Watch John Mayer Trio Cover Grateful Dead & Jimi Hendrix At Crossroads Festival

Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival returned after a four-year hiatus at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles over the weekend. The star-studded, two-day event saw John Mayer Trio covering the Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix.

John Mayer Trio — guitarist John Mayer along with renowned musicians, bassist Pino Palladino and drummer Steve Jordan — reconvened on Saturday for the second time in 2023 after performing at the Love Rocks NYC benefit concert earlier this year, their first performance together since 2016.

Mayer and company kicked off their Crossroads set with “Vultures,” from JMT’s sole album, the Grammy-nominated 2005 live record Try! The band then turned to material form John’s solo catalog with the bluesy “Gravity,” which also appeared on Try! before being included on Mayer’s 2006 Steve Jordan-produced album, Continuum. The studio version also included Pino Palladino on bass.

Next, John fittingly broke out his custom Jimi Hendrix Monterey Fender Stratocaster for the legendary guitarist’s “Wait Until Tomorrow,” a song that also appeared on the JMT’s Love Rocks setlist. Over an outstanding rhythm section performance from Jordan and Palladino, Mayer took a torch to the song off The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s 1967 album, Axis: Bold as Love.

John then addressed the audience saying, “I thought this would be a collision of worlds in the most perfect way if we played a Grateful Dead song for you,” he said. “And I was thinking of what would be the song in the catalog that lent itself the most to these incredible musicians Steve Jordan and Pino Palladino. And this one came to mind and we played it and went, ‘OK!’”

The JMT then offered the Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter composition, “They Love Each Other,” a song Mayer sang with Dead & Company. Mayer also had a crunchy solo in store for the Dead live favorite.

Watch John Mayer Trio’s complete Crossroads set, along with introduction by MC Bill Murray, below:

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John Mayer’s solo acoustic arena tour gets underway on Wednesday in Hollywood, Florida. Check out the guitarist’s itinerary:

Setlist

Source: JamBase.com