NPR Music

John Mayer has made multi-platinum albums, won Grammys, dodged paparazzi, kind of self-destructed, escaped to Montana and spent more than a year without speaking or singing publicly to allow his damaged vocal chords to heal.

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Tomorrow on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, Grammy Award-winning musician John Mayer brings his guitar and his quick wit to our studios.

JOHN MAYER: It's like guitar tuning and paper medical records are like the two things that you look at and you're like, how is this still happening?

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

In the 1970s, a shift began in country music, away from the slick production of Nashville toward a rougher sound in both lyrics and instrumentation. The movement was called Outlaw Country and its effect is still felt today with mainstream country artists sometimes striving for outlaw credibility. This month, an outlaw country classic was reissued. Waylon Jennings "Honky Tonk Heroes" and that got music critic Meredith Ochs thinking about the record's legacy.

This episode of World Cafe is a special one: Thursday's Latin Roots episode coincides with Thanksgiving. For the occasion, we invited editor Judy Cantor-Navas of Billboard magazine to play some of her favorite Latin songs about food. As she puts it, these are songs with "sabor" — flavor. In this case, the selected songs may also feature double entendres. Listeners will hear from El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, a band celebrating its 50th anniversary, as well as tunes from other artists.

For our Sense of Place: Toronto series, we welcome the duo of Whitehorse to the WXPN studio. The members of the band — Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland — happen to be married. The two had successful and separate solo careers in Canadian folk and rock, but decided to join forces musically in 2011. Their self-titled debut record came out shortly afterward.