Ahh, the wonderful world of internet pranks playing out in real life.
Last Thursday, the town of Bozeman, Montana was set ablaze when a post was made to a local Facebook page called The Real Ask Bozeman saying that a local resident had just sat down next to none other than John Mayer at Nova Cafe.
Mayer does have a home in Park County, so it’s not unfeasible he would be in and around Boseman, but that post quickly turned from “Hey, John Mayer might be in town” to a much larger event.
Rumors that Mayer would be playing a pop-up show in Cooper Park quickly spread and when Thursday afternoon rolled around, over 100 people were gathered around hoping for a once in a lifetime intimate concert called the Pray For Snow Wonderland Show. Mayer has played pop-up shows like this before, which added to the perceived legitimacy of the rumor.
Adding to the hope was a small stage with stools, speakers, and mics already set up, so the crowd was clearly quite excited, hoping that at any moment John Mayer would be crooning smoothly and ripping blues riffs.
But alas, as you probably guessed, this turned out to be nothing more than a hoax.
After an hour or so of waiting, it was clear that no concert was happening but two local musicians who brought their guitars in hopes of having them signed by Mayer hoped on stage and played for the crowd.
Now, I have a sneaking suspicion that those two musicians were the driving force behind this whole thing. Gather a crowd of people and then magically have all your equipment ready to go for when Mayer doesn’t show? Convenient for sure, but reports from the crowd say that everyone actually had a great afternoon and enjoyed their time with each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fL3g8vPOuA
I’m not a fan of pranks and hoaxes, but all’s well that ends well and this turned out to bring the community together and bond over the strangeness of the entire thing.
Maybe Mayer will hear about this and actually go play a show there soon. Would certainly be really cool…
Let’s listen to probably my favorite cover ever when he played “Free Fallin” at the Nokia Theater in LA.
