00:00My name is Mike Dawes and we are here to talk about this very famous John Mayer song.
00:12Stupid!
00:19Slow Dancing in a Burning Room. So you know what's really funny? I arranged this
00:22amazing John Mayer song, Slow Dancing in a Burning Room, for solo guitar back in like 2017.
00:29So quite a while ago. And this was before it kind of became a guitar meme.
00:34You know, like now you go into Guitar Center and someone does that and it's almost on par with,
00:39you know, it's that kind of level of meme. I honestly, and I feel ashamed to say this,
00:46I wasn't too familiar with John Mayer's music. I grew up listening to Iron Maiden, as you could
00:50probably tell, and it was just a different world. But I just heard that specific song,
00:54just Slow Dancing in a Burning Room, totally organically, on the radio or something like that,
01:00just in England. And I just thought that would be such a cool, first of all, that's a great song.
01:04Like, what a song. There's a reason it's such a huge song. It's just brilliant. But when I listen
01:10to certain songs and think about, oh, would it make a good guitar arrangement? There are certain
01:14characteristics that they have to have. And this had all those characteristics. And I was also looking
01:19for a ballad in my set that was a cover that would tick certain boxes. And this just had all
01:24of that.
01:24But mainly the song just resonated with me. It's just an amazing song and I wanted to play it.
01:35Every song I arrange, I try to do them in different guitar tunings, just to kind of paint
01:40with different palettes. You know, it's like some songs are CG, some songs are Monet's, some songs are
01:45different styles of painting. And I like, that's how I like to think of the different tunings. But I
01:51hadn't had a song that was just standard tuning, kind of relatively traditional. And playing John
01:56Mayer, it has those kind of box-shaped blues licks all over it. All those songs, all those licks and
02:02things it has in the song. So I felt that standard tuning would be really appropriate for it because
02:08the way he plays and some of his phrases are so standard tuning appropriate. The fun thing with
02:14standard tuning is, standard tuning is best for most things, most of the time. A lot of the things
02:19I do are not that, but this is that. And I wanted to give it a go. But in terms
02:22of challenges, when I
02:24do a solo arrangement, I try to fill as much space as possible. And in standard tuning, open strings
02:30don't sound particularly nice together. You can obviously play around in the key of E with certain
02:36strings, but certain strings, that's not what you want resonating if you're playing a song in C sharp minor
02:42or E major, which is what this is in. So once I established the chords and had to start adding
02:46the top line, I was having to come up with really, really long arpeggios that are very painful stretches
02:54like this to get the notes I wanted. Because if I accidentally hit a G natural or a D natural,
02:59it's going to sound horrible. So there's a lot of tricky stretches and tricky reaches,
03:05particularly in the verses. That was probably the most challenging part actually.
03:14When arranging, there's all these different layers. Like solo guitar, it's all about combining bass,
03:19harmony, melody, and then sometimes I do little percussive things as well at the end. Okay,
03:24that's just candy. That's not what we're really talking about. But John Mayer's vocal range
03:31isn't as high as a female singer. It's in the same, a similar register, you know, within this six string
03:37canvas I have to paint with, as little guitar licks and things. So dancing guitar licks around his top
03:46line was actually quite a challenge. So I was having to play with different octaves and things for those
03:51licks. So I was trying to get some of his licks in there, but around the vocal. That's actually a
03:56good
03:56example. That's his vocal. And then the response has to be in a different register. You know, vocal,
04:04vocal, vocal, little response, you know. I'm having to dance around these different ranges so that the
04:09listener's ear is focused on the actual top line, the vocal melody, which is the most important thing,
04:15right? So I'm trying to throw in these little John Mayer-isms. The guitar solo is easy because
04:23I'm just getting it in there with some very simple bass notes. There isn't much clouding it. So yeah,
04:28when I'm trying to get his little mannerisms out, I'm trying to strip back everything else and let
04:33that be at the forefront.
