And, boy, can that man play.

In a 14-song set and two-song encore stretching nearly two hours, Mayer jammed with his bandmates, adding soulful blues riffs to every song. While Mayer comes across as mellow on his radio cuts, few in the audience at Usana Amphitheater sat as the singer improvised his way through his numbers.

"We've all had such a beautiful time onstage, and that's because I finally figured out that if you don't love playing a song, change it up to make it lovable," he said as he launched into a slowed-down, bluesy version of "Daughters," from his 2003 effort "Heavier Things."

That blues-and-soul feel pervaded many of the songs from the new album "Continuum," but none so much as "I'm Gonna Find Another You," which bled into "Stitched Up," a song Mayer co-wrote with jazz legend Herbie Hancock on the album "Possibilities."

"I'm pretty proud of these two songs," Mayer said. "When I was making the record 'Continuum,' I was listening to a lot of soul music. I harnessed all that soul power sitting in L.A. traffic."

Mayer has evolved greatly as a performer since his first performance in Utah at Deer Valley in August of 2002. During his set, he recalled being "the guy who put the tape inside VHS tapes" and noodling around with a guitar lick that he looped through a delay pedal back in 1998, when he struggled to pay $4 for a 9-volt battery that lasted only 20 minutes. But that investment paid off as the song evolved into the breakout hit "No Such Thing" from his freshman album "Room for Squares."

Mayer's guitar playing contrasted nicely with previous act Colbie Caillat's breathy, heady voice filling out love songs for about 45 minutes. The opening act, Brett Dennen, started the night off with 30 minutes of folky tunes as he battled the sun beating down on Usana's west-facing stage.

The night was dark as Mayer took the stage just before 9 p.m., with stage lights dominating the music as smoke pumped through the rafters of the set and bounced off a shimmering silver curtain backdrop.

Mayer played mostly upbeat numbers, foregoing the ache of songs such as "Dreaming With a Broken Heart" but still riffing through songs such as "Gravity" and "Say."

"John Mayer songs are like e-mail, and I'm sending this out to songs@you.com, where there is no limit on server space or bandwith," he said. "Tonight the amount of love coming from this aperture can't be stored in five googabytes. Now that's a lot of love."

smcfarland@sltrib.com