John Mayer's New Direction
As a multi-platinum selling artist with three Grammys on his mantle, John Mayer is a certified pop star.
But since his last album, "Heavier Things," he's taken a slightly different direction — the blues. He joined forces with two music greats, Steve Jordan and Pino Palladino, to form The John Mayer Trio.
They're out with their first album, "Try! John Mayer Trio Live in Concert," and
one of the tracks, "Who Did You Think I Was," on The Early Show Monday.The new album has seven tracks written by the trio in only four days, Mayer says.
Asked by Dave Price whether other artists would simply have stuck with their previous winning formula, Mayer
, "I don't know any other artist in terms of their exact inner structure. But I think maybe I would think about it if I knew it was going to be there the next time I went to Xerox it. I don't know. It would be one thing if I knew, but I don't."And all I can do is stay a music listener. Actually, so much of being a musician is being a music listener. The process of changing direction is the same process and sometimes as simple as you changing CDs in a player. The only thing is, I have more to stay true to than you do in that sense."
Why the blues?
"I've been told this — I don't know how much more expressly this could have been put to me by my heroes, you know, B.B. King, Buddy Guy and, to a certain extent, Eric Clapton — that this is a music that has been buried a little bit in the ground, and it's been waiting for someone to dig it up and carry it on. I actually had to become a good enough pop musician to bring blues to people, which is ironic."