Mraz sets out to define and create a love album
Singer pays tribute to Earth’s place in the universe
Jason Mraz saw my bicycle helmet and was immediately intrigued. “You bike?” asked the California singer-songwriter, known for his impossibly peppy, folk-tinged pop tunes that exist in a selfcontained universe where life is always awesome.
Sitting in a downtown Montreal hotel room in early March to promote his new album Love Is a Four Letter Word, Mraz came off as unassuming and unpretentious — a laid-back West Coast dude at peace with himself and the world. Asked if he had ever tried winter biking, he replied in the negative, then shared an anecdote about his worst two-wheeled brush with danger.
“I hit a water bottle one time,” he said. “I thought I’d be cool and pedal over it, but I lost control. I was on my way to get my passport photo — my first passport. So whenever I looked at my passport for the next 10 years, I knew what that boy had just done, I knew he was bleeding at his elbow and his clothes were all wet. I was bleeding like a freak, getting my passport photo taken.”
Mraz brings several bicycles along when he tours by bus, but it’s when he’s at home that he rides most often.
“It’s all I do,” he said. “I live about six miles from the closest store, so it’s a good haul everywhere I go. I’m in northeast San Diego; it’s country. We have a little farmhouse, with lots of trees. It’s an agricultural region, where mostly food and flowers are grown.”
He and his girlfriend not only grow their own food but reap the benefits of a crop of 25-year-old avocado trees that were there when they bought the property.
Yes, they’re vegan — and “raw when available,” he said, “though I love grains and root vegetables. Roast me up some root veggies and brussels sprouts with some coconut oil and I’m a happy man. I just find (healthy food) keeps me well-oiled and fresh and clean. It works.”
We talk about the new album, his fourth.
“It began with the artwork,” Mraz said of the concept, referring to the four geometrically shaped blocks (vertical rectangle, circle, upside-down triangle, square) that make up the cover.
“I saw these shapes in this order a couple of years ago,” he said, “but I also saw the word ‘love’ in it. And then it occurred to me that it only says love be- cause I choose to see love in it.
“Then I thought, ‘Well, if I can see love in those four shapes, then I can choose to see love in any person, or in the mirror, or in the world at large. That was my ‘Aha!’ moment. I said, ‘I want to use this as an album cover and I want to create music that is of a similar consciousness, that is a look at love and what it is — what it means to love, to be compassionate for oneself, for one’s planet and all of its inhabitants.’ I set out to define love and create a love album.”
Over the course of 12 songs, Love Is a Four Letter Word pays tribute to love, positivity, connectedness, acceptance, perseverance, honesty and Earth’s place in the universe.
“I wrote 80 songs (for the album),” he said. “The first 50 were sad and lonely, ‘Who am I?’ type songs. I worked until I got to the next 30, celebrating who I am and what I’ve overcome to get to a place where I’m in control.”