INTERVIEW | Jason Mraz is a sweetheart.

Or at least that’s how he comes across in a telephone interview.

He’s also a bit of a broken record. Much of what he said is word-for-word reiteration of his website. And who can blame him, really? He’s already been accused of hating fellow singer/songwriter/heartthrob John Mayer, and of being another mere imitator trying to cash in on Mayer’s success. So the fact that he’s careful about what he says isn’t exactly surprising.

Here are the facts: Mraz got started busking on the streets of New York after dropping out of musical theatre school. He picked up a following playing San Fransisco’s famed coffee house Java Joe’s (Jewel is also a Joe’s alumni). And he doesn’t hate John Mayer. They’re friends, actually.

It’s obvious that questions regarding his history are old hat for Mraz.

But when it comes to discussing his current acoustic show Tour of the Curbside Prophets, he’s eager to talk.

Rather than performing a traditional set, Mraz and fellow Prophets performers Raul Midon, Makana, and DJ Bob Neck Snapp operate under the mantra “don’t break the rhythm.” As concert goers enter the show, DJ Bob is already playing. When the first songwriter takes the stage, he integrates the beginning of his song with the end of the DJ’s beats, and so on. The music never stops. “It isn’t your traditional songwriter showcase,” Mraz says. And that seems to be what he likes about it.

Lookin’ like a young Hugh Grant.

Mraz insists that his decision to shirk convention with the Prophets tour isn’t about rebelling against his genre.

The tour is simply a way of mixing things up, both for himself and for his fans. Rather than coasting on the success of his first album Waiting For My Rocket To Come and its massive single Remedy, the unusual show is Mraz’s way of reconnecting with his musical roots. He can’t return to the coffee houses (he’s tried, mayhem ensues), so the tour is an attempt to recreate the coffee house experience in a bigger venue. And fans are eating it up.

Keeping the fans happy – particularly the coffeehouse crowd who didn’t just jump on the bandwagon after Remedy – is important to Mraz. His new album, a live release entitled Tonight, Not Again: Jason Mraz Live at the Eagles Ballroom will include a lot of older material that fans are always requesting, but that wouldn’t quite fit on a new studio release. And in case you’re wondering, a new studio release is also in the works, which should keep the singer’s largely female fan base appeased for some time.

When it comes to his popularity with the ladies, Mraz is immediately dismissive of the possibility that his looks may have played a part in his success. “I don’t exercise,” he says. “I’m a skinny moke. I’m not the most attractive guy on the bus.”

He’s sure his success is more about the music.

“Girls gravitate towards lyrics” he explains. “Right away, girls are hearing the message within [the song] and they’re going ‘awwwww! That is so sweet of him to feel that way.” The fact that he’s a bit of a hottie, despite what he says, is just a bonus.

Success isn’t all roses and rainbows, however. Mraz attributes the breakup of his most recent relationship to his long touring schedule, and his sadness about it seems genuine. “We’re trying to be friends through the whole thing,” he says. “Today’s her birthday, actually. I sent her some flowers.”

Girls everywhere are awwwwwing, but Mraz says the emotional buoyancy of being a star does little to lift his spirits. “It’s great,” he admits, “and yet so not. I still go to bed alone.”

Fans shouldn’t get their hopes up, however. While he loves having tonnes of women in his audience, Mraz doesn’t date his fans. Neither does John Mayer. Sorry girls.

Jason Mraz and The Tour of the Curbside Prophets play the Centre for the Performing Arts in Vancouver tonight.

This interview with Jason Mraz was originally published in the Vancouver Sun, June 10, 2004 under the headline “Hottie’s history a bit stale, but new show has buzz”.  Jump down below the scanned piece for a work history/baby journalist update from 2018.

2018: In mid 2004, I was working days as a photo editor at the Vancouver Sun.

That job is mostly about lightening, brightening and formatting images in Photoshop so that they’ll print well on newsprint. I was also pitching and taking as many writing assignments as possible, no matter how small, in an effort to build my portfolio of clips. Since I was already on the photo desk, the paper wasn’t paying me more to write, and this created a little bit of resentment among the old-guard of unionized reporters (more on that here, just jump down to the bottom), which I didn’t understand at the time, but do now.

