Country Music Blog: John Mayer

If Cathy Bentley was so strict, how did her son, Dierks, pull off a lemonade-and-vodka stand? Only his mom knows, and she shared her stories with People.
A Nashville middle school is rich with 75 new musical instruments, thanks to a little help from Kellie Pickler and the Country Music Association.

Blue Highway meets the virtual highway as the acclaimed bluegrass band revamps its Web site.

Where are all the grown-ups? The Hannah Montana movie needs you. So if you're free Saturday, come on down to the open auditions in Nashville.

And despite a closed set and tight security, when the filming starts at Franklin High School, fandemonium will no doubt set in.

When Taylor Swift met John Mayer, she started quoting things from his MySpace blog. She said she was freaking out. He might've been a little freaked out himself.

The Road to Escondido is really growing on me. It only seems like J.J. Cale and Eric Clapton have been collaborating for years, because they complement each other so well and because Clapton did so well with the Cale songs “After Midnight” and “Cocaine.” But Escondido is their first full-fledged CD together and what a pleasure it is.

Cale, for those who don’t know him, is a musical recluse from Tulsa who has recorded maybe 13 albums in 40 years, but whose work is prized by guitar aficionados and songwriters alike. Clapton invited him to play his Crossroads guitar festival in Dallas in 2004 and that led to this studio partnership. Cale’s road band forms the core of the musicians, but they are aided by the likes of Taj Mahal, Billy Preston, John Mayer, Albert Lee, Willie Weeks and Steve Jordan. Cale wrote most of the songs; Clapton contributed one, as well as a co-write with Mayer. Brownie McGhee’s “Sporting Life Blues” is the other non-Cale song.

They hit a soulful groove with the first notes of “Danger” and never let up. This is lazy afternoon, wine-sipping, mellowing-out music with a backbone that still rocks. These two old pros make it seem so effortless. Even Cale’s anti-war song, “When this War is Over,” makes its point without bringing you down:

These old boys are leading us somewhere - that is plain to see /
I don't know much of nothing, still it troubles me /
Got to find another way, this one ain't the way to go /
Got to get a plan, change our ways or no...
When this war is over it will be a better day /
When this war is over it will be a better day /
But it won't bring back those poor boys in the grave.
 
It is hard to believe now that the eternally laid-back Cale was once a regular performer at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go in L.A., alternating with Johnny Rivers. Or that Cale is the same guy who engineered Blue Cheer’s psychedelic-metal pioneering “Summertime Blues.” Or whose song, “Call Me the Breeze,” became a Lynyrd Skynyrd staple. Laid-back is as laid-back does.

Escondido, for those who were wondering, is a nice smallish city of 130,000+ people about 30 miles northeast of San Diego. Sounds very laid-back.