J-Mayer.org: John Mayer

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• Inside Wants Out
• Room For Squares
• Any Given Thursday
• Heavier Things
• As/Is
• 
  TRY! John Mayer Trio
• Continuum
• The Village Sessions
• Unreleased Material

Inside Wants Out

"Inside Wants Out" was released September 24, 1999, it was mostly found in Atlanta, Georgia, it later was picked up by Columbia Records. Soon it lead John to get his first major record contract and four of the songs were re-recorded for Room for Squares. Glenn Matullo and David LaBruyere along with John, produced the album, and John co-wrote 4 of the songs with his long term friend and follow band member from Lofi Master Clay Cook.

There are two different versions of the CD. It was later re-released on September 17, 2002 with Neon on the second version. The first version has Neon 12:47 AM, which is a live cut with his band.

About Clay Cook

John met Clay Cook when attending Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts back in 1998. The two became good friends, and when John left Berklee after only a year, they moved to Atlanta, Georgia where they formed their duo group called LoFi Masters. They played at clubs and the most famously Eddie's Attic. Clay is credited in many of John's earlier work, but during the process of recording Inside Wants Out due to creative differences the two separated.

The album is also where David LaBruyere makes his first debut in working with John professionally.

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Room For Squares

"Room For Squares was my alright...here we go record."

"Room For Squares", is the first major label record that John released, it was recorded over the time span of 2000-2001 and was produced by John Alagia. Like "Inside Wants Out", the album was released two different times. The first release was on June 5th, 2001, with Aware. The first version is not much different then the second one, only that 3x5 does not appear on the first label version because it was not yet finished being recorded. The second release was on September 18th, 2001 with Columbia records, 3x5 was finished and put on the album as well. At the same time a bonus disk was also released containing two other songs not on the main album, Lenny, and Wind Cries Mary which also can be found on the No Such Thing single B side.

There are two different album covers, the black and white cover which is the first original release, then the second album cover is the official one with the squares.

Random Facts About The Album

• The title for the album came out of a inside joke reference to Hank Mobley's No Room for Squares album
• The guitar that appears next to John on the album’s cover, was only used for one song and it was for Neon, he had it tuned just for that song.
• The album reached #8 on the charts in the US, and to date it has sold over 5 million records, making it John’s most successful album thus far.
• The inspiration behind the chemistry chart on the CD comes from his chemistry teacher in high school. John has said that his teacher was the only one who got what he was trying to do with his music and guitar playing. John wasn’t the best student in school, but his teacher supported him and talked to him a lot about his music.
• One of the biggest inspiration behind the sound of the album came from John's admiration of Charlie Hunter

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Any Given Thursday

Any Given Thursday is the live DVD/CD that was released on February 25, 2003. It was filmed in Birmingham, Alabama on September 12, 2002, during John's tour for Room For Squares. The CD peaked at #17 on the billboard 2000 chart.

There isn't a big difference between the CD and the DVD, only that the talking by John is cut down. The intro that John does before Message In A Bottle, is called "Jóga" by Björk, it is not found on the CD for copyright reason but is on the DVD.

Random Facts About The DVD

• The DVD was recorded 4 years to the day of when Continuum was released.
• The Birmingham, Alabama show was not the only show that was considered for the dvd. Two other shows considered.
• John came up with the name Any Given Thursday by being inspired by a Stevie Ray Vaughn live record and being taken back by how amazing it was. John later found out that it was just another typical show, there was nothing new about it, it was a regular show like anything else. Any Given Thursday, as John explains, was just a typical show for him, it's not his best show, not his worst, but it was a concert that showed what he was doing on that tour back in 2002.

Band

• Michael Chaves – keyboards, guitars, backing vocals
• David LaBruyere – bass guitars
• Stephen Chopek – drums, percussion

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Heavier Things

Heavier Things, Is John’s second major label album, and it was produced by Jack Joseph Puig. It was released on September 9th, 2003 and debuted #1 on the billboard charts and has sold over 4 million albums.

"In terms of the significance of the title — it's more of the insignificance of the title that makes it what it is. ... When it came time to title the record, I had expanded myself so much, and I had put down everything that I wanted to put down on tape. And then it was like, 'Ok, now it's time to title the record.' What do you call it? What do you call a record that you put everything down on, and feels right for the — you know, it's not my lifelong masterpiece, it's my next statement.

"So there's nothing I want to title it that's gonna be big and bold and have a crown on top of it. So I like the word things. I think it's completely nondescript and dumb, it's kind of blunt, you know? I think in the way that the cover appears Heavier Things is the most inarticulate way that you can describe the record. For some reason — I can't explain yet — it fits perfectly."

