John Mayer Gets The Blues

John Mayer Gets The Blues

'I'm a bluesman,' says Mayer, but the little girls may not understand: Aidin Vaziri | John Mayer is about to commit career suicide, and there's no stopping him. It's Tuesday, a few hours before the first of his two sold-out shows at the Fillmore, and the singer-songwriter is lounging in a suite at the Four Seasons on Market Street. The first sign of trouble is the clothing. In tattered jeans and loose-fitting white T-shirt, his hair a mess of wayward curls, he doesn't look so much like a multiplatinum pop star and sorority house pinup as a bellboy playing hooky from work. "I'm done with fashion," Mayer announces, his 6-foot-3-inch frame slumped on the couch. He isn't kidding. On his feet are a pair of Adidas running sneakers and white ankle socks. It's the same outfit he'll wear onstage later. Then there's this: The 27-year-old singer-songwriter is in town to begin a tour with his new project, the John Mayer Trio, a blues-rock ensemble that includes bassist Pino Palladino, the British session player who served as John Entwistle's replacement in the Who, and drummer Steve Jordan, a musician who has worked with Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. That's right, a blues-rock ensemble.It's not exactly the left-field move Mayer's managers were hoping for after the remarkable success of his past two albums, the quadruple-platinum 2001 debut "Room for Squares" and its 2003 follow-up, "Heavier Things," which entered the charts at No. 1 and sold 2 million copies. But Mayer says his bosses, like his numerous critics, will just have to deal with it. The fans, well, they can make up their own minds. "I'm walking into the line of fire, but you got to see the way I walk. It's quite a strut."