MusicRadar
The No.1 website for musicians
NAMM 2010: Taylor launches Jason Mraz signature acoustic
I'm Yours guitar man honoured
Press Release, Sat 16 Jan 2010, 3:30 pm UTC
PRESS RELEASE: San Diego-based troubadourJason Mraz has spent the past thirteen years performing everywhere from local coffee shops to stadiums with his Taylor guitars. Along the way, Mraz has released three studio albums, several EP's and live albums including the recently released Beautiful Mess - Live on Earth DVD/CD.
Mraz's live shows have garnered critical acclaim around the world and his albums have earned multiple Grammy nominations. Late last year, his hit single, "I'm Yours", set a music industry record for the most weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
In early December, Mraz visited the Taylor factory to meet with the company's design team and to complete work on his own Taylor model, the Jason Mraz Signature Model (JMSM).
The JMSM is based on Mraz's go-to guitar, a Taylor nylon-string NS72ce, a guitar he says "nurtured a whole album's worth of songs" and in performances, "gave me a way to communicate with the audience without a guitar standing in my way. It felt like it was part of me, it was a part of the energy that I wanted to put out there."
Crafted from a back and sides of Indian rosewood and a top of Western Red cedar, the JMSM includes key design touches provided by Mraz. The fretboard inlay, in Mexican cypress, features the phrase "Be Love" set below a design that features a triangle within a circle, which mirrors a forearm tattoo he got in July 2009. "I chose this symbol simply because I want to be whole in mind, body and soul," he explains.
"I think that's a divine trinity there. What is 'Be Love' but cutting out the middle man. You don't have to have a certain someone to be loved. You don't have to have certain conditions to have love in your life. You can just be love. So, it's basically a practice of unconditional love, a practice of unabashed generosity."
Mraz's touch can also be seen in the soundhole rosette, which features one of the artist's passions: the zodiac. "I'm always looking into the cosmos to inspire me or to help me create my schedule, even for tours and for when I'm going to write and what I'm going to do," Mraz shares.
