RY:  What do you think you would be doing if you weren't playing music?

JM:  It's kind of hard to answer, because I started playing music at an early age.  Idealistically, I'd want to be a graphic designer.  Something that would allow me to have the same crew of people around me everyday.   I'd sit down at my desk with my computer, have a 9-5, have a little appartment, wake up and just work all day.  I'd still want to be creative.

RY: Your music has been put into a category that is the young singer/songwriter/pop musician.  How do you feel about that and how do you feel pop music is changing? 

JM:  I think that the point of music is to be refreshing.  Music is all about contrast.  I don't really know how much that has to do with like the vitality of what's appearing or how much it has to do with whats come before it what new music is in response to.   Take the music that Jack Johnson and Pete Yorn make.  It's been around for a really long time.  I think that people just like to get sick of something.  You like to keep your sunglasses on long enough to take them off and go "Oh my, that's so bright".   People like to put the dimmer down on your dashboard a little lower so you can turn it up and go "Whew!" (laughs).  I think a lot of it has to do with contrast.  In terms of how I feel about being grouped with singer/songwriters, there's the view I have of myself how I'd like to be, and then there is the view of what I actually am.  I'm not that scared about anything else.  I don't see anything as a threat to music.   I don't think Britney Spears is a threat to music.  Britney Spears fulfills a desire for a lot of people who want performance and who want (visual) entertainment.  That happens to be with a beat and a melody, but thats entertainment.  I went to a Britney Spears show a couple years ago.  That girl makes a lot of people happy that Pete Yorn would just not satisfy.  I don't think its in danger of killing any other kind of music and it's not an acid that eats other music.  I think the real danger, if there is any, is in prominence.  As in, how much prominence is given.  Why is there a channel that is supposed to be the embodiment of popular music in itself, but yet it really only plays one kind of popular music.   At the same time, MTV plays my video.  If that signals a change, great, and I have anything to do with that change, even better. 

RY:  Obviously you've been touring pretty heavy for the past two years, what do your future concert plans look like and can we expect to see another solo tour or a tour with just you and Dela?

JM:  I would like to do a me and Dela tour a la Dave and Tim, but I don't know when it's going to happen.  I think sometimes I miss the reality of the situation and that is I made a pop record.  So, I have to tour on a pop record.  I would love to do an acoustic tour in the fall or early winter next year with a stand-up comedian opener.  I think it would be real cool to have Zach Galifianakis (former host of Late World with Zach) open. He could go on for 30 minutes and we'll go for an hour and a half.  I think as far as future tour plans go in an immediate sense, I think we're going to drop off the American map for a couple months, do some international stuff.   I don't want to be so available to people on the road that they take it for granted.  I don't want people to say "we can see him next week."  I think that after this tour the next time we'll go out will probably be for a few weeks at the end of the year and play some places we didn't hit this tour.  Other than that, the record is doing really well in other parts of the country.  We're going to get in backpacking mode.   We're going to go across the world. 

RY:  In recent times, its quite obvious that your populairity has increased at an astranomical rate.  As a result, some fans have labeled you as a sellout.

JM:  That's one of those things that when you're on an airplane, the pilot says "Pshh.  We're about to hit some choppy air, you might want to put your seatbelt on".  The choppy air comes, but you're not scared.  I was well aware very early on that there was going to come a point when a lot of people were going to exponentially get into my music and that there were going to be people crying selling out.  It doesn't affect me at all.  I'm a music fan myself and I know what selling out means.  "Selling Out" cirucit Iggy Pop's populairty selling out is a different thing than a fan saying selling out now.  Selling out back then meant you compromised your goals, integrity, and identity for money.   I could have told you 2 years ago I wanted to play these shows, so I'm not selling out.  What selling out now means, is a very immorpheus definition which means "That's not the way I wanted to see you.  You've sold out.  Sold out equals the path of your career is not what I imagined for you or for me.  The path that I imagined for you and me, this is nothing like it". It's anything other than the explicit thought that this one person had of what it was all going to be like.   Anytime that it becomes different, which its going to be, there is a compromise that the person going to the shows have to make.  If you listen to my record, do you really think that the music is designed, written, recorded, or produced to be played for eighty people always?   It's not.  It's designed to be played for as many people as possible.  I scientifically engineer my music to be as accessible to people as possible and to be as engaging to people and make them as accessible to it as possible.  So, again, I think that its all about trading your concept of what it is for the reality of what it is.   People have the concept that I'm a troubador.  We have two busses (I'm in one) and we have two rigs, this is a business, there is an incorporated, somewhere in this situation. The difference is I think as this goes on, hopefully when I'm on stage, you can still see music coming out of somebody.   I don't care if its in front of five-hundred thousand people, I have the coolest fans in the world.  I don't have fans who push other fans, I don't have fans who are elite.  My fans have nothing to prove.  Whether they're fourteen or eight it doesn't matter.  If I were a nineteen year old fan who personally saw me two years ago, I would be happy.  I think most people are, but again, its not a big deal. Selling out is meant to be inflammatory.  It's meant to piss someone off or me off as much as possible.  Again, doesn't affect me at all.  It's a disappointment.  Some people can make that re-adjustment and some can't.  The people who can't will have wonderful memories of when they saw me in front of one-hundred twenty people and thats great. 

