This arti­cle was orig­i­nally posted by PR Newswire.

U.S. Mil­i­tary Vet­er­ans to Ben­e­fit from Tour and Pro­grams Tied to Mayer:

Seven-time Grammy Award-winning singer, song­writer and musi­cian John Mayer launches his first U.S. tour in two years on April 9, stop­ping in 18 cities through May 6.  The tour leads into Mayer’s upcom­ing fifth album Born and Raised, which will be released soon thereafter.

Mayer pro­duced Born and Raised with Don Was, who worked on albums for acts such as the Rolling Stones, B.B. King and Bon­nie Raitt.  Rock leg­ends David Crosby and Gra­ham Nash pro­vide vocals on the title song and musi­cians join­ing Mayer on the album and on the road include highly-regarded keyboardist/pianist Chuck Leavell—who has worked with the Rolling Stones, Eric Clap­ton and The All­man Broth­ers Band—as well as pre­vi­ous col­lab­o­ra­tors Sean Hur­ley on bass and Aaron Ster­ling on drums.  Rounding out the tour­ing band are David Ryan Har­ris on gui­tar and vocals, Doug Pet­ti­bone on gui­tar and Michito Sanchez on percussion.

Mayer recently pre­viewed the album’s first sin­gle “Shadow Days” on his tum­blr blog (http://jhnmyr.tumblr.com/).  The song will be ser­viced to radio today.  He debuts his new album with a per­for­mance at SXSW on March 17.

Mayer became pas­sion­ate about sup­port­ing U.S. war vet­er­ans fol­low­ing a visit to the Marine Corps’ Camp Leje­une in North Car­olina four years ago.  He has since spent time with active mil­i­tary and vet­er­ans while tour­ing, and part­nered with the North­ern Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute of Research and Edu­ca­tion (NCIRE) to pro­vide vet­er­ans with a healthy rein­te­gra­tion into civil­ian life which will help heal the bat­tle scars caused by the trauma they experienced.

Con­cert­go­ers can join Mayer in his sup­port of vet­er­ans in two ways.  A block of third-row orches­tra seats will be made avail­able for sale at a pre­mium price exclu­sively through Tickets-For-Charity, with pro­ceeds going to Mayer/NCIRE pro­grams.  At Tickets-For-Charity, fans pay the same or bet­ter price found else­where for high-demand seats, with 100% of above-face ben­e­fit redi­rected to char­ity.  For more infor­ma­tion, go to www.ticketsforcharity.com/johnmayer.

And at http://celebrity.ebay.com/john-mayer, Mayer fans can bid on four front-row tick­ets, plus a chance to meet him, with pro­ceeds also going to Mayer/NCIRE pro­grams for veterans.

In 2011, through his part­ner­ship with NCIRE, Mayer was able to launch the first of sev­eral pilot pro­grams to ben­e­fit the young men and women return­ing from Iraq and Afghanistan.  Pro­grams include a mobile exer­cise and well­ness pro­gram; the devel­op­ment of a pro­gram of inte­gra­tive med­i­cine for trau­matic stress; a study on vet­er­ans’ read­just­ment to civil­ian life which aims to develop new ther­a­peu­tic tools to aid the tran­si­tion; and a first-of-its-kind screen­ing and inter­ven­tion pro­gram for women suf­fer­ing from eat­ing dis­or­ders trig­gered by post trau­matic stress related to combat.

Mayer’s pre­vi­ous albums–Room for Squares, Heavier Things, Con­tin­uum and Bat­tle Studies–have sold more than 11 mil­lion copies com­bined.  He has been hon­ored with seven Grammy Awards and an addi­tional 11 nom­i­na­tions.  He has also been included in Time Magazine’s annual Time 100 list of the most influ­en­tial con­tem­po­rary thinkers, lead­ers, artists and enter­tain­ers, and twice been fea­tured on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine’s annual “Gui­tar” issue.