Where The Light Is - John Mayer Live in Los Angeles

After making his introduction as a sensitive, acoustic-styled songwriter on 2001's Room for Squares, John Mayer steadily widened his approach over the subsequent years, encompassing everything from blues-rock to adult contemporary in the process. Arriving during the tail end of teen pop's heyday, he crafted pop music for a more discerning audience, spiking his songcraft with jazz chords and literate turns of phrase. The combination proved to be quite popular, as Room for Squares went triple platinum before its follow-up release, Heavier Things, arrived in September 2003. Mayer continued to retool his sound with each album, however, moving beyond the material that had launched his career and adopting elements of rock, blues, and soul. Moreover, he partnered with legends of several genres, making guest appearances on albums by Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, and B.B. King, while touring alongside jazz icon Herbie Hancock. Mayer also retained enough pop/rock foundation to continue his reign of the charts, making him one of the decade's most popular songwriters.

Born in Bridgeport, CT, and raised in the nearby town of Fairfield, Mayer began playing blues as a teenager. By 1997, his skill on the electric guitar was enough to warrant admission into the Berklee College of Music, although Mayer dropped out after two semesters to pursue a songwriting career in Atlanta. Working alongside former classmate Clay Cook, he frequented the local coffeehouse circuit and began co-writing material that melded palatable pop/rock with unexpected flourishes. Cook and Mayer parted ways shortly thereafter, however, with Cook joining the Marshall Tucker Band's touring lineup for several years. Now a solo artist by default, Mayer recorded several of the duo's songs, packaged them alongside a handful of his own compositions, and self-released the EP in 1999 under the title Inside Wants Out.

Mayer secured a deal with Aware Records in early 2000, and recording sessions for his debut album commenced later that year with producer John Alagia, renowned for his work with Dave Matthews and Ben Folds Five. Although Inside Wants Out had been a decidedly acoustic effort, Room for Squares proved to be a more expansive affair, with several of Mayer's old songs receiving new, radio-ready arrangements. Released in 2001 by both Aware and Columbia Records, the album quickly launched Mayer's career, with "No Such Thing" and "Your Body Is a Wonderland" both becoming Top 20 hits.

As Mayer hit the road in support of the album, his considerable talent as a lead guitarist (a skill that had been downplayed during Room for Squares) flourished, leading him to showcase several blues-influenced solos on his 2003 live album, Any Given Thursday. That same year, Mayer won his first Grammy Award for "Your Body Is a Wonderland." He returned to the Grammy ceremony two years later, this time to accept a pair of awards for "Daughters," a soulful ballad from his lucrative sophomore release, Heavier Things. Commercial and critical success notwithstanding, Mayer's interest in other genres convinced him to take a brief break from pop music, and he tested his instrumental chops by collaborating with blues artists (Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Eric Clapton) and jazz legends (John Scofield, Herbie Hancock). He also assembled the John Mayer Trio, whose bluesy rock & roll was displayed on the band's first and only release, Try!

Mayer returned to his solo career with 2006's Continuum, a warmly received album that saw him focusing on blues, pop, and contemporary soul. "Gravity" found modest success as a single, but "Waiting on the World to Change" proved to be the album's commercial highlight, cracking the Top 20 in February 2007 and winning a Grammy that same month. Later that year, Mayer achieved his highest-charting single to date with "Say," a song from the Rob Reiner film The Bucket List. After "Say" peaked at number 12, the song was included in a reissued version of Continuum, and it took home yet another Grammy Award (along with "Gravity") in early 2009. Following the release of a live album, Where the Light Is, Mayer once again returned to the studio in 2009, this time to record Battle Studies.

—Andrew Leahey

Recorded at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles, California, Where the Light Is: John Mayer Live in Los Angeles finds singer/songwriter and guitarist John Mayer performing in three different band settings: acoustic trio, electric trio, and large ensemble. As such, the evening works as a nice representation of Mayer's work beginning with the 2003 album Heavier Things and continuing through his creative reinvention as a modern electric blues artist with 2005's Try! John Mayer Trio Live in Concert and finally his smash Grammy-winning 2006 effort, Continuum. Essentially, the concert is designed to showcase Mayer's ability to move from melodic soft rock and pop to folky solo numbers and rockin' blues. Generally, the conceit works and the concert does shine a light, so to speak, on Mayer's virtuosic musical chops. However, segmenting this concert into such specific aesthetic sounds loses some of the diverse flow a Mayer concert usually has. It should be noted that the concert is also available on DVD and Blu-ray, where you get see each band and appreciate the diversity among the ensembles. That said, for fans of Mayer the songwriter, you really can't lose, as the guy is hard-pressed to come up with a bad song, and tracks like the fan favorite "Daughters" and the bittersweet "Stop This Train" really benefit from the acoustic reading Mayer gives them here. Similarly, by putting "'Who Do You Think I Was," "Vultures," and his inspired take on Jimi Hendrix's "Bold as Love" in the middle electric trio section, Mayer builds the energy of the concert, perfectly setting up the pop/blues cornucopia of the final large ensemble set. Beginning with the hit "'Waiting on the World to Change," Mayer's last set (on disc two) is really the set most fans will gravitate toward, as it finds Mayer and his backing group of stellar sideman diving headlong into such soulful numbers as "Why Georgia" and "I Don't Trust Myself (With Loving You)," while also making room for such bluesy nuggets as his Stevie Ray Vaughan-inspired reworking of the Ray Charles hit "I Don't Need No Doctor" (a number heard on John Scofield's That's What I Say with Mayer as guest). Admittedly sprawling and ambitious, Where the Light Is is nonetheless a dynamic showcase for Mayer, who never fails to shine.

— Matt Collar