RY:  Sort of a follow up to that last question.  There is a group of fans, as you call them the "superfans" who have been coming to shows and who have been listening for quite some time now continue to do extensive traveling to catch shows.   The time has come where your accessibility to meet a large portion of your fans is no longer possible. How do you continue to keep your "superfans" happy as well as your new fans?

JM:  I'm still very accessible.  If you come up to me while I'm at the mall and ask to take a picture or get an autograph that's fine.  For instance, with Inside Wants Out, the most that I can do and the least that I can do is to take a song off.   Put a barcode on the back.  We tried to change one of the colors for the front artwork, but it was too late and we missed the deadline.  Something that honors those early fans.  Other than that I don't know short of an ID card that I should have thought to make up early on.   How pompous would that have been though?  Hold on to this card.  It entitles you to special benefits when I play seven-thousand seat theatres (laughs).  It really comes down to me being as present as I can be on stage.  I've never been more present on stage before.  I'm looking at people and thats as much as I can do pretty much.  When I get on the radio, I'll have them take as many calls as you can take and talk as much as I can.  I don't really have it set out to be elusive or aloof.  I feel really silly when a Suburban drops me off and someone opens the door for me.  I feel really silly when there is a ring of security people around me like the Star 98 show in LA but you don't know what to do.  So, I think as long as it feels silly and feeling strange I have still kept that connection.   The minute that I put my sunglasses on and look down at the ground and walk in, then yeah, I wouldn't want to listen to myself anymore.  

RY:  Can you expand a bit on how the transition works from being an internet only musician to a mainstream top 40 musician and what the advantages and disadvantages are? 

JM:  Somebody basically had to hand you the key.  I think I was too oriented on what it was going to end up that I didn't get so attached.  The way that I've lived my life which is just the way that I'm wired to be really confident.   I know that I'm going to reach a certain point.  Not this point, but I knew that I was going to be able to make music for a lot of people.  I didn't know when, I didn't know how, but I knew it was going to end up that way.  I didn't really spend a lot of time thinking about where I was anymore than these are the formative years that take me to where I want to be.   Where I want to be is in the middle of my 5th record, that is just as anticipated as the second or first.  Actually, if my fifth record was as anticipated as my first, nobody would buy it (Laughs).  I want to have a lot of fans.   I want to make music for a lot of people.  I always knew that I lived those early days to get to the point of where I want to keep getting to, which I'm not there yet.  I want to get to the point of being a classic artist.  I think everyone wants to.   I don't know if I ever saw it as a trade-off because I knew.  I enjoyed the hell out of it and I stood in every moment for what it was.   I always knew that I really wanted that to be the stepping stone.  I never got attached to it enough for there to be a down-side.  Whats the downside now?  I don't get to sleep in the back of the van?  I don't get to eat Taco Bell everyday (laughs)?   I'm glad that I paid my dues.  I probably could have paid a little longer, but that's alright.  I paid for as long as I had to.  I did so much playing every day that by the time I got on stage, some of the shows sucked because I was so tired.  

RY:  The previous time I interviewed you, I asked you where you saw yourself ten years from now.  Obviously, a lot has changed since then.  Where do your answer stand in terms of this question today? 

JM: Previously, I had stated New York City, but now I want to live in LA. I want to balance the life of living on the road with the life of living in a house.  Live on the road four months out of the year.  For the rest of the time, wake up and get in my car and sit in on this guys record.   Wake up and go to the studio and work on another album or drive around to a radio station here.  I want to have a home life.  I want to have a front lawn.  Right now, because I don't need a front lawn, there is no better time than to tour twelve months a year.   This is solitifying my ability to take six months off and be domestic and do my own laundry and get my oil changed.  But, still to be a musician all the time. 

RY:  Can you talk about some of your goals as a person?

JM:  I want to be a provider for a family.  The money you make is so relative to the life you have and who you provide for.  The money that I make doesn't mean that much to me right now.   It's a number.  What if that number were to correlate to a baby's bedroom or repaving the driveway.  That's when your money just sparkles.   I would also not mind having a steady love in my life.  I'm uncannily good at getting sick of things.  I got sick of a lot stuff as I've gone through it.   One of the things I've gotten sick of is "That girl has a cute ass, I wonder if I can meet her after the show."  The girl with the cute ass also has bad breath.  I'm completely sick of it.  I want to be able to get back on the bus and say it was a great show, how is everything, how was YOUR day? The world revolves around my day, so I want to call someone else up and ask them how was their day.  Another goal is to add another inch to my penis at some point.  Maybe in the next couple months with the use of some isometric exercises. 

RY: At this point in your career, have you had any regrets or disappointments?

