John Mayer: Looking to let loose : Netglimse.com News

John Mayer: Looking to let loose

Grammy winner John Mayer is playing it loose and easy this summer. He's talking music — and not his ex-girlfriend Jessica Simpson.

"I've gotten older and learned how to have a little fun and stop taking myself so seriously all the time," John Mayer told a web site. "I have this idea for a summer tour that's really relaxed and less a display of musicality and more like a conversation. I just want to take off all the pressure and play as loose as I can."

John Mayer's 90-minute set should do just that when he performs at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion tonight.

And if history repeats, this will be a lovefest. John Mayer knows how to turn on the charm and has always driven women crazy at his shows everywhere.

And they likely will be interested to know that the fresh-faced singer-songwriter turned fresh-faced bluesman who first broke out with Room for Squares in 2002 is flying solo these days in the love department, too. And if the New York Daily News is to be believed, not missing his high-profile former flame all that much.

His platinum status has not diminished with subsequent albums Heavier Things and Continuum. He's also a guest columnist for Esquire ("Music Lessons With John Mayer").

All of which has done little to change the outlook that he's a male Norah Jones.

But his 2005 live album Try! (with Pino Palladino and Steve Jordan under the name the John Mayer Trio) was a tougher, albeit calculated, move to redefine his image closer to those of his heroes Eric Clapton and B.B. King.

John Mayer was named to the Time 100 with tightrope praise — mostly don't dismiss him so fast for being a pop star because he "wields sincerity like a pitchfork," and "the dude's pretty funny, too."

Time didn't let him completely off the hook for the perceived transgression Waiting for the World to Change, adding: "It's tempting to dismiss the 29-year-old as the latest figure in a disturbing cultural phenomenon: the rock star as wuss."

Daily Variety echoed those sentiments in its recent review of John Mayer's concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. "He never managed to be anything but a lightweight pretty boy pop star," wrote a music critic.

Then again, Rolling Stone named him one of "the New Guitar Gods."

Whom to believe?

He's definitely bigger than his body, Gravity definitely isn't working against him, and in concert he has a message for those who want to change him — a searing version of Ray Charles' I Don't Need No Doctor.