http://www.miamiherald.co...story/story/1464897.html

John Mayer lets his songs, his voice and his guitar do the talking

Singer-songwriter John Mayer kicked off his U.S. tour Thursday at the BankAtlantic Center in Fort Lauderdale with a show that was a powerful demonstration of his musical talent, but left him something of a cipher as a pop star.

The balance between musicality and celebrity wouldn't really matter if Mayer hadn't become such a tabloid presence in recent years. He's arguably just as famous for dating and breaking up with the likes of Jennifer Aniston and Jessica Simpson, giving us a little too much information about his sexual feelings and posing shirtless on Rolling Stone as he is for being a gifted songwriter and guitarist who's sold more than 12 million albums, won seven Grammys and chalked up a number of radio hits.

On Thursday night the focus was emphatically on Mayer's music and not his pop presence. Wearing a plain black T-shirt, jacket and pants, Mayer let his songs, his voice and his guitar do the talking. All were impressively eloquent. Backed by a crack seven piece band, Mayer dominated the music with taut, muscular electro-blues guitar and some impressively skillful, even inspired jazz playing.

Projections and stage effects were minimal, and the few remarks Mayer did make were mostly about his music. Eight of the show's fourteen numbers were from his new album, Battle Studies, and emphasized Mayer's gutsy guitar prowess, while big soft pop hits like Your Body is a Wonderland, Daughters and Say were absent.

That's probably a good thing if Mayer wants to be taken seriously as an artist. The seductive, baby-faced boy heartthrob has become a still sensuous, but warier and more conflicted man. ``It's great to play this as a whole new person,'' Mayer, 32, said to introduce Why Georgia, from his 2001 debut Room for Squares. ``I was a scared, pimply little kid when I wrote this. . . . Actually, the older I get, I think we're all scared, pimply little kids.''

Not that he looked scared or pimply on those heartthrob early videos, but we'll take his word for it. Mayer's voice has a husky, plaintive quality that can make it seem soft, a sweet whisper just for you, even when it's amplified to fill a sold out arena like BAC on Thursday. He can work a soulful falsetto, too, like he did on Vultures, whose thudding bass and spiritually tinged lyrics echoed the Al Green gospel-soul classic Take Me To The River.

But the feeling on most of the songs Thursday, particularly those from Battle Studies, was ambivalent rather than amorous. Mayer opened with Heartbreak Warfare, where loving means that ``No one ever really wins.'' On Assassin he confronts a girl who's as much of a romantic killer as he is. ``Are there any unhappy single people in the house tonight?'' he asked to introduce Perfectly Lonely, where he can't seem to decide if being alone is a good or a bad thing.

In a rare moment of humor, Mayer interrupted himself during Half of my Heart, where he's a commitment-phobe ``who's never truly loved anything'' to give a pop riposte. ``There's two sides to every story,'' he said. ``Here's what I imagine she'd say to come back at me'' and he broke into the Stevie Nicks/Fleetwood Mac hit Dreams, singing ``Here you go again, you say you want your freedom. . . .'' He's a romantic Peter Pan, and he knows it.

But for all the intensity of Mayer's playing and the emotional revelations in his songs, he himself seemed detached from the audience and what he was playing. Despite the heat in his guitar playing and the passion he sings about -- and aroused in the screaming women at the BAC -- Mayer himself is cool. Maybe he wants the music to speak for itself and for him, and maybe it does for many. Maybe he's been so burned by the harsh glare of media attention on his love life, so habituated to tweeting whatever he thinks, that it's hard for him to really open up. But we might have felt the songs more if it seemed that Mayer was really feeling them, too.

Opening act Michael Franti and Spearhead had their first top 40 hit last year with the irresistible Say Hey (I Love You), making them new to the arena circuit and a general pop audience, something Franti acknowledged frequently. ``We've never been in the Top 40 Thousand before, much less the Top 40,'' Franti joked, thanking the crowd several times. The long, lean, dreadlocked Franti is a charismatic and energetic figure, but his humanistic, socially conscious message and Afro-reggae-worldbeat-funk-rock music often didn't translate into the kind of broad power needed to make an impact on a venue this size. (Part of the problem was the sound, which was thin and muddy. That mostly seems to be the case with opening acts on arena tours, whether because they get less in the way of sound technology or because their music doesn't have the density and volume needed to fill these huge spaces.)

Franti has a nice way of combining American pop and global dance music, and a ``love the one you're with'' message with genuine empathy for the disadvantaged. The hook from Billie Jean rang out in Everybody on a Move, while U2-ish guitars combined with reggae in I'll Be Waiting. Rude Boys saluted dancehall exuberance from Japan to Brazil. ``Hey world, whaddya say, should I stick around for another day?'' Franti sang on the lovely, moving Hold On. ``Do you believe in me, the way that I believe in you?'' It should be an anthem for Haiti.

Music like that speaks for itself. Franti seemed to be working hard to appeal to the audience, as if they needed to be sold on music more substantial than lightweight pop. Some songs sounded rushed. If he settled in, took his time and let his songs speak for themselves, there's plenty there even for a stadium, and plenty reason for an audience to thank him, rather than the other way around.