I went to the Mayer Hawthorne show this past Sunday in Toronto. Buff1, 14KT and MymanHenri were the opening acts for a sold out engagement at the Drake Hotel. MymanHenri, who’s another well-respected DJ opened things up with a twenty-five minute set that included some Jay Dee remixes and some down-tempo funk. It was a smaller venue at the Drake and the crowd was somewhere between hipster and hip-hop heads. Nonetheless, you could tell everyone was into it. Buff1 came on after playing everything from his first two albums There’s Only One and Pure which included tracks like; “Good music”, “Beat The Speakers Up”, “The Sky”, “Big Thangs”, “Real Appeal” and “I Know the Secret”. With 14KT on the turntables he really warmed it up. He really made a concerted effort to get crowd participation happening and try to inject some humour into his live show. I’ve seen enough shows where the opener just does their set and its just doesn’t translate as well with the crowd. 14KT came on after playing selected tracks from his acclaimed The Golden Hour album. Instrumental hip-hop at its finest mixed with soul samples like the original sample from Jay-Z’s “Dear Summer”. He also played “Doing Fine” and some tracks off his most recent Nowalataz album. He rocked for about 20-25 minutes until Hawthorne came on to perform tracks from his Stones Throw release A Strange Arrangement.

Mayer started his set with; “Maybe So, Maybe No”. Hawthorne’s band The County is backing him on this Lonely Hearts Club Tour so everything was sounding real good. He then performed; “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out” and he stops the track halfway through to ask the crowd what kind of music they like; Metal? Band plays a metal riff, Country? Band plays some country. What about reggae? Band plays some reggae and then transitions into “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out” the reggae version which sounded incredible live—-> REMIX! After performing that track he asked everyone to put L’s in the air as they performed the melody to Slum Village’s – “Fall In Love” in tribute to the late Jay Dee, Baatin, DJ A.M. and Michael Jackson. After the small tribute he got the crowd back with “One Track Mind” which played into a cover of Electric Light Orchestra’s – “Mr. Blue Sky “. Pretty funky cover and it worked well with Hawthorne’s falsetto voice. He then played “Green Eyed Love” which sounds so good live!  He then took a small intermission to thank the crowd for coming out and the let everyone know its celebration time. Being that Hawthorne is an Ann-Arbor Michigan native, NFL’s Detroit Lions won their first game on Sunday (first win in almost two years). Let’s hear for the Lion’s everybody!

Five minutes later we were back to the music “Your Easy Lovin’ Ain’t Pleasin”. A nice uptempo track that definitely got everyone dancing. From there we got some baby-making music; “I Wish It Would Rain” which segwayed into a uptempo cover of Maceo Parker’s – “I’ve Got Work To Do”. He slowed back down with; “When I Said Goodbye”. “Love Is Alright” picked everyone back up and they kept it going so he could take some time to introduce his band – The County. He did one encore and the last song of the night was “The Ills “. Talking about ending the show on a high note? Definitely had a great time. Three words: go see them!

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