How did you first hear Stevie Ray Vaughan? And why did he make such a big impression on you?
In 1991, a neighbor gave me a cassette of [1983's] Texas Flood. What hit me was the tone, the texture. It was rich, deep and round. It was wet, fluid, like mercury. I remember saying, "I don't know how you describe it, but that's the sound I want."
Stevie also began this amazing genealogical hunt for me: Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Freddie King, Albert King, Otis Rush and Lightnin' Hopkins. I wrote Buddy Guy fan mail when I was sixteen: "Dear Mr. Guy, I love your records. I'm going to play with you someday." Buddy used to play at Toad's Place [in New Haven, Connecticut]. I wasn't old enough to get in. I'd call the guys there: "I'm a huge Buddy Guy fan. Please let me in. I won't drink." They never let me in.
When you're onstage with Buddy Guy, he treats you like an equal. Do you feel like one?
I'm not an equal. But I feel like I can hold my own. And hold your own doesn't mean coming out the winner. When I play with B.B., I play as few notes as possible. I'm there to satisfy his sound. The first time I played with B.B., he kept going, "Play another solo." I don't think he was being generous — I think he didn't want it to be a cutting contest. As I played with him more, he'd turn his volume knob up. That's when I said, "Wow, B.B.'s really letting me in."
How would you describe your guitar style?
I don't play so much like Stevie Ray Vaughan anymore. I realized my signature is not soloing. It is in the chord voicings, the inversions. In "Wheels," on Heavier Things, the lead line is chords.
That explains why you once said "Axis: Bold as Love" is your favorite Hendrix album. It's his most concise, song-based record.
The songs on Axis are an extension of beautiful guitar playing. You can almost hear Hendrix looking at the guitar as he plays [makes the sound of a long, shivering note], going, "I wonder what that does?" There is an element of discovery. Are You Experienced? is like a rough draft. Axis sounds like the colors on the cover.
Do you have an identifiable tone or color?
I'm going for the biggest, fluffiest, tubbiest sound. I want my guitar to sound like Sting's voice — thick, on the bottom. I want to figure out my own phrasing, my own vocabulary. Eric Clapton is so influential that people go, "Is that Clapton or someone doing Clapton?" I would like to get to the point where someone says, "I can tell that's John Mayer."
Why didn't you play more solos on your first two albums?
I landed in Atlanta in 1998 and wanted to be in a band — play electric guitar and sing. I couldn't find anybody. And the electric guitar doesn't sound great alone. So I wrote Room for Squares on an acoustic guitar. Compositionally, there was no room for me to sprawl. And Heavier Things was my Axis: Bold as Love intention.
But I came off the road after Heavier Things and went, "Why am I still not happy?" How could I have sold that many records and still misrepresented where I'm coming from? The Trio saved me. It was me putting up a roadblock and saying, "There is some shit I have to do, to get back on track."
The Trio album is mostly original songs. Did you write them with the band in mind?
Originally, we were just going to play covers. But I love composers who write for the format. Guitarists like John Scofield and Pat Metheny write for the personnel. So we wrote songs lightning-fast. "Good Love Is on the Way" was written out of wanting to have a song like "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?" by Derek and the Dominos. "Out of My Mind" — I wanted a slow blues tune. You gotta be high to like that one — it's so slow.
You did some songwriting with Eric Clapton in London last year. What was it like?
One of the most pivotal weeks of my life. That man is bullshit-free. We had lunch, and he told me something that I think about every day: "You can't mastermind everything. You'll go crazy. Just show up and play."
But look at who his heroes are. You're only as good as your heroes, and Eric is flawless at giving his bibliography, his footnotes. Eric embraces his lineage. And he said something to me — he let on that just as Muddy Waters took him in, he was taking me in, as a passing-on. That was absolutely huge.
