Dead & Co guitarist adds his signature instrument to Bryan’s ‘Better Days’
John Mayer is just one of several high-profile special guests (hello Bruce) featured on Bryan’s brand-new album, The Great American Bar Scene, but he’s the first to share effusive public praise of the 28-year-old’s fifth record.
Recorded at Electric Lady in New York, Mayer added guitar to “Better Days,” one of several understated ballads on Bryan’s album, which he released earlier today.
“I always knew this song Zach wrote was special,” Mayer said on X. “I had no idea how beautiful, powerful and deep an album it would be part of. I’m stunned.”
Mayer has kept busy lately with Dead & Co, and in recent years, he’s collaborated with a host of younger artists, from Maren Morris to Leon Bridges to, most recently, Bryan.
“I’m blessed to have been able to fulfill my dreams of making music,” he continued. “What I never saw coming: to be asked to play with an artist as deeply tapped in” as Bryan.
Apart from Springsteen, other guests on The Great American Bar Scene include roots duo Watchhouse, Canadian country singer Noeline Hoffman, and Oklahoma singer-songwriter John Moreland. Before Bryan’s album was even released, he’d already scored his second-ever highest pop-charting song with the folk ballad “Pink Skies,” a designation he then bristled at last month when he wrote on X: “PINK SKIES IS NOT A POP SONG.”
The week before Bryan released The Great American Bar Scene, he invited Hawk Tuah girl onstage at one of his stadium shows in Nashville.