John Mayer, Counting Crows & Maroon5

People were still pouring into their seats at the Sleep Train Amphitheatre as Maroon5 opened up the night with “Through With You.” If you haven’t heard Maroon5 yet, you need to crawl out from under your rock. Their album, Songs About Jane, is amazing and they’re even better live. With a truly unique style that effortlessly blends elements of rock, hip-hop and soul and a live show marked by seamless song transitions and the undeniably affective vocals of Adam Levine, Maroon5 has solidified themselves as one of the most polished, brilliant acts I’ve ever seen. Highlights of their performance included “Harder To Breathe,” “Tangled” and their powerful closer, “Sunday Morning,” for which they got the entire crowd to stand up and clap with the beat — something I’ve seen many bands fail at doing. Perhaps it’s because of the groups I’ve seen try this, most were metal bands that seemed pissed off that anyone could sit through their brilliant, palm-muted two-chord progressions. But that’s not the point. The point is that Maroon5 really connected to their audience and left a great feeling in the air as dusk settled in.
Counting Crows were next on the bill and they kept up the good energy that Maroon5 brought to the stage with an almost completely acoustic set. Honestly, I couldn’t have been more impressed with their performance that night. Adam Duritz proved himself to be an incredibly talented singer and a naturally charismatic frontman as the band ran through some great renditions of “Mr. Jones,” “Long December” and “Big Yellow Taxi.” Many metallic tree-like candleholders and an ever-changing background of projected images created a perfect atmosphere during it all. As their set came to a close, the band invited Maroon5 to come back out. Along with them came a bunch of other random people, including one little kid who stole the show with his charmingly spastic dancing. “Man, kids and animals — they’ll upstage you every time,” said Adam as the band came back out for their encore and concluded what really was a great performance.
Closing the night was John Mayer, whose distinctively smooth vocals, impressive guitar work and memorable songwriting clicked instantly with the audience. Through it all, he seemed remarkably comfortable on stage, cracking jokes about his next album being produced by the Neptunes and how “You Body Is A Wonderland” could be the soundtrack to awkward cell hookups in prison. Highlights of the show included John singing to a cell phone that someone in the front row was holding up so a friend on the other line could hear the concert and great performances of “3x5,” “No Such Thing” and the last song of his encore, “Why Georgia.” When all was said and done, I left the amphitheatre with that great feeling you get after seeing a concert that was even better than you expected. If you get the chance to see any of these bands, take it. Maybe someone will sing into your cell phone.

– Dana Hocking
– Photo by Laura Dutro

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