But while he may have enjoyed the comfort of working from home (like tracking vocals off his deck), it also meant long days and nights with little escape. A-Z (Atlantic), devoting several disciplined months to constructing a CD’s worth of white-boy hip-hop (“Wordplay,” “The Geek in the Pink”), Casanova crooning (“Bella Luna”) and sensitive-guy melodic pop (“Life Is Wonderful,” “Mr. Mraz did just that for his long-awaited follow-up album, Mr. Now, I’ve got the musicians there to do it, and I can just go in my living room, hit ‘record’ and get it done.”

“Before, if I wanted to record a song, I had to pay to rent a studio. It’s a really happy place.”īut most important to Mraz is having a place where he can record on a whim. there’s always someone practicing an instrument or painting or just chilling, being high. I like the idea of having a safe haven for exploration. “And on the tour, they tell you that Bob and all the Wailers lived there-they all slept together, they all cooked together… It was a way for them to stay unified and be creative constantly. “I visited the Marley house in Jamaica,” Mraz explains.

Turns out Mraz-whose 2002 debut, Waiting for My Rocket to Come, yielded the Top 60 hits “The Remedy (I Won’t Worry)” and “You and I Both”-had exactly that in mind when he bought the five-acre property a year ago and invited his bandmates, merch guy and art director to move in.

Nestled in a development-free spider-infested avocado grove, the Spanish-styled mini-mansion (which includes a guest house that’s soon to become a recording studio) boasts four bedrooms, 360-degree views, three fireplaces, a hot tub for eight and a tiki-lounge-like bar area adjacent to the pool. Like the palatial 3,600-square-foot home outside of San Diego where singer-songwriter Jason Mraz now sits, loading up his glass bong. If there’s one major perk to having a platinum-selling album, it’s finally being able to splurge on some of the things you’ve always wanted. For the December, 2005 issue of High Times, Shirley Halperin profiled Jason Mraz, who celebrates his 44th birthday on June 23.

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