Yesterday, I watched a video of Matthew McConaughey singing a strange, rhythmless dirge called “Bless The Mood” at the ribbon-cutting for the Moody Center. Last night, inside the new Frank Erwin Center replacement on the UT campus, audiences posed with lit-up jumbo letters reading “In The Mood.”
Back when I was a student, at the Moody College of Communications, we opted for “Feeling Moody?” on our t-shirts.
I suppose we can all be grateful the Galveston-based philanthropic family weren’t surnamed Vibey.
Of all the mood-making activities above, seeing John Mayer perform on 4/20 may be the moodiest: the furrowed brow, the closed eyes, singing along passionately off mic with puckered lips to date-appropriate cut “Who Says” (“who says I can’t get stoned”). The broken-hearted maestro’s Sob Rock tour called for an oversized gray blazer backed by Eighties soft rock-inspired neon pink clouds and twinkling stars over Paris. Think geometric mid-aughts vaporwave album covers.
All sounded clear and looked fantastic during the first public concert at the new 15,000-plus-capacity arena, despite a few logistical hiccups in the just-finished, not-quite-ready building.
Mood-wise, the striking wood-and-glass-enclosed structure feels much more energetically integrated into the campus than its predecessor across MLK. I recommend a pre-show visit to the massive mezzanine balcony for a sunset view stretching from the capitol to the UT tower. I did have to hike up a not-operating escalator to get there, one of a few wonky encounters at the stadium joining crowd complaints of a water leak flooding a bathroom and toasty temperatures.
Personally, while waiting in a hallway for an elevator that never arrived, I watched someone try to enter a gender-neutral bathroom to find the handle was inaccessibly busted.
Luckily, the Moody has a week until their official grand opening, April 29-30, with George Strait, Willie Nelson & Family, and Randy Rogers Band – a title perhaps withheld from Mayer due to his Connecticut-born, watch aficionado status. Whereas the latter played against one end of the arena, Strait’s show will try out expanded capacity with a centered stage. Unfortunately due to the Weeknd’s cancellation of a planned Moody-opening tour, Mayer kicks of a calendar without any non-white or non-male musical headliners until Leon Bridges in August, unless you count Carrie Underwood hiding in the iHeartCountry Festival lineup.
Last night, alongside the crowd chorus on Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’,” an impressive number sang along to 2012 selection “Walt Grace’s Submarine Test, January 1967.” In the night’s sweetest moment, Mayer played it impromptu during the encore, after reading a front-row fan’s sign declaring “Walt Grace is my lullaby” aloud earlier in the show. “I’ll do just a little bit of it. Don’t fall asleep on me, because it’s your lullaby,” he said, before getting into it and performing what felt like the whole thing with two backup singers.
After finale “New Light,” ongoing construction around the center expectedly caused some confusion. A crowd gridlocked at the stair entrance of the Manor Garage – the nearest to the stadium – while I routed with others down a rocky dirt path only to be instructed to walk up those same crowded stairs to the fourth floor, to exit on foot. Cutting down to San Jacinto ultimately seemed like the best way to head north, although no signs indicated such. One fan in a wheelchair circled back uphill after encountering a stairway on the poorly-marked pedestrian route.
But, if the Frank Erwin Center is any indicator, Austin’s new concert focalpoint has some 45 years to work out the kinks.
This article appears in April 15 • 2022.