The story of singer/songwriter John Mayer's rise to mainstream success can be summed up quite simply'boy meets guitar, boy falls in love with guitar, lands a record deal and charms audiences, teenage girls and Elton John. What's not so simple, however, is Mayer's knack for putting clever and thoughtful lyrics to his melody-rich songs. His live show is widely heralded for its improvisation and covers-within-guitar solos. Planning to run through the halls of the Alliant Energy Center this Friday night, Mayer chatted with The Daily Cardinal.
For this leg of the tour, you're playing much larger venues than before. How does it affect the show, the intimacy that you have with the audience?
It definitely makes me change the nature of what I do, a little bit. I want to start playing rooms that are bigger and bigger. I still want there to be a consistent kind of effect on people. What that means is making every person in the room to feel like I would miss them if they were gone. And when you get into bigger rooms, what you have to do is throw your thing all over the room, and it's easier in the club. Some of the best advice that I ever got was 'Play to the last row. Send out what you're doing all the way to the last row.' And that's harder to do now. But I think my style, my approach is the same, so you feel like you're watching the same person. But there are things that are done a little differently.
What I'm doing now is turning places that weren't the front row into the front row. We have a couple microphones set up on each side of the stage and run, Guns 'n' Roses style in rhythm to the music to one side of the stage and make the people that thought they had side stage seats, realize now they've got front row seats, that I'm facing them. That's probably the best I can do, in that situation.
OK.
And I've got a T-shirt gun, I forgot to tell you, an air-powered T-shirt gun.
Oh, that's cool.
Just kidding, I don't have a T-shirt gun.
There's a lot of girls out here who think you're a pretty good looking guy.
They haven't seen me from a side view.
Does that worry you, that people won't take you seriously?
No, no. The simple answer is that it never entered my mind, but thank you for putting it there. My take on it is that people come to my shows for the music that I make. In terms of the demographic responding to any other thing than that, it will disappear and reappear probably 100 times, based on the way the light hits me. I feel like, if that's a fun detour, that's fine. But the problem is, where am I going to meet a lady? I addressed that in the shower yesterday, and I still couldn't come up with an answer. I think I'm going to have to do a tour of elementary schools and meet a teacher.
You could come anywhere in Madison and meet a lady, I don't think that will be a problem.
Could you set something up? Can you set up, like, a bitch drive? [Laughs] I never said the word bitch drive.