JM:  I don't really have any disappointments.  I regret not understanding the line between my personal life and my public life earlier.  I remember when I was going out with Vanessa and I would get on the radio and they'd say "we heard you're dating Vanessa Carlton."   What I should have said was something like hey next question.  What I did though was give the world the benefit of the doubt that I could explain it in a way that would make people say "Okay, I understand" and then not bring it up really.   I think that hurt the relationship just because we're too really young people who just started getting into our own music industry and then you sit down in the car and her song is playing and they're like "here is John Mayer's girlfriend." I regret that and I wish I would've understood earlier.   Now, with pictures being taken for People Magazine, that's not my fault.  I haven't brought it up to anybody.  I don't go talking about it.  It's not my fault.  The thing is, it's not my fault that I met somebody that I really really like and enjoy spending time with, which is where its at right now.   I don't have a girlfriend, I don't wear a ring.  It's someone I enjoy spending time with and talking with.  Why should that be turned into an apology or some kind of leverage because they have a picture of me?  It's a dignity thing.  It's like someone snaps a picture of me.   What can I do?  Am I going to let it affect my day?  No.  I do wish earlier on that I understood how it worked.  I didn't give myself enough credit that people cared enough to talk about it.  But, that's about it. 

RY:  Describe what its like to go through constant changes whether it be with a new guitarist, a new drummer, a new tour manager.   What's that like and how does it work?

JM:  You absolutely have to live one day at a time.  If you were too look ahead to the future and try to get from where you are today, to this point next year, you would die.  Thankfully everything so far has been an up slope.   Every new person who has come in so far has been better.  Everytime we work on a song, it gets better.  Wonderland kicked ass tonight b/c we thought, hey, lets put the organ in the song.  I think if it was the other direction, I would probably be a lot more disheartened.   You just live for everyday.  You go today is cool, tomorrow might impress me more.  It just keeps upgrading and upgrading.  If I had known back then that I was going to end up here, I would have been like, when are we going to meet Michael Chavez.   He brings something incredible to the band.  His style really affects the bands style.   I think its beautiful playing.  You can watch him get more comfortable each night. 

RY:  In terms of collaborations, is there anything planned for the future or anything you would like to do in terms of collaborations?

JM: I did that thing with Alice Peacock.  I really like the song a lot.  I haven't had the opportunity to record with anyone else, although I would like to.  I would like to collaborate with a lot more people than I have and if it doesn't work, oh well.  I would love to write with Martin Sexton.  We were messing around tonight on stage during soundcheck, and I was like man, there is some cool stuff we could do.  

RY:  Can you tell me a little bit about what you have planned for your new record, when it may come out and how it will be different from "Room For Squares?" 

JM:  It'll be different from "Room For Squares" and that it's not going to be as major scale melodic.  You won't be able to play it on all the white keys of the piano.  It's not going to be so boppy, not poppy, but boppy.  It's something that I really like doing because I was so inspired by Charlie Hunter.   Now, I think I'm a little more seasoned and suttle.  I really like the idea of exploring guitar textures.  I still want to be smooth.  I still want to be textured and "Something's Missing" is the sound of my next record.  There is no song like it on "Room For Squares."   There's a little bit of pain in it and a little bit of melancholy.  "Room For Squares", what it has in it is a little bit of young romantic melancholy.  I really like the idea of being sexy, like an older sexy.  A little darker, a little older, but not like a dark record with clouds on the cover.   I listened to "Room For Squares" July 5th for the first time since January.  When I heard it, I was like this record is corny!  It's cool because it's corny and it makes no apologies for melody.  Now, there is going to be a lot more guitar playing.   A little more stretching out.  I knew this before, and I would tell you if I was making this up.  I always knew that "Room For Sqaures" would be the record that allowed me to make the other records that I want to make.   Maybe my second record wouldn't have done as well if it was my first record.  "Room For Squares" is the mixtape. Welcome to what I do, and here is the starting point.  There is some stuff we are doing at soundchecks that I won't play until the record comes out because I want people to be able to go to the store and pick up the record and say that haven't heard the majority of it.   It's kind of a letdown otherwise. 

RY:  As it stands, your repitoire of songs is only moderate in size. Do you think a time will come where songs like "No Such Thing" and "Wonderland" won't be played every show? 

JM:  Asbolutely.  I can't wait to be like Dave Matthews Band and play four or five records worth of stuff and play two nights in the same place and only repeat two songs.  The reality is, that I'm not that artist yet.  I've been graced with a fan base that is very much the fan base of a band with a bigger repitoire than what we have.   This is all from one record. Thankfully, we have E-Sides*.  I would love not to play "Wonderland" the first night and then play it the second night.  However, that's all I've got right now.  Maybe one day, we'll have songs on the second record that people like just as much.  I think I'll probably be playing "3X5" for the rest of my life because I can't stop playing that song.   It's almost like I've gotten so many fans up front, that I have to catch up to them. 

RY: Anything you would like to say about the future? 

JM:  I hope to sell out in everyone's mind completely, because that would mean that they didn't see it coming at all. 

*This is the night that John invented the term.  This is what he refers to his unreleased tracks.  So, just remember five years from now when you're seeing John at an ampitheatre or stadium of your choice and he mentions e-sides, that this is when the word was created.