Surfing provides award-winning singer Jason Mraz with a form of recess and influences his music, he tells Ben Tracy in an interview for a special summer fun edition of CBS SUNDAY MORNING WITH CHARLES OSGOOD to be broadcast July 13, 2014 (9:00 AM ET) on the CBS Television Network.

Mraz, the man behind the infectious chart-topping hit “I’m Yours,” among others,takes Tracy to a surfing spot near his California home.

“The fact that surfing serves no point, really, I think brings to my music a sort of carefree, ‘everything is going to be okay’ quality,” Mraz tells Tracy. “Because when you’re out on the water, that’s how you feel.”

In addition to his love of surfing, Mraz shares with Tracy his thoughts on songwriting, his childhood and his new music.

Mraz says his goal when writing songs is to acknowledge there are dark places and give listeners a way out of them. “I certainly don’t want to bring an audience into that dark place and say ‘come with me on a journey while I bum us all out,’ and then hope that the next song gets us out,” he tells Tracy. “No, it has to happen within one song, you know. If you’re going to go to a sad place for me, I’ve got to get out of it before the song’s over.”

The singer, who has won two Grammy Awards, talks with Tracy about the unusual place he keeps his trophies, about being a devoted vegan and avocado farmer, and returning to the San Diego coffee shops where he began singing and his career took off. Despite his success, Mraz says he keeps thinking it could end. “It’s been 10-plus years on the world stage, and I still think that I’m going to go back to the coffee shop someday,” Mraz says.

CBS SUNDAY MORNING is broadcast Sundays (9:00-10:30 AM, ET) on the CBS Television Network. Rand Morrison is the executive producer.

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