The face of the San Diego acoustic scene has changed drastically in the past year. On any given weekend last January, one could always go somewhere in San Diego and find Jason Mraz doing what he does best: entertaining the locals, wooing the women and making fun of Toca (his percussionist). He was a staple, and this year finds him well-missed while San Diego acoustic fans search coffee houses for the next Jason Mraz and ask themselves whatever happened to the old one.
The truth is, a number of things have happened to the old Jason. Despite releasing a nationwide album in recent months, Mraz earned a place on to the biggest small stage that exists, appearing on “”Conan O’Brien”” on Jan. 21. After a whirlwind tour of the country that included an opening date for Dave Matthews Band and a much-talked-about-but-little-understood altercation with the acoustic world’s current king of the mountain, John Mayer, Mraz will finally return Feb. 1 to play before a sold-out crowd at Spreckels Theatre in downtown San Diego. It is easy to see by the venues he is booking and by his slowly increasing ticket prices that he is moving up in the world, but one has to wonder how long San Diego will continue to welcome back its prodigal son.
His San Diego fan base seemed less than enthusiastic about his release, “”Waiting For My Rocket To Come.”” While some of the album’s tracks include up to nine instruments, many feel that Mraz’s sound gets lost in the mix. The live sound that he created and perfected in San Diego is nowhere to be found on his nationwide release. One track on the album has a female back-up vocalist speaking the words, “”Jason M-R-A-Z, boy, you so crazy.”” This type of studio-derived muck comes as a shock to those who fell in love with his pure acoustic sound. Saturday night will offer an interesting insight into how his live show was affected by his time on the road promoting his album. Will he play the songs the way he did when he left the San Diego scene, or will acoustic fans have to hear the new, sometimes hard to listen to, album derivatives?
Mraz’s alienated fan base may never get to know the answer to this question. Did Mraz sell out? Was he a victim of a record company trying to produce a radio-friendly album? Or was he just trying to do something different on his studio album than he had ever done before? The truth is always somewhere in the middle. While the majority of the country is just becoming familiar with Mraz for the first time, the Spreckels audience will have the chance Saturday night to answer the question that everyone in San Diego has been asking themselves since Mraz left town so many months ago: Whatever happened to Mraz?