04:40It was back in the era of crazy viral guitar videos, man, where people watched full music videos and they
04:46would go viral. Now it's like so different. But yeah, a lot of people did. And actually,
04:52it went viral partly because of you guys at Guitar World, because you guys natively posted it. So it
04:57was released via Guitar World, actually. This was the same time I did a Metallica arrangement of one.
05:05I did that with, I think, a different magazine, Metal Hammer, I think. And then I did slow dancing with
05:10you
05:10guys. Yeah, lots of people reached out. I mean, I actually, on the recorded version, had Nick Johnston
05:17jump up and play on the record. So he played at the end. And we shot a music video for
05:22it in Los
05:23Angeles. And Nick, of course, now is playing with Mastodon, which is awesome. He's one of my favorite
05:27electric guitar players. So please check him out if you haven't. I can't recall anything specific,
05:33although I was invited to meet John Mayer. I've never met John Mayer. I've never met you, John,
05:37if you're watching. And I regret to say that the reason that I missed that opportunity, it was from
05:43Paul Reed Smith himself, around the launch of The Silver Sky, was that I slept in. That was the
05:49reason. It was at the NAMM show. And anyone who's been to the NAMM show can understand why one would
05:53want to sleep in at the NAMM show. So I apologize. And it was a public event. It wasn't a
05:58one-to-one
05:59meeting or anything. But I do regret that. I haven't had any communication with John Mayer,
06:08but I know a lot of his guitar techs and people in his circle have probably, or they say they've
06:14shared it around. Certainly with the Metallica thing, I know it got to the Metallica camp pretty
06:18quickly, which was released around the same time. Oh, gosh. Thank you for the incredible song,
06:30man. And honestly, having learned that song and dissected it in the way that one does when they're
06:36doing a solo guitar cover, you really get to know a song. The ironic thing and the curse of solo
06:44guitar
06:44arrangements is that when you're kind of really going through things so forensically
06:51and getting all the little nuances in there, you then don't want to listen to the song anymore
06:56because it kind of ruins the song for you. But I will say out of all the songs I've done,
07:00I still listen to Slow Dancing in the Burning Room because it's just timeless. It really is a timeless
07:04song. And I think that not necessarily my arrangement, but the song itself, every guitar player should
07:10really learn that song. I think it's just a masterclass in songwriting and there's so much
07:14tasty guitar playing that's also pretty achievable for a lot of people as well. I think it should
07:19be in everyone's repertoire.
07:27So I've been strictly solo for so long, but once I started working with Tommy Emmanuel,
07:32we did a record together where we actually did a duo version of this arrangement. It's an EP called
07:37Accomplice Volume 3. And he just makes it sound so much better. I mean, you put Tommy on anything,
07:43it's just going to sound better because it's Tommy, right? And we've played this... Actually,
07:47oh gosh, you're bringing me so many memories now with these questions, which is great. So
07:52it's affected the way... I would say this song, this arrangement and the experiences I've had
07:58with this particular arrangement as a result have changed things a lot for me.
08:04I say I'm in an auditorium with two and a half thousand people with Tommy Emmanuel. We're playing
08:10John Mayer's Slow Dancing in a Burning Room based on this arrangement. And we decide to arrange it in a
08:17way where we bring it down at the end, you know, where it's just the chords and I get the
08:22audience
08:23singing like Jacob Colliering some harmonies. And they're all split up doing their choir, you know,
08:30different parts. And then we fade down and Tommy and I end up crawling on the floor and we get
08:34into
08:34the fetal position and pretend to go to sleep, just leaving the audience humming the chords of
08:38Slow Dancing in a Burning Room. And that could be, say, the encore of a show. That's an experience that
08:43is obviously owed completely to this kind of songwriting, right? Because you can't just get an
08:50audience to do a thing unless it's one of those songs which is just inside people here. And Slow
08:56Dancing is one of those songs. And I guess by dissecting it and reassembling it in all these
09:00different ways over the years, I've been able to see that firsthand and see how it affects people.
09:05And, you know, if you're on stage and you go by that chord, you can hear the people know it,
09:14you know, and that's something I hope to get to with my own music one day.
09:18And what a privilege it must be to be the composer of something like that.
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