Interview: Jason Mraz Lays Low Before New Record Release

(andPOP) - Jason Mraz. Remember that name? Think back. Think hard. No, not John Mayer. Mraz. It's been a while since anyone has really heard from the singer-songwriter, unless you were listening to his breakout hit "The Remedy" for the umpteenth time on the local adult contemporary station.

But after spending some time away from the spotlight, Mraz is gearing up to get back into the music scene with new songs and a new record. The hiatus, Mraz tells andPOP, has helped shape the album into something he hopes listeners will find quite different from what they might expect from him.

“The last album was very introverted, very personal songs: songs about Jason Mraz or songs from the Jason Mraz perspective,” he says. “Over the last few months, and throughout my travels in the last year, I realized that writing specifically only about my life experiences is limiting, considering there’s so many great stories to be told out there in the world.”

Moving away from writing simply love songs, Mraz plans to address social issues – environmental ones, especially – on his upcoming album, tentatively set for release in the fall.

Already, he’s sung about issues of self-esteem and self-image in a track he contributed to the “Be Ugly” campaign, recently launched by the ABC hit sitcom “Ugly Betty.” “Beauty In The Ugly” is a revamp of an old song that Mraz used to play live but was never formally released. The upbeat anthem tells ordinary girls to “own your name and stand up tall.”

Mraz says he was inspired to write the song after seeing so many girls at concerts and knowing so many women who “leave a trail of beauty magazines everywhere we go” – magazines that promote only one standardized version of what is considered beautiful.

It’s something Mraz himself isn’t immune to either.

“Image becomes a pressure on an artist and it certainly has for me,” he admits. “I just want to write songs and tell these stories and I just want to sing… but you have to make appearances and do videos. It’s so weird.”

Getting some time off away from all of that, he says, has not only given him new ideas and new feelings to work with musically; he’s also had the chance to have some time to rediscover who he is.

Mraz hasn’t taken such a long break since he first burst on the scene in 2002 with his debut album “Waiting For My Rocket To Come.” Since then, it had been constant touring and the release of another album, 2005’s “Mr. A-Z,” a critical bomb that saw only mild commercial success.

“I realized I really haven’t just settled down for six years. What does that feel like? Who am I now? What do I do? When I go to the grocery store, what things do I like to buy,” he asks, “cause I’ve been living off of catering and tour bus food and restaurants for so long?”

Now, Mraz is enjoying cooking his own food and laying low at his home in San Diego, where he has built his own personal studio. When he’s not working on the new album (which he’s “super proud of” so far), he’ll break out a book and do some reading or head to the beach with his surfboard. Once in a while, he’ll take his guitar out to a local coffee shop for an impromptu performance to test some of his new songs on fresh ears. No lights, no cameras, not even any bootleg tapers, whom Mraz has always made a point of welcoming at his shows.

It’s a useful and almost therapeutic process, which he likens to test-driving a car for kinks. “You’re like ‘alright, maybe I should go home and make some improvements on it so I can make it work a little smoother around the turns.’ That’s what I do,” he explains.

Perhaps reflecting the organic roots of its conception, the new record will be mostly acoustic: “keeping the sound raw, letting just the voice in the song be heard, trying to do as little electric instruments as possible,” Mraz describes.

Playing acoustic was how Mraz started out and it was important to him to go back to that approach after producing two big pop rock records. It’s why over the course of the last year, Mraz has made an effort to return to some of his old haunts (such as Schuba’s in Chicago and New York City’s Irving Plaza during a four-city “Songs for Friends” Tour last July) to play exclusive acoustic sets. A few select performances made it onto a live acoustic record, released in December and sold exclusively through jasonmraz.com.

So, he says, “it looks like I’ve been out of the music scene but actually I’ve been more involved in my music scene than ever.”