Musical jack-of-all trades Mayer Hawthorne on soul music, songwriting and what calls his surprising success.

parents (his mother plays piano, his father plays bass in a band called The Breakers which, Mayer proclaims, ‘is the shit’). Growing up, his musical appetite was a steady diet of soul and Motown until junior high, when hip-hop like Nas and Public Enemy entered the mix. Eventually, Mayer would move to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of being a hip-hop producer.

Thus, it’s fitting that Mayer might find himself roaming the U.S. on tour. Just, however, not as the main, headlining attraction supporting his own album.

“I never had any plans of recording an album of soul music,” Mayer says about A Strange Arrangement, the Stones Throw record that he wrote, recorded, produced, engineered and on which he played all of the instruments.

“I had recorded a couple of demos in my bedroom just for fun, as an experiment” he continues. “When I met (renowned producer and Stones Throw label founder) Peanut Butter Wolf, he was just blown away and asked me if I would record a whole album of that material. It wasn’t really what I wanted to do — but it was such a good opportunity to work with a label I loved and I couldn’t turn it down. Little did I know that this album would explode. Nobody had any idea it would get this much attention.”

A Strange Arrangement has been generating interest not only because of the one-man band production style behind it, but also thanks to its catchy, funky sound. It’s a bricolage of Mayer’s favorite styles of soul music — heavy on the Motown influences, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, Tyrone Davis with giddy hand-clappers such as “Your Easy Lovin’ Ain’t Playin’ Nothin’” in addition to slow-burning grooves like the title track and “Shiny and New.” But there are elements of other musical genres; the song “Green Eyed Love,” for example, has keys that evoke a 60’s-pop feel and Beach Boys vibe.

The album and its subsequent success are happy accidents that have landed Mayer not only a national tour — including a few upcoming South by Southwest shows — but a solid place in the neo-soul musical renaissance that’s occurred in the past few years (think Mark Ronson, Daniel Merriwether, etc).

When asked about the resurgence of the genre though, Mayer groans. “I get asked this question every interview,” he says. “I think people are starting to realize that all the best songs were great because they were well-written songs; it just so happened more coincidentally than anything that a lot of the great new songs written in the past couple of years have been by soul artists. Maybe we were the first ones to remember how important songwriting is. But across the board now … the majority of my favorite albums in 2009 were indie-rock albums — like Phoenix, The Bird and The Bee, Empire of the Sun — and there’s just as much focus on great songwriting there as there is in soul music.”

EXTRA CREDIT: Watch Mayer’s video for “Green Eyed Love” and download the Classixx remix for FREE!