Grammy Award Winning Artist John Mayer is teaming up with Sony and Bank One to give a free concert here in New York City tomorrow night. We got to speak with John earlier today to talk to him about his summer plans.

JOHN MAYER, MUSICIAN: Every time I go out on the road, the identity of who I am and who I want to be is always changing. To be an artist, you know, I`ll go out on a tour and go, I think that was who I was and then take a month off and go, oh, wait, that was nothing like what I was. So you get to go out and kind of work out your inspiration into something new.

HAFFENREFFER: You said on your website that your latest album "Heavier Things" is a reflection of who you are today, whereas you`re very successful album was a reflection of who you at that time. How have you changed both musically and I guess personally over these three years?

MAYER: You know what, I think the word is refinement. You refine a little bit in terms of what your style is and what your style is as a guy and a musician. But it`s really hard - you know, I always say like, if you`re the first person to say you`ve changed, you haven`t. So when people say, well how are you different? You know what, you have to hang out with me to tell me because you would never get a good read from me. It`s like people go, I`m different, I`ve changed and you go, just by virtue of that you haven`t.

HAFFENREFFER: But when you hear the first album "Room for Squares," what do you hear musically that is no longer there?

MAYER: Well, that`s a good question. I hear a lot of distraction. It`s just youthful kind of everything in the kitchen sink like mentality. And what "Heavier Things" is - they`re always just experiments. If they`re successful, then that`s the way they always should have been. And really at the heart of them they`re just experiments.
And the experiment of "Heavier Things" is trying to just be kind of singularly thematic from song to song and not - you know, write a song, is it good? Great. Put it down on tape. Put it out. And people have really responded to it as - for me as a guitar player, I`ve really enjoyed getting to show that side of me to people.

HAFFENREFFER: Who were some of your inspirations growing up on the guitar side of things? I read Stevie Ray Vaughan in one bio.

MAYER: Yes, absolutely. Everyone has that first artist they discover that`s the gateway to everyone else and for me it was Stevie Ray Vaughan. And then that linked very quickly into like Jimmy Hendrix. And then all these old blues guys. I was a 15-year old kid growing up in Fairfield, Connecticut, and my friends where I`d go home after school and it was like the "League of Super Heroes", but it was blues guys and jazz guys and stuff. And so I`ve gotten to play with some of my heroes now, too. And it`s kind of like I`ve flown in the simulator for so many hours that I got actual flight time with these guys, which is just stunning to me.

HAFFENREFFER: You probably learned a lot just from watching them, I imagine, on stage with you.

MAYER: Oh, I`m a different guy. I just played - Eric Clapton just had a guitar festival in Dallas a couple of weeks ago. And after watching all those guys play, my playing is different now. Guitar playing music, you know, bottom line is, it`s so adaptable and it`s so flexible that if you saw a show last year, you see a show this year it`s totally different because what I`ve seen with my eyes and heard with my ears is different now.

HAFFENREFFER: And "Room for Squares" came out in 2001.

MAYER: Yes.

HAFFENREFFER: You`re still new to this industry here.

MAYER: Thank you for saying that, David. It`s true.

HAFFENREFFER: What have you learned about the music business as an artist that you didn`t know going into this?

MAYER: Oh, that`s a dangerous question to answer. What I learned about the music business? I believe that the music business is a very well-intended thing. I don`t think it`s evil. I think it`s good intention. I think that there are more jobs in the assembly line of creating music than there has to be.
And my fight is to get that assembly line of idea, creation, execution to just such a short spectrum that it doesn`t get stopped up in - think tanks are really hard, man. For everybody to agree on something, it has to have no rough edges on it. And that`s my - I`ve learned how to be diplomatic but at the same time still get my way at the end of the day.

HAFFENREFFER: That`s a lot of artists now are turning to self-publishing themself recording and self everything of their own albums. Does that look like a better model to you?

MAYER: No.

HAFFENREFFER: No.

MAYER: No. It`s like there are elements of the pop world that I really like and there are elements of other styles of music that I like. And one of the elements of the pop world that I like is the commercial aspect of selling a lot of records and making music for a lot of people. And I think that every artist is different and has to take a really kind of florescent look at who they are. And for me, I want to always be a pop musician. But I think what pop means is just, it doesn`t mean crap. It means popular music. It means not blues, jazz, blue grass, country, folk. And so for me it`s like, I want to sell records. I love being on Columbia Records. The best logo - I wanted to sign with a company that had the best logo, you know what I mean, and Columbia they`ve got that little circle with the two lines and it`s just . . .

HAFFENREFFER: It does it for you graphically.

MAYER: It makes a good tee shirt. Some of these new record companies, they`re great record companies, I just don`t like the font. I`m a font guy and Columbia has a great, strong, serifa (ph) font.

HAFFENREFFER: Let me ask you about one of the songs on "Heavier Things." "Bigger Than My Body." Great record. Great video and a wonderful song. One of the more successful ones off the album thus far.

MAYER: Yes.

HAFFENREFFER: Reading the lyrics, it sounds like it`s about a force that is keeping somebody or something from reaching its potential.

MAYER: Totally.

HAFFENREFFER: Is that you?

MAYER: Yes. All the time. As many records as I sell or as successful as I become, I think that the mentality, that sentiment that keeps driving me is you ain`t seen nothing. It`s that feeling of, oh, we didn`t actually get anywhere. I`ll tour for two years on a record and I get home and for about a week I pat myself on the back then I go, oh, but that was actually nowhere compared to where I`m compelled to go in my head.
The idea is ways going to be brighter than what`s actually going on but it`s that quest to make those two things match that keeps people on the road. Keeps me on the road.

HAFFENREFFER: Who do you listen to in your free time?

MAYER: Who do I listen to? The iPod is kind of equalized the time line of music. So in a few clicks you can go from something that came out last week to something that came out 20 years ago. I`ve really kind of been discovering and I should say rediscovering but I really am just discovering Marvin Gaye for the first time and what that was and I still listen to "Thriller" all the time. "Thriller" is - like Usher. I love Usher but Usher is just trying to make "Thriller." "Thriller," you can just go out, you can buy Usher`s next record right now and just go buy "Thriller," you know what I mean. I listened to "Thriller" in the car yesterday. I was like, this is still the greatest record of all time.

HAFFENREFFER: A very nice guy, as well. John plays tomorrow night in New York City`s Bryant Park. It`s free but you still need a ticket.