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As/Is

As/Is is a set of live recordings John released only on Itunes. The live shows were recorded during John's 2004 tour between July 16th to August 14th. There were a total of 6 volumes, with a sixth having selected songs from all the shows on the last volume. The fifth volume can be found on a CD and can be bought on certain music sites, and also be found on eBay.

Each volume cover, contains pictures of bunnies, and on the sixth volume, contains a picture of the famous Japanese artwork, called The Great Wall Of Kanagawa.

Volume One (was released on iTunes but not really considered one of the main volumes)
Released: December 1, 2003

Mountain View (California)
Recorded: July 16, 2004
Released: August 10, 2004

The Woodlands (Texas)
Recorded: July 24, 2004
Released: August 17, 2004

Cleveland/Cincinnati (Ohio)
Recorded: August 3 - 4, 2004
Released: August 24, 2004

Philadelphia Pennsylvania/ Hartford Connecticut
Recorded: August 14 - 15, 2004
Released: August 31, 2004

The band that appears in the concerts

• David LaBruyere - bass guitar
• David Ryan Harris - guitar and backing vocals
• JJ Johnson - drums and percussion
• Michael Chaves - guitar & keyboards
• Eric Jacobson - trumpet and dented flugelhorn
• Chris Carliff - saxophone and flute

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TRY! John Mayer Trio

In 2005, John formed the new band John Mayer Trio, with Steve Jordan playing drums and Pino Palladino playing bass. Steve has worked with musicians such as Bruce Springsteen and The Rolling Stone, while Pino worked with Jeff Beck and The Who. The band's first appearance was on the Tsunami Aid Benefit where they performed Bold As Love, then the following month at the Grammy's.

"Steve and I had been doing sessions together, and we were scheduled to do the Tsunami Aid benefit. So Steve said, 'I know who we can get—Pino Palladino.' I said, 'I'd love to play with Pino.' Pino came and we rehearsed Jimi Hendrix’s 'Bold as Love’ for the benefit. And something happened that I had hoped my entire life would happen, which is that thing about how a band got together for the first time, and everyone in the room just knew there was something special. When it became me, Steve and Pino, it became this whole different thing. That set me off on a writing streak; the challenge was, 'here's this great band - now what are you gonna do with it?' So I went and wrote from a whole new place. So it became a band."

"I know what I'm getting into. I know for me to get onstage and play blues music, a lot of people aren't going to like the look of that. Basically, it's like wearing a target. But you get to a point where you need to try to get where you want to get."

"We wrote all the original tunes, in that streak: it was all out of pure necessity. I was so scared of being a cover band that I wrote these tunes really fast. I wrote the lyrics in the hotel rooms in the first week of the show. I wrote the lyrics for a song called "Try" in the production office in San Francisco, taped the lyrics to the monitor and sang off the monitor. I wrote the lyrics to "Good Love Is on the Way" before night two of L.A., went back from sound check, ordered room service, turned all the lights off and just went, 'how bad do you want to have this song done for L.A.? Real bad. So write it' It was an amazing place to write songs from. It was just a run-and-gun thing"

The album consists of 9 original songs written by John, Steve and Pino, 2 are cover songs. John has stated that they wrote all the songs in 4 days.

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Continuum

"With any trilogy, the third in the series blows it open" - John

Continuum is John's third studio album; it was released on September 12, 2006, and debuted at #2 on the billboard charts. John has described the album's process, "Continuum is the result of the trio and of my listening to different music and growing older. It's a really compact album and very, very dense. That's because I had a lot of time. I'm a phase-shifter. I'm constantly changing shape. The album's got a lot of growth, not just compared to the work I've done before. It has a lot of growth inside the record itself. I hear songs I wrote in 2004 and songs I wrote four months ago. Through all the shifts that I go through, I was able to find out what I am always for 12 songs."

"I'm just thrilled with the way this record sounds live. It confirms every hope that I had and expectation that I had for writing these tunes and thinking that they would be infinitely playable songs, songs you can't wait to play."

"The criteria for these albums [Room For Squares and Heavier Things] was how good of a song can I write, then it became, well okay if that’s a good song, I can always give it to some one else. I’m trying to write this one cross section of music, which is, that confluence of grit and blues, that thing you love about guitar players. But thing you love about guitar players ends at a certain point because most of these things you get from a rock band, they don’t give you hooks. You go to acoustic guys, you go I think that Kean record is amazing, I think The Shins are amazing, I think all those things you go to because of the mulotic side."

John's band members, from the John Mayer Trio, Steve Jordan and Pino Palladino, all play on every song, on the album.

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The Village Sessions

The Village Sessions is a live EP that was released on December 12, 2007. It contains six songs of acoustic versions from John's third studio album Continuum. The album was only released in indie stores and from the Aware Record store. It was sold out by December 23th, but can be found on amazon.com, Itunes as well as the Aware website now.

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Unreleased Material: Bigger Than My Body single

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