Dead & Company Cancel Show After John Mayer's Father Richard Suffers 'Medical Emergency'

Family comes first for John Mayer.

Hours after Dead & Company — the Grateful Dead offshoot the musician plays in with Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann — announced the cancellation of Wednesday evening's show in Saratoga Springs, New York, John posted to his Instagram Story to shed light on the situation.

"This morning, my father suffered a medical emergency and was transported to the ER where he received much-needed and great care," the guitarist, 44, wrote of his father Richard, 94. "He is now fairly stable and will continue to undergo some procedures, but as you can understand, I have to stay in NYC and can't play tonight's show in Saratoga Springs."

The band was expected to play at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, but will now pick back up at Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, Virginia on Friday evening.

Mayer updated followers on Saturday via his Instagram Story, writing, "Thank you for the outpouring of love re: my dad. He's doing great, and we couldn't be happier. I'm truly humbled by the show of support."

"My dad was a piano player," the musician told pal Andy Cohen in February 2021 of his father, a retired high school principal. "He would play at the Rotary club, and he would play off the page. He was a written music player and I was an improv, spacey ... I didn't know how to read music. I still don't know if he quite gets how I've made it if I can't read music."

Speaking to PEOPLE in 2007, Richard admitted to an initial ambivalence towards his middle son's career choice, explaining, "My experience in music was everybody had a job. We were teachers, plumbers, and on the weekends we'd play. So it boiled down to saying, 'John, you have to have a Plan B.' And John said, 'I don't have a Plan B. This is it.' Trying to get him 'within the lines' — I failed and he won. And he was right."

In the same interview, John said he admired many of his dad's best traits.

"My father is the most upstanding man I've ever met. He's not the kind of guy who says, 'Don't cash that for a week.' He wouldn't have written the check if he couldn't cash it. He's never ventured something that he couldn't complete. I'm a mess of unfinished thoughts. Really. The music world allows it, art allows it. That's where I wish I was more like my father."

In 2017, John established The Richard Mayer Scholarship Fund in honor of his dad in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where the elder Mayer worked. Chosen students who plan to become educators or educational administrators themselves receive $20,000 over four years of schooling, the CT Insider reported.

"I'm proudly my dad's son, both in our daring use of metaphor and hair-trigger emotional responses and in wanting to be teachers," John said at the time. "I have my dad's desire to be a teacher ingrained in me, and as I become more mature, it's emergent. As I get older, I develop more and more respect for academics. This is a nice cross-section of what my dad has done and what I've done in a way that I think honors the bloodline."

Added Richard, "I couldn't have expected a better gift than this. I gave 42 years to the Bridgeport education system and they gave me a wonderful life. This is just a wonderful way to be remembered and be doing something positive. I can't think of something more thoughtful."