball with a reggae version of “Ain’t No Sunshine” and a ridiculous solo! Following that was a 10 minute version of “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room”. After a few others, he played the crowd favorite “Gravity”. I think it was here where he jammed with a guy playing the soprano sax. There would be great sections of nothing but instrumental grooving and jamming, it was truly an amazing moment seeing John and his sax player standing side by side trying to match each other with notes and rhythms!!

The crowd then erupts when “Waiting on the World to Change” is next, including hilarious 2nd verse lyrics that mocked the BP oil spill. John changes lyrics from time to time, but it’s not as great as his storytelling. He told some good stories, you had to be there for those. The last song of the normal set was “Half of My Heart” which morphed into “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac and then “Don’t Stop Believing”. The encore started with his great cover of “Free Fallin” and then ended with “Edge of Desire”.

For those of you who’ve seen him in concert before, you know he’s an incredibly talented musician and guitar player. His music was really taken to a new level that you don’t hear on the CDs or on the radio. This was an incredible night of music. If you get the chance, you need to check this tour out. The fact that I was on the lawn with friends and not in the seats was the only thing keeping this from being one of the best nights ever. Then again, I don’t know if I could’ve handled the amazing talent of the band from any closer!