By Rachel Bobak
Assistant Pulse Editor
On Saturday night, people anxiously waited outside Anderson Arena to see Jason Mraz perform. Some even camped out on the lawn hours before the doors opened at 7 p.m. for a concert started at 8 p.m. to be the first ones inside.
Compared to recent concerts held at the University, the Mraz concert ranks as a success story. The concert sold over 3,000 tickets in a capacity of 3,800 seats.
Local band Steve Raszka and Canadian jazz musician, Kyle Riabko, were the opening acts. Riabko will continue to tour with Mraz.
“I’ve been saying this whole year that the Jason Mraz shows have been the best,” Riabko said. “The audience is tailor fit for us.”
Mraz is also enjoying his time on the tour. He said he is willing to play for anyone who has invited him and his band. He is now doing smaller venues because he has not started promotion of his new album, “Mr. A-Z.” The album has a current release date of July 22.
“For us, this is just ‘fun month.’ Just go out and whoever’s invited us, we’ll show up,” Mraz said. “But they’ve also invited the public, and that’s what makes it a good show.”
Mraz began singing since he could talk, he said. He began playing the piano soon afterwards. Mraz, who began playing guitar at the age of 18, describes himself as a beginning musician who still has a lot to learn.
“I kind of fall into it. I’m not one to instantly hear it and translate it from my head to the guitar,” Mraz said. “I have to spend hours noodling and toying around.”
Unlike Mraz, Saskatoon bornRiabko, has been playing guitar since he was 10. He used to pretend on a mini hockey stick when he was three years old, until his father bought him a guitar when he got older.
His father started taking him to bars when he was 10 to perform. “I loved it. It taught me a lot,” Riabko said. “It was cool to be around that atmosphere all the time. It was a learning experience.” At the time he was still going to school.
Now at 17, he takes classes online and will be graduating in a month from high school. Although college may be in the back of his mind, he will take a break from touring at some time in the future.
“I don’t see myself doing anything but this for my whole life,” he said. After performing with Buddy Guy, who is 73, Riabko realizes he can do it for the rest of his life if he wanted to.
Riabko found it amazing to perform with inspiration, Buddy Guy. “It was a religious experience,” he said.
When he performs on stage, he likes to be able to relate with his audience the way other musicians do. “I want to let them know that I’m not a serious singer/songwriter, introspective artist type,” he said. “I’m here to have fun.”
When Mraz is on stage, he likes having smaller audiences. “You can make eye contact with everyone in the room,” he said. “Less than a thousand people in a room; everyone wants to be there. It’s more intimate.”
Intimacy is a huge factor for Mraz, because when he writes songs, he writes when no one else is around. “But once something is created, it doesn’t belong to me anymore. And that’s the kind of meditation I have to go through,” he said.
Now that he performs with a band, he creates with other people and loses its intimacy. He said he and his band write songs that only make sense to them and have experienced on the road.
“I don’t like being called Jason Mraz now that we’re a band. I wish we had a band name,” he said. “I was originally going to call myself Rand McNally, because everyone would think, ‘I’ve heard of that guy.’ But instead I wrote the song.” Rand McNally would make a map of the area where he caused trouble, so he would know not to go back.
Riabko has a song out called “Misbehave,” which he describes as raunchy. He enjoys writing and performing his sex songs. “People find it kind of weird and cool,” he said. “It’s about sex and purely enjoying it. And I love songs like that and I think people gravitate towards them naturally. I mean, Prince made a whole career out of it.”
Mraz is known for wearing a pin that reads “I love sex.” Mainly he wears the pin because of his feeling toward expressing oneself in a relationship. Since he is in a relationship himself, he said he enjoys writing love letters to his girlfriend on a regular basis.
But before he became truly famous, he came across some weird fan experiences. “I signed a girl’s ass one time,” he said. “And the next time I saw her, it was tattooed on her ass.”