01.24.26, 8:00pm | The Wildey Theatre, 252 N. Main St., Edwardsville, IL | All ages | from $54
Don Was has been everywhere. Born Don Edward Fagenson in 1952, the proud Detroit native has spent over five decades working in music. A member of a pantheon of great producers, his list of collaborative projects is a veritable who’s who of popular music.
A winner of an Emmy and six Grammy Awards, Was has produced albums by Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Bonnie Raitt, Iggy Pop, Carly Simon, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Ringo Starr, Brian Wilson, Leonard Cohen, Ziggy Marley, and more.
In addition to performing live with several seminal artists, Was has achieved chart success with the band Was (Not Was), whose hits include “Walk The Dinosaur,” “Spy in the House of Love,” and the cult favorite “Dad, I’m In Jail.”
Also a film composer, documentary filmmaker, and radio host, Was currently serves as the president of Blue Note Records, a post he has held since 2012.
Currently, he is continuing his prodigious career with Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, a band whose music is a collage of Afrobeat, jazz, pop, and spiritual sounds. Founded in 2019, the Motor City-based outfit recently released its latest record, Groove in the Face of Adversity.
Was discussed his career, Detroit, and new album with The Arts STL.
The Arts STL: How did the Pan-Detroit Ensemble come about?
Don Was: When I put the band together, I went back to a lesson I learned in the early ‘90s, when I was on a roll as a producer. I had gotten to work with my heroes in very short order, from Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones to Leonard Cohen, Willie Nelson, Brian Wilson, and Kris Kristofferson, the greatest writers I knew.
It was an incredible experience, but it left me with a severe case of writer’s block because every time I sat down at a piano to write a song, I would give up after 15 minutes. I wondered what the point of doing this was when Brian Wilson was half a mile away. Just send him the lyrics.
Finally, about five years into it, I was in the studio with Willie Nelson and the same thing happened. I’m looking at him, lamenting the fact that I can never be Willie Nelson.
But then it hit me. Conversely, Willie Nelson can never be me. He didn’t grow up in Detroit in the 1960s, drop acid, and go see the MC5 and the Stooges play. He didn’t know that George Clinton in Parliament didn’t play at a sock hop at his junior high school. So, I thought that the thing that makes you different, which in the music business is sometimes considered a marketing problem. The thing that makes you different is, in fact, your superpower.
So, when it came time to put a band together to play a show, I thought, don’t try to be something you’re not. Just go back to Detroit, get together with like-minded musicians who grew up listening to the same radio stations as you and playing in the same bars, and playing with the same bands, and speak the common Detroit musical language that exists. Be yourself.
That is what this represents. There are nine of us. The first day we got together to rehearse, I could tell within the first 10 minutes that something special was happening, because it felt like we’d been playing together for 30 years. We just all fell into a groove.
Since that moment, we have continued to grow musically. It’s always fun to play with them.
What should people expect from the live show that’s coming to The Wildey?
It’s got the kind of raw, unvarnished sound that characterizes Detroit music. There’s an ethos to the music that comes out of there. I chart it back to John Lee Hooker, who was as raw as you could be and yet as soulful with a deep groove and everything that has come subsequently, whether it’s in jazz, rock and roll, or R&B and soul music.
At the very least, I hope everyone leaves feeling better than when they came in. Hopefully, there’s a connection. What I’m really aiming to convey in these confusing and chaotic times is a sense to people that they are not alone.
This leads into my other question: how did growing up in Detroit affect you musically?
There’s something about Detroit. It was a one-industry town, so everybody was in the same boat, economically.
Even if you didn’t have to work on the assembly line, your life would be dependent upon the success or failure of the auto business.
If they laid off workers, people would move away from the city to find new work. Then they’d start laying off teachers, and they’d start laying off barbers. So, there is something about being in the same boat as that.
It creates a lack of pretension to the music.
I think that’s clear in everything from John Lee Hooker and Mitch Ryder and Elvin Jones to the White Stripes and Jay Dillard.
That street runs through the city, and all sorts of music Also, after World War II, people moved to Detroit from all over the world to work in the factories, and they brought their cultures with them.
So, we grew up listening to a jambalaya of musical styles, and I think you can hear a whole lot of them all at once in our show. It’s the connection between the MC5 and Marvin Gaye.
Can you discuss the recording of Groove in the Face of Adversity?
I view it as an introductory handshake. This is who we are, and we’re not going away.
Three of the tracks come from live shows. We’ve also recorded the same songs in the studio. But some of those worked better live than in the studio.
There is an energy exchange with the audience. For example, for “Midnight Marauders,” we played that in the studio, and we set it up the same way on stage. There is very little overdubbing on it. There’s something about not having the audience there. It had to be in a kind of more relaxed, hypnotic groove. With an audience there, the energy exchange makes us push it up. It gives a little more of an edge, which is nice live. But the studio recording of that sounded better.
On the other hand, “I Ain’t Got Nothing But Time” and “Nubian Lady” soared in front of the audience. That’s a beautiful thing. When you’re doing a set that relies on improvisation, the audience becomes a member of the band.
If you pick up on their energy, it comes back to the stage, and it influences the next notes you choose to play. On a couple of those nights, something happened, and I’m glad we were able to capture it.
As a band, you have a lot of room to improv, don’t you?
