Mayer has new sounds since his trio days

John Mayer is on the phone, struggling to describe how he arrived at the soulful, almost understated sound of his latest album, "Continuum," when the words suddenly come to him.

"You start out with fire," he says, picking up speed as he talks. "More fire than you'll ever need, and that's cool. And the more fire you have, the cooler you become. And then as you get older, you start to learn that there are more things than fire out there, and smoke is pretty damn cool, too."

He's so delighted by the metaphor he leans away from the phone and paraphrases the line to his publicist, before returning to an interview in advance of his tour with Sheryl Crow [which comes to Auburn's White River Amphitheatre Saturday].

"I'm going to rip myself off and say that in every interview now," Mayer says, laughing.

That's not to say there's no fire on "Continuum." In fact, the Fairfield, Conn., native's third major-label studio record features some of his most passionate guitar playing yet, and includes a cover of the Jimi Hendrix song "Bold as Love."

The album is a study in restraint, as Mayer shifts from the sleepy-voiced come-ons of "Room for Squares" and "Heavier Things" to a sound rooted in vintage soul, with a pop edge.

Mayer, 28, says the sound of the new album wouldn't have been possible without last year's diversion, the live record "Try!" he made with bassist Pino Palladino and drummer Steve Jordan. Together, they were the John Mayer Trio, and its frontman says the experience was liberating.

Concert preview


John Mayer and Sheryl Crow, with Marjorie Fair, 6:30 p.m. Saturday (doors open at 5 p.m.), White River Amphitheatre, 40601 Auburn Enumclaw Road, Auburn; $36-$66 (206-628-0888 or www.ticketmas ter.com; information, www.whiteriverconcerts.com).

"It was never meant to be as big as my solo thing. I just had to do it," he says. "It was a vacation, actually. It was obligation-free music, you know? It was played in places so small that I didn't owe anybody anything, I didn't owe anybody a certain kind of a show."

Mayer has always shown impressive chops on guitar in concert, but his blues-soaked playing hadn't seeped into his records until "Continuum."

"That's what the trio taught me," he says. "The trio gave me the confidence to play guitar, to just turn up and play."

Mayer — who also handled his own production duties for the first time on "Continuum" — is pleased enough with the results to have said that "Continuum" is "the first endeavor in my entire life, music or otherwise, that I did not cop out for a second on."

He elaborates. "When you make a decision that something isn't good enough and pass on fixing it because you're aware of how hard it's going to be, that's copping out," he says. This time, he identified and fixed the "tiny sparks" of dissatisfaction that he had a hard time spotting on earlier albums.