John Mayer Announces 2019 North American Summer Tour

Owen Sweeney – John Mayer
John Mayer feels the music when he plays Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia April 7.

John Mayer announced Monday that after spending the first half of this summer on tour with Dead & Company, he’ll embark on a jaunt of his own, hitting arenas across North America from July to September.

Mayer’s tour kicks off July 19 at Albany, N.Y.’s Times Union Center and concludes September 13 and 14 with two shows at The Forum in Inglewood, California. The string of dates complements Mayer’s previously announced March and April dates in Australia, New Zealand and Asia.

While Mayer has gigged relentlessly with Dead & Company since the band’s formation in 2015 — and has even staged special gigs with Dave Chappelle — his upcoming tour marks his first through North America since 2017, when he released his seventh and most recent studio album The Search For Everything.

Mayer will headline several of the venues he played last time around. He’ll perform at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena on July 30 where, in April 2017, he sold 14,607 tickets for a gross of $1.13 million. Mayer will return to Dallas’ American Airlines Center on September 5; in August 2017, he sold 13,220 tickets for a gross of $1.27 million at the venue.

The tour also contains two-night stands at New York’s Madison Square Garden and The Forum. Mayer sold 14,428 tickets for a gross of $1.31 million at an April 2017 MSG show, but he hasn’t played two nights at the venue since February 2010, when he sold 30,088 tickets for a gross of $1.99 million. He descend on the iconic New York arena on July 25 and 26.

Across two headlining gigs at The Forum in 2017, Mayer sold 24,156 tickets for a gross of $2.11 million. But those shows, occurring in April and July, were months apart; his 2019 gigs, slated for September 13 and 14, are consecutive.

In 2017, Mayer appeared on Pollstar‘s Year End Top 100 Worldwide Tours, selling 801,119 tickets across 64 shows for a gross of $54 million.

Though Mayer has gone nearly two years since his last studio album, he has remained at pop culture’s forefront. In 2018, he scored a minor hit with “New Light,” his easygoing gold-certified single. He also lent his talents to albums by Mac Miller and Travis Scott, even backing the latter up on his Saturday Night Live performance. Mayer even launched an oddball talk show on Instagram Live named Current Mood.

Still, no Mayer project has loomed as large as Dead & Company, which has made Pollstar‘s Year End Top 100 Worldwide Tours each of the last four years — in other words, every year since the Grateful Dead offshoot, which features Dead founders Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, formed. In that time, Dead & Company has sold 1.88 million tickets for a gross of $148.1 million, and they’re poised for another big summer.

Though Mayer’s trek runs from mid-July through mid-September, his itinerary has a conspicuous gap in the second half of August. After an August 14 gig in Chicago, Mayer doesn’t play again until August 31 — which means he and Dead & Company could still possibly play one of the two competing festivals celebrating Woodstock’s 50th anniversary. Both events are slated for the third weekend in August and, as many have noted, Dead & Company are one of the few remaining acts with members who appeared on Woodstock’s original bill.

For now, see Mayer’s summer dates below. Tickets for the gigs go on sale to the general public on February 1 at 12 p.m. local time.