Yes, but in this group, it’s kind of a delicate balance that I learned from touring with Bob Weir. The songs have structure but built into the structure of how you play them, it’s different every night. There’s no bass drum part; there’s no set bass part. You play what you’re feeling that night. So, even if we repeat a song from night to night, it’s going to come out differently each time.
I think the connection with the audience has a huge impact on that.
There is nothing live playing live, is there?
It’s the best feeling I know of. There’s something that happens when you get an interesting conversation going among the members of the band. I love playing with these people because everyone really listens and responds in a sensitive and provocative way.
But then the audience picks up on it, and there is energy exchange going on, and the music starts flowing through you to the point where you forget you’re holding an instrument; you experience this kind of collective ecstasy. That’s an incomparable feeling.
I feel lucky to be able to do it as often as I get to do it. If I could play 350 shows a year, I would.
Looking back at Was (Not Was), how was that experience for you?
Oh, we had a bomb, man. It was wonderful. It was a family. The takeaway for me was that at some point, we allowed the pressures of having a hit record [“Walk the Dinosaur”] and the even greater pressure of following up a hit record to impact our ethos.
I think that was a mistake. I see it happen to bands all the time. It’s easy to lose your way.
But we did. We were building something, and it got waylaid by something that was helpful. It was great to have a hit like “Walk the Dinosaur.”
I was able to produce Bonnie Raitt because of that song. Because we’d had a hit. Suddenly, I was bankable.
Even though the Bonnie Raitt records we made had absolutely nothing to do with “Walk the Dinosaur,”it opened a lot of doors. But it kind of killed the band, I think. We couldn’t follow it up.
And once you start thinking about what you’re doing next, it’s kind of guaranteed to blow up in your face. Because with the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, we harbored no illusions about having hit singles or anything like that. We make music to express how we’re feeling. To communicate that to other people.
Honestly, the goal doesn’t change at all, whether you’re the artist or whether you’re producing an artist or whether you’re running the record company. The goal is the same. I want to make music that gets under people’s skin, makes them feel something, and helps them make sense out of a messed-up world and feel like they’re not alone on the planet.
Are you playing any of those songs on this tour?
Yes. It’s been nice. I’m very honored, and I like some of the songs.
We play some of the songs with Pan-Detroit Ensemble. It’s fun to pull them out. They’re like old friends.
What is the best position for you to produce an artist?
For me personally, I do better work for an artist. I team up with an artist who’s got a vision and a direction for where they want to go.
I enjoy the process of figuring out what they’re hearing in their heads and helping them get there by whatever means necessary. There’s no one way to do it. It also varies from artist to artist.
In general, I prefer to work with an artist with a strong sense of where they want to go, and they just need help realizing that and then pivoting away from the making music part.
How does it feel to be president of Blue Note Records? That’s got to be amazing.
It’s all part of everything I do. I think they’re all connected. Playing a gig, being president of Blue Note, producing a record. It’s all part of the same thing, which is getting good music to people for the right reasons. I’ve been collecting Blue Note records since I was 14 in 1966. It’s a dream gig.
So, having literally worked with everybody, is there anybody you’d like to work with?
There are people I wish I had worked with whom I got along with. But there are people. I think Miley Cyrus is an awesome artist. I’d make a record with her, and I got to play live with her a couple of times and was pretty blown away by how charismatic an artist she is.
Have you worked with Jack White?
We recorded for him at Third Man. I met him before he was famous, in the Detroit days. We’ve also played together live. But I’ve never made a record with him.
Do you have an interesting story about Iggy Pop?
He’s way more than meets the eye. I think he was the greatest frontman I’ve ever seen. He played in my high school in the ’60s. I have a history with him as a fan, but I didn’t meet him until just before we did this album called Brick by Brick.
I think every wild story you’ve heard about him has at least a kernel of truth to it. He’s also a super well-read, highly educated, articulate, brilliant guy, too.
He’s got tremendous depth. When you look at his writing, you can see how great a poet he is and what a unique perspective he has. I think the world of him.
Do you know the story of the time that I introduced Iggy to Leonard Cohen?
Leonard called me up. He asked if I was friends with Iggy, and I said I was. He said will you bring him over to my house? I want to meet him.
So, Iggy happened to be in town. He stayed at the Chateau Marmont, and I called him up. He really wanted to meet Leonard. I picked him up, and we drove to Leonard Cohen’s house and walked in. He was crafting. He was quite a good calligrapher. Leonard had beautiful handwriting, and it was like painting, almost, what he could do.
So, he was in the process of writing a beautiful-looking letter to answer a classified ad in whatever the underground paper in San Francisco was at that time. A girl had taken out a personal ad saying, “single white female, early 30s, looking for a man with the benign nobility of Leonard Cohen and the raw severity of Iggy Pop.”
So, Leonard wanted Iggy to come over so they could answer her together. He had written a reply, and then my job was to take a Polaroid picture of the two of them sitting in Leonard’s kitchen and then send it back to this woman.
But those two, they got on great.
Do you think you’ll work with the Rolling Stones again?
I won’t say never, but I feel the baton has been passed. There’s a certain kind of record Mick wants to make and deserves to be able to make and that is not what I do.
You know I love them. There’s no bad blood. I don’t feel distant from them. I spent 30 years working with them, and they’re one of the highlights of my life, and I’m grateful for them.
What would you like to do that you haven’t gotten to do yet?
I wