John Mayer says he is hoping for a long-term relationship—with you.
     Sure, he may be one of 2002’s breakout artists. His major label debut album, Room For Squares, went Platinum on the strength of such songs as "No Such Thing" and the sensual "Your Body Is A Wonderland."
     Yes, the singer-songwriter-blues guitarist netted a four-star review from %Rolling Stone% for the CD, praised as a "travelogue of discovery: of love, identity and purpose," with arrangements reminiscent of the deft pop of Elvis Costello and the Police. His sound, suggests Billboard, could be described as Dave Matthews Band meets David Gray.
     All that’s nice, Mayer agrees, as he makes preparations for yet another concert. It’s not that he’s greedy, mind you. It’s just that he wants to be in it for the long haul.
     "I think people right now, the age they are, being 21 and 22, really do want to find a group of bands they can take with them through life," he says. "They see too many bands come and go quickly. They want to get married and settle down with a band if they can."
     He says he would be honored if someone chose him to be one of those artists. "If I could be that band for anybody, that would be amazing. What an incredible life that would be if people not only bought my first record, but bought the idea of me for the rest of my life and kept buying it."
     People are willing to marry a band that speaks to them, he suggests. "I hope when people buy Room For Squares, and it should be called Room For Squares: The First Record, I hope they understand this is the first of a lot of records. Hopefully they bought a gateway to going through life with an artist, not just one CD. It’s not, ‘Please let me stay around so I can have a Platinum record each time.’ It’s ‘Please let me go though life with my extended buddies [the fans].’"
     Mayer is off to a great start.
     He says he is not surprised at this moment the way he is being embraced. "My surprise came when Rolling Stone gave me four stars when the record first came out. I was surprised when anybody liked the record."
     The Connecticut native who now makes Atlanta his home sees himself as a pretty confident and objective guy. "I don’t lie to myself. I like to call it as I see it," he says. "I’m not as surprised in going from playing 1,000 seats to 4,000 seats as I was from 100 to 500 seats."
     He says once he realized that people actually did relate to what he was doing, he knew it was just a matter of more people being able to do that. People are pretty much the same, he reasons.
     "If you get half a million, at a certain stage you probably will get 4 million people, if they are able to hear it. The touring thing is unbelievable. It really is amazing from what we did the last tour even to what we are doing now."
     He says that he is growing more comfortable with it all. "I’m getting to a point where everything is becoming streamlined in my life. I’m learning how to stand onstage for two hours and play in front of thousands of people as if I am completely in the moment every moment."
     That’s new for him, he admits, to be able to let go and not worry about making mistakes onstage and just open up a lot. "The tour is running really smooth right now behind stage. It’s designed to give me the energy to make playing that one show each day a real priority." He adds, through laughter, "I feel strikingly domestic. We’re in our own world with two busses and trucks."
     Making it all possible is that his music is resonating for people. "I hope that what it comes down to at the end of the day is that people believe that I believe what I’m singing. It comes down to being believable. You don’t have to be likeable; generally, though, I think I am.
     "It is too easy to watch music coming out of people’s mouths lately and you’re not quite sure if it was written with the best of intentions. Hopefully people can see my music is tethered to my brain."
     He wonders aloud if there is a lack of earnest music and troubadours today. "People want to see musicians sing things that come from their own mind and own heart in real time, responding to the moment for them."
     That’s what touring is for Mayer. "I’m singing what I want to sing based on the emotion of what that day feels like. That’s what comes out of my mouth and guitar. That impacts people. They know anything can happen."
     He loves being surprised when he takes the stage. "What I enjoy about the live experience is getting onstage, being handed a guitar that is in tune, taking it off mute, knowing that the very moment I want to play a note, I can play it. People are waiting on me and I’m waiting on me, and I have no idea what I’m going to play. That’s the biggest joy in life."
     He believes he is good at avoiding cliches. That’s very hard to do, he agrees, and he acknowledges that he does not accomplish that all the time.
     "I’m not being trite. I’m not being a parody of myself, and in finding a new kind of color to adopt for myself, it’s not this or that: it’s singer-songwriter, but it’s also blues guitar player, it’s also comedian. I feel my shows are like a late-night talk show that we settle down and do every night."
     It’s about responding to the previous night and the night before that, he explains. "I like giving people something they don’t want to miss the next time. It’s a show with little twists and turns and curves. It has me being silly and stupid and compassionate and completely deep. I can make the most tasteless reference at some point and then go into one of my most earnest songs of the repertoire."
     Mayer has demonstrated well that he has control of his words, a facility with the language of music. His describes his songs as emotionally autobiographical. "I don’t think I could fake myself out and still be able to write well and true about it," he says. "I need some kind of emotional stake in it to write my lyrics, assuming that place. It might just be an emotion I understand but am not currently experiencing necessarily."
     Mayer says that writing music and having sex are the same thing. "You can create something out of nothing but will," he explains. "There are no other ingredients but the will to do it. In a time when everything can be next day and ordered and put on credit and paid for, music to me is promise, all promise, very little realization. It’s the promise of walking into a room with a guitar and not being sure you will leave with an idea that will take, not being sure it won’t slip away from you."
     For sure the Room for Squares CD didn’t slip away from Mayer. He says he wanted to be as lean as possible in making the record, "trim the fat in every way." He continually asked himself, "Is the song good?"
     Melody took precedence. "It’s unapologetically melodic. It’s melody first. It’s melody before cool, before hip. The CD is really kind of a songwriter’s project in being brief.
     "There are no extended jams on the record. The song is over before you know it because there is no dead weight. It’s a concept album in being lean, kind of, and making songs that sound good and giving people the promise of what the next record will be like. It will be less lean and more experimental and take a few more chances."
     That’s the beauty of music, he implies, the beauty of possibilities. "Music is a mirror that is unlike any other mirror in your house. It shows you looking at yourself the way you want to be seen. It has the image of yourself as you would really want to be: emotionally and stylistically. It is the image of yourself that you wish you were and might actually be."
     John Mayer knows he is not there yet.
     "Success is when you reach cruising altitude and the seat belt lights come off," he says. "They haven’t come off yet. We are still in our ascent."