The Mayer of ACL

Possibly one of the most anticipated acts for myself this year at ACL was homeboy right here. And let me tell you, Mayer Hawthorne came prepared! In my eyes he was the most rehearsed and best prepared act of the entire festival. His performance was spot on, and each song blended into the next almost seamlessly. Nothing against other acts at the festival, but his set was golden from begging to end. One surprising thing I found was that he has a truly monster singing voice. There's no production magic going on when you hear him sing on his album, "A Strange Arrangement", its just pure talent from the Michigan native (he even threw in a "GO BLUE" remark in front of the pro UT crowd, ha). One thing you notice at the festival is a lot of the acts do at least one cover during there set, and Mayer was no different. Where he did differ though was the decade he chose to pick his cover from. Where you have bands like Broken Bells covering The Black Keys, Band Of Horses covering Cee-Lo Green, Mayer on the other hand chose The Doobie Brothers' "What a Fool Believes". And Honestly it was perfect, a little funny at first, but Mayer and The County knocked it out of the park. As always I was able to record the entire show and it came out pretty decent. Though I did cut it up so it would be easier to listen to. The recording below is my favorite part of his set and includes 2 brand new songs, "I Need You" and one I heard for the first Time, "No Strings" which is available for free download here , though in my opinion the live recoding is almost better ;) The recording starts out with a pretty funny story that apparently happened at one of my favorite establishments in Austin, Waterloo Records. The rest of his amazing set will hopefully be up soon, but for now, enjoi this. -Nick
Mayer Hawthorne Live @ ACL 2010 by nico43