Am I the One Who Plays the Quiet Songs?

John Mayer exploded on the scene a couple years ago with acoustic driven pop songs like No Such Thing, which catapulted him to James Taylor of the 21st Century status and landing him in every co-ed’s music collection. Each song on Room for Squares was a well crafted pop song but if you caught him in concerts or at the very least head his live album Any Given Thursday, he yearned for a little more than your garden variety TRL acts with more bluesy versions of songs and Dave Matthew Band type jams. That transition continued with the more experimental Heavier Things that had a few straight up blues songs on it. Mayer recently completed his transformation into a blues artist when he dumped his touring band and repackaged himself as the John Mayer Trio with Steve Jordan on drums and Pino Palladino on bass with the group channeled the power trios of the past such as Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

The live album, Try!, starts off with How Did You Think I Was? with a riff so raw all the car companies are probably clambering as you read this to put it in their commercials even if it sound like a Lenny Kravitz rip-off, to be specific, Always on the Run. The lyrics sound as if they were a retort to anyone who questioned Mayer’s credibility, “Am I the one who plays the quiet songs? Is he the one who turns the ladies on?” But even with the power trio, Mayer can’t seem to get away from his lovelorn lyrics that populate his previous albums like on Good Love Is on the Way. And Mayer goes a little too far when he intros Out of Mind by joking the home of the blues is in Connecticut. You can even hear his band roll their eyes when he says this.

No concert is complete without a cover song or two. On Try! the trio runs through the Hendrix gem Wait Till Tomorrow. But the musicians truly gel for a funky version Ray Charles’ I Got a Woman. If you listen closely you can even hear Mayer emulate Kanye West’s Gold Digger, which samples the Charles classic, with his guitar. But when Mayer starts to sing, he ends up like sounding like he’s imitating Jamie Foxx imitating Ray Charles. The song was supposed to close out the show, but anyone who has ever been to a concert, there’s going to be an encore where people cheer for one or no. So after the prerequisite wait, Mayer and crew comes out and go through bluesier versions of song off of his last album, Daughters and Something’s Missing, the later slips back to his teen idol self with the call and response with the “checks” at the end of the song.

Song to Download – Who Do You Think I Was?

Try! gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.