Don Was: Doctor Detroit Drops In

If there were any justice in the entertainment world, Don Was would be a superstar, with periodic concerts at the Santa Barbara Bowl selling out as soon as they’re announced, and records crashing the Top 10 on a regular basis. As it is, Was had some hits in the late 1980s with his funky duo Was (Not Was) – including the golden goofy groove “Walk the Dinosaur” – then went on to become a versatile and wildly successful record producer whose credits include everything from B-52’s “Love Shack” to Bonnie Raitt’s Nick of Time to projects by Brian Wilson, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, the last five Rolling Stones records and way too many others to list. For the last 13 years, he’s also been the president of the historic jazz label Blue Note. 

Was has played some recent big gigs in town, but as a sideman – with Bob Weir (in 2018 at the Arlington) and Charles Lloyd (2019 at the Lobero). The last time he was here under his own name was, well, maybe never. 

That all changes on September 25 when his new ensemble, Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, a less than two-year-old project, performs at the Lobero. We caught up with Was for an extended interview earlier this month. Excerpts below. 

Q. You haven’t had your own band for a while. What prompted this new project of The Pan-Detroit Ensemble?

A. Terence Blanchard was curating jazz concerts for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and invited me to be a part of it. It had been a long time since I had my own band, basically since Was (Not Was), and I hadn’t really written anything, which started back in the early nineties where I had just finished working almost successively with Brian Wilson, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and The Stones. Every time I sat down at the piano to compose, I’d get about two minutes in and I’d think, what’s the point of this? All of those guys are among the greatest songwriters of all time, what did I have to add?

But then I realized that they didn’t grow up in Detroit in the late fifties and early sixties. They didn’t have the Stooges play at their high school, or Funkadelic play a sock hop at their junior high. They didn’t go to the Grande Ballroom and see the MC5, they didn’t have Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder as regular customers at the record store where I worked. 

The point is, no one was really making records who grew up in the middle of that. So I thought, just be yourself. Be as different as you are, just like I tell the people I produce. So I went back to Detroit and I hooked up with people who had the same musical DNA as I did. We clicked immediately. Some of them I’ve been playing with for over 30 years on and off. There’s something about the music of Detroit that’s like a global language.

What do you think that is?

It has something to do with Detroit being a one-industry town, with everybody tied to the auto business. There’s no point in putting on airs. Everyone knows where you’re coming from, so you get a very honest, unpretentious population, and that gets reflected in the music. That runs from John Lee Hooker to Bob Seger to Motown to the Stooges. What ties that all together is deep soul and some kind of groove. The Pan-Detroit Ensemble is my take on the indigenous music of Detroit, including my last 13 years as president of Blue Note Records, where we’ve got more artists from Detroit than anywhere else. 

That job seems like another left turn in a career that has seen you produce so many different artists from almost every conceivable genre. What’s your secret to being able to do that?

I wasn’t expecting it either, but I’ve been buying Blue Note records since 1966. …Whether it’s producing or the label, I work with artists who have a strong vision of what they’re trying to achieve and I try to help them realize it by whatever means necessary. It’s about storytelling and communicating on a really deep level. Great music gets under your skin, makes you feel something, helps you make sense out of the very confusing qualities of being a living human being. The genre is absolutely irrelevant. Getting through to people transcends any type of style. 

The way I produce records, the way I run Blue Note Records and the way we construct our band: surround yourself with people who you admire and trust and let ‘em do this thing. Let them be the best version of them that they can be. 

The Pan-Detroit Ensemble was supposed to be a one-off. Now you’re hitting the road for a second tour. How is it going?

Our goal is to play for people and make ‘em feel good for an hour and a half, and have them walk out feeling better than when you came in. These are turbulent, crazy times, stressful times for everybody on every end of the spectrum. And if we can make ‘em feel good, it’s a noble undertaking.