John Mayer Previews Dive Bar Tour in L.A.: “Here, the Gloves Are Off”
With John Mayer shifting from playing for 20,000 fans at Madison Square Garden on his Search for Everything Tour to performing at Los Angeles’ 500-capacity Echoplex on Wednesday night for the Bud Light Dive Bar Tour, you might expect him to go a little more intimate and acoustic for the occasion. But he actually told Billboard before the show that he had the exact opposite instinct.
“I have a lot to draw from now that I’ve made so many different kinds of records,” Mayer said about his approach to the gig. “At first, I wasn’t sure why I was doing it — it’s a little scary in the moment. But then you look back and go, ‘Oh, I can pull a lot of different feels’ — feels of music, not feels like feelings — different music feels. Well … also feels like feelings. And so it just makes sense for a night like tonight that you pull out your barrelhouse blues, rock ‘n’ roll guitar-solo stuff, the groove-heavy stuff.
“If…