Bringing, in song, his latest on love, heartbreak and life lessons, it's a wiser, more enlightened Mayer who will head downunder, bringing the 70's and 80's California rock/pop sound of his new album, Battle Studies, for a tour of the same name.

The tour plays New Zealand first and starts in Australia at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on April 30, then at Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena on May 3.

Mayer plays Wollongong for the first time at the WIN Entertainment Centre on May 5. 

The Newcastle Entertainment Centre plays host for its second time on May 7, and on May 8 Mayer wraps up his tour in Sydney at the Entertainment Centre. 

All of Mayer's concerts will be configured with Gold and Silver price categories and tickets go on general sale Friday February 19. 

Mayer's Battle Studies Tour will be his seventh time playing Australia.

Four studio albums, seven Grammy Awards and nearly 13 million album sales in just nine years, the now 32-year-old Mayer isn't just  getting older a worry he cast adrift with the 2006 release of his here-I-am, blown-open, mega-success, Continuum he's getting better.

Since his 2001 debut, Room For Squares, and the world-wide radio group hug given to its hit, Your Body Is A Wonderland, as well as the Grammy it brought; to 2003's Heavier Things and two more Grammys; to his first co-producing turn with Steve Jordan on the four-time Grammy Award winning, hit-harnessed, Continuum, which included Waiting On The World To Change, I Don't Trust Myself (With Loving You) and Gravity; to his latest and fourth studio album, his second time producing with Jordan, the November 2009 released, Battle Studies; Mayer's kind of gravity heads only one way.  Up.

He calls Battle Studies a "from-the-gut" confessional and, if it can be said of his album, it is definitely true of his concerts.  They're intimate with the same "efficiency of simplicity" he says marks his new record. 

There's no assembly-line dancers or manufactured costume changes; it's Mayer's sweet voice and what's been called his "guitar ninja-dom" that style-up the room and both these he lets rip. 

Whether it's his heart on his sleeve or the watch on his wrist both are obsessions Mayer wears them proudly. 

Fans keep time. 

Mayer makes a practical symphony of the screaming upon screaming upon screaming which is universally in-chorus at all his live shows.  He speaks with his audience, tells them things about himself, lets them know him.

Fans talk of an 'afterglow' having seen him live and they bathe in it for days. 

"John makes them feel like he's singing for just them, to just them, it's very personal," says promoter, Chairman of Chugg Entertainment, Michael Chugg.