I just wanted to write.

This meant taking any and every assignment I was offered, no matter what. I was regularly given the pieces no one else wanted – filler stories, listings, boring stuff, often on subjects I had no expertise in whatsoever. I had never heard of Mission of Burma when I was asked to interview their frontman, for example. And while I liked Emma Thompson, I didn’t know much about her when I was assigned to write why I loved her. I was scrambling, and in 2004, Google was a lot less helpful than it is today.

When I was assigned this interview with Jason Mraz, I was happy.

I actually knew and liked his single Remedy (I Won’t Worry). He was close to my age, and it felt like, for once, I might be able to write something I felt comfortable with. At the same time, I was an interviewing newbie. The questions I’d prepared on my little yellow notepad were banal – the stuff a high schooler might come up with. Stuff along the lines of “Where do you get your ideas?” and “Has fame been difficult?” I knew this kind of thing wasn’t working, but I also didn’t know what else to do. Remember, I hadn’t been to journalism school and I was literally winging everything about this job.

Baby Jen, age 23. Extremely naive.

I sat down to interview Mraz over the phone and the beginning of the conversation was incredibly stilted. Suddenly, I broke from my list of questions and did something I’d never done before.

I asked him if he was okay.

I told him he sounded irritated. Like I said, we were near the same age. I tried to treat him like a friend. For the first time, I got what amounted to a real interview. He opened up about a recent breakup, and was more open and friendly than anyone I’d interviewed before. He also didn’t seem to think I’d use most of the stuff he was saying. And neither did I.

After the interview, I wrote up my piece, and was then called over to my editor, a man named Michael Scott (this was long before the American version of The Office).

Michael said it was boring.

He didn’t think they could use it. I explained that I thought the interview had gone well, but I didn’t think it was right to use a lot of the content, because we’d just been chatting and it didn’t seem fair to reveal the things Mraz had said that felt too personal.

Michael cracked up. He seemed to have taken a general liking to me and we’d attended the same university. He possibly felt this made me his mentee. And he told me that nothing anyone ever said to a writer was “off the record” and that, even if a person were to say that phrase, it was a meaningless film-era fiction. No such thing. We went over my notes from the phone interview and he instructed me to use the personal stuff. “With this, you might have something halfway decent” he said.

Telling an interview subject that they seemed down, or annoyed, and asking if they were okay became a staple for me.

It ended up yielding content for many of my better interviews over the years, but I always felt weird and shitty and manipulative about it. The truth is that I was never cut out for journalism. I liked writing, but the results of interviewing felt awkward at best, and mean, unfair, and dishonest at worst. Still, I was thrilled to have come up with something “halfway decent” at this time, and felt it was a great step forward in my career.

As a side note, this piece seems significant because it’s also a good illustration of the syntax and style shortcuts that I came to rely on while writing for newspapers.

Turn around time was nonexistent. I was advised to pre-write pieces and fill in the blanks with quotes after the fact, so I often did. And as a result, I learned to reuse turns of phrase, transitions, and a variety of silly expressions. You’ll see these appear again and again in my early work. They include, but are not limited to, phrases such as “isn’t exactly surprising” and “fans are eating it up”. I also liked “in case you’re wondering”. If an interviewee expressed that something wasn’t typical in some way, I liked to quote them, then say “And that’s what s/he seemed to like about it.”

I liked to open pieces with a quick, definitive statement line, then a contradictory sentence beginning with “Or at least”. I liked to write versions of “you’d think X, but actually” or “You might be surprised to hear”. Or “If you think X, think again.” I liked to end with extremely short lines, such as “Sorry, folks” or “Indeed she is”. My writing was extremely formulaic. At the same time, for the audience and the medium (older, traditional readers and broadsheet newspapers), it worked. My work was in print. I didn’t have to deal with abusive, obnoxious comments, and all in all, things were going well. In retrospect, I think a lot of the informal advice and on-the-job training I received was fucked up, but I didn’t know that at the time.