John Mayer Showers Praise On 14-Year-Old Guitarist Brandon ‘Taz’ Niederauer

Dead & Company guitarist John Mayer isn’t usually impressed by young guitar players, but he recently showered praise on 14-year-old Brandon “Taz” Niederauer. Mayer was hosting an Instagram Live session late in December, when a follower asked him about whether he would “pass a baton” to a younger guitarist.

Here’s the full text of Mayer’s take on Taz:

I will say that Brandon Niederauer is the first young guitar player that is not a gimmick. I know the only way to say that is to sympathetically insult other people and I don’t mean to do that. But Brandon is the first young guitar player, who is playing from a certain sector inside themselves that is listenable, enjoyable…it tracks as a musician would track when they play, it tracks in your brain you can follow it, you can get into it. He’s really the first young kid I’ve seen who’s truly playing with the intention of a musician.

Listen, let me tell you something, everybody knows how to sound a certain way on the guitar…the trip from zero to passable on anything now, because of the way the world works, is very short. So, twenty years ago if you were passable and you were young, it was incredible that you had gotten there. But the internet flattens everything out, equalizes all information so you can get to passable in two months on anything because of how easy it is to climb the learning curve. So, I’m not interested in what somebody can do on a guitar. The what of it is fairly easy, the how of it and the why of it is what makes a real guitar player and a real musician. Brandon is playing from pure, real ‘what’ and ‘how’ and intent and he’s going for it and you can hear it like music and get off to it and dance to it. So, yeah…I dig it. I dig it. The fact that he’s young is secondary.

Here’s the entire video:

John Mayer returns to the road with Dead & Company in February.

Watch Brandon “Taz” Niederauer play “Surprise Valley” with Widespread Panic at last year’s Peach Music Festival as captured by Sean Roche:

[Hat Tip – Alan Paul]