Mays composed, orchestrated, and arranged as a core member of the Pat Metheny Group, playing piano, organ, synthesizers, and occasionally trumpet, accordion, agogô bells, autoharp, toy xylophone, and electric guitar. He composed and recorded children's audio books, such as:"East of the Sun, West of the Moon," "Moses the Lawgiver," "The Lion and the Lamb," "The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher," and "Tale of Peter Rabbit" with text read by Meryl Streep. In 1985, Metheny's and Mays' compositions were performed by the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago in the critically-acclaimed production of "Orphans" by Lyle Kessler. Lyle's Oberheim analog synth pad and his voice counting second hand of clock at the recording session, "55..., 3..," which can be heard from the bridge part of ""As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls (1981)"," was used for Christian Dior's Fahrenheit Cologne commercials for almost 30 years, from 1988 to 2016.