From September 7-9, 2017, i will be making my return to Boise, Idaho for the first ever 208 Comedy Festival. Some of my favorite LA heavy hitters will be there with me, including Danielle Perez (Twitter: @divadelux), Marcella Arguello (@marcellacomedy), and other comics I’ve met over the years, like Becky Braunstein from Portland (@BeckyfromAlaska). Boise is an amazing comedy town. Check out their comedy club, Liquid Laughs!
I will be performing stand up at the Cape Fear Comedy Festival from May 17th through May 20th, in Wilmington, North Carolina. Apparently this is where Dawson’s Creek used to be filmed, but I was too young to really care about James Van Der Beek, so that’s not what I will be thinking about while there. Instead, I will be focused on brings some hot minutes to the south! You can find more information about the festival here.
On December 3rd at 11:55 PM, I will be partaking in the 3rd Annual Funny Women Festival at iOWest in Hollywood, California in the stand up competition. Some of the other hilarious women performing in this festival include Mary Lynn Rajskub, Mo Collins, Kate Flannery, and Angela Kinsey!!!
Full details of the event can be found by clicking here.
I’m completely unsure of how many times I’ve seen John Mayer live, but September 1st’s show at Red Rocks was my latest Mayer adventure. The Battle Studies tour consisted of a winter American tour, which included the Pepsi Center show in March. The set list for the March show had a much more layered feeling, while this Red Rocks show consisted of a lot of older hits that amateur Mayer fans would certainly be familiar with. These songs, “No Such Thing,” “Your Body is A Wonderland,” and “Why Georgia,” could have easily been replaced with more recent songs either from Continuum or Battle Studies. Some songs I would have loved to have heard are “Assassin,” “Friends, Lovers, or Nothing,” “I’m Gonna Find Another You,” and the ever-elusive but personal all-time favorite “St. Patrick’s Day.”
The set list from the other night consisted of these songs:
Chest Fever > Vultures
No Such Thing
Beast of Burden > Perfectly Lonely
Ain’t No Sunshine
Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
Bigger Than My Body
Love Soon > My Stupid Mouth > Comfortable > 3×5
Your Body is a Wonderland
Heartbreak Warfare
Voodoo Child
Who Says
Gravity
Do You Know Me
Why Georgia
Half of My Heart > Don’t Stop Believing
Encore:
Edge of Desire
I honestly think that playing only one song for an encore was a load of shit. Unless the law was forbidding that he play another song, John usually closes out with one full-band encore song and a pairing of acoustic solo songs. I’ve never seen him play ONE song at an encore. What’s up with that?
I also thought that the songs he chose to jam on were interesting, but standard. I did enjoy the “Ain’t No Sunshine” jam but could have done without “Voodoo Child”. He could have pulled out some “Covered in Rain,” but I’m sure mostly everyone in that audience would be confused by the 11 minutes of genius that would have followed.
The best part of the show was when he played what he called “rarities.” I’m not sure if I would call “Love Soon” and “Comfortable” rarities, but if you haven’t followed John since 2001 or so, you might not know any of the words, which is exactly what happened on Wednesday night. During this acoustic medley, John included “Love Soon,” and at one point, when he paused to let the crowd fill in the blank, I was literally the only person in the first ten rows or so who completed the lyric. I screamed “I’m calling it love soon,” and John raised his gorgeously tattooed left arm to point at me. “Ah!” he exclaimed, in awe of my lyrical knowledge. Thus, I was acknowledged (at least in my own crazy mind) by a rock legend in training. Even though I didn’t party on his tour bus like I did last time, this show was a welcome end to a mostly shitty summer (Is it just me or was the summer of 2010 pretty miserable?).
Overall, the Battle Studies tour was really unpredictable in terms of set list choices, but it’s also been the most solid set of performances by John’s band. John and his band are playing at a level completely off the charts. David Ryan Harris, a favorite and an original member of John’s band, joined on the summer leg, though was conspicuously absent in the winter.
John seemed especially chatty on Wednesday night, not to mention he appeared to be very grateful that anyone had shown up to hear him play at all. He thanked the crowd at length and inquired about whether we had had a good summer. Summer was a little blah this year, in my opinion. Last February, John received a lot of heat for some unsavory comments he made about Jessica Simpson and black women in Playboy. I feel as though everyone has nearly forgotten about his verbal missteps, and John’s retreat into the recesses from tabloid celebrity served him well. John is once again all about his music. His music should stand alone as a testament to his resilience as an artist. After nine years, Mayer still moves me. I can’t explain how he does it – he’s John Fucking Mayer, and that’s all I need to know.
I was lucky enough to catch John twice this year, which likely means that he’ll be doing a few special shows next year, in major cities like LA and New York. I’ll be in LA soon enough to be able to catch him if this happens. I’m also hoping for a Mayercraft Carrier 3 next year – that’s John Mayer’s 3-day cruise that consists of live acoustic shows and general hilarity. Until next time, Mr. Mayer.
I love going to concerts, and I tend to go to more live shows than most people. I think I will be obligated to write some posts on the concerts I attend. This summer promises for some amazing concerts – a few that are coming up are La Roux, John Butler Trio, and the Mile High Music Festival.
It’s taken me forever to post about this concert – my apologies about that. I had a difficult time finding the cord that connects my camera to my laptop. Anyway, John Mayer’s March 23rd show at the Pepsi Center in Denver, though marred by an extremely inconvenient and very dangerous blizzard, was truly one of the best Mayer shows I’ve been to so far. I’m unsure of how many times I’ve seen him now – maybe 9 or 10. The 2010 winter tour focuses on Mayer’s fourth studio album, Battle Studies.
This was the setlist from the Denver show:
Heartbreak Warfare
Crossroads
Vultures
No Such Thing
Perfectly Lonely
Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
Assassin
Comfortable
Free Falling
Waiting on the World to Change
Half of My Heart > Dreams
Bigger Than My Body
Why Georgia
Encore:
Who Says
Gravity
I would have to say that the highlights were “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room,” simply because that has to be my favorite John Mayer song of all time, and the transition of “Half of My Heart” into Fleetwood Mac’s classic, “Dreams”. The encore was not a surprise – “Who Says” and “Gravity” have been a staple of each show of this tour. I felt that the inclusion of songs like “Bigger Than My Body” and “Waiting on the World to Change” were meant to please fans who do not know every Mayer song, but would know the words to those radio hits. I really don’t care for the song “Perfectly Lonely,” and I’m not sure why. It’s just a little whiny for me. Some songs I would have loved to have heard are “St. Patrick’s Day” and “Wheel.” If you do not know those songs or if you’re on the fence about the musical stylings of John Mayer, those two songs will make you a believer.
I was fortunate enough to have seats in the third row, but I ended up having to go alone due to two factors: an ex-boyfriend who left me high and dry, and a massive blizzard that did not allow me to pick up my sister in Greeley. I ended up meeting two really cool girls from Fort Collins, and the three of us finagled our way onto one of John Mayer’s five tour buses, where I consumed Grey Goose that I assume is somehow provided by Columbia (John’s record label). I didn’t end up taking pictures of the inside of the bus, but it was likely one of the most luxurious tour buses in the world. The seats were upholstered in super-soft leather and flat-screen TV’s adorned every corner. The assortment of food and alcohol available made me want to live on a bus – that bus, specifically. Photos and videos of the show are posted below.
View from the 3rd Row.
Patented John Mayer guitar face.
During "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room"
"Our love was, comfortable, and, so broken in..."
This photo is almost perfect and explains why I want a boyfriend with a Japanese sleeve tattoo.
I love this picture. This is when John had his guitar laid out in front of him for a serious solo.
Fixed Air 