john mayer:
Tackling one genre at a time
John Mayer in his early career.
When the pop of the 1990's started to die out, John Mayer was there to revive the dying genre with his own rock style to put a twist on it. Born in 1977 on October 16th to the parents of Margaret and Richard Mayer in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Growing up watching Marty McFly ,a character in the movie Back To The Future, jam out on the guitar, Mayer enjoyed the thought of being able to play guitar. When he was just 13 years old his father rented him a guitar. After a neighbor had given Mayer a cassette of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Mayer had fallen in love with the blues. Mayer enrolled at Berklee College of Music but left the campus after two semesters, setting his sights for the road thanks to the help of his college friend Clay Cook. The duo banded together to form LoFi Masters, they started performing at local coffee shops. This is when both Mayer's and Cook's music desires started to separate Mayer wanting to lean more in the pop direction. With Cook's help John recorded his first EP titled "Inside Wants Out" with Cook doing vocal back ups and Mayer playing guitar. Mayer then got a break when he got a label to follow his music and get his name out there for people to see in 2000. Only a year later and a whole lot of work put behind him Mayer releases his first album "Room For Squares" published by Aware Records. Aware Records makes a deal with Columbia Records and Columbia remixes John's album and adds in songs from "Inside Wants Out". By 2002 "Room For Squares" has been hitting the charts drastically. In 2003 John accepted a Grammy award for "Best Male Pop Vocal Performance", for his hit song "Your Body Is a Wonderland". Later that same year his next album hit the shelves "Heavier Things", and it goes off without a hitch. John's tone shows influences from the blues guitar legends B.B. King and Eric Clapton. Both of which he ends up touring with on stage soon. John signature style of playing the blues reflects the inspirations that he had as a kid growing up. In his writing he delves deep into topics that most people haven't sat down to think about. His quote from his column at Esquire Magazine is note worthy to reflect just this, "Songs can be Trojan horses, taking charged ideas and sneaking past the ego's defenses and into the open mind." While Mayer has been writing hit song after hit song, he hasn't giving up on his fans at all. Always encouraging people to do whatever it is that makes them happy in this world we live. “If you had started doing anything two weeks ago, by today you would have been two weeks better at it.” His impact on music has been significant and what he has to offer the music industry in the future is still yet to be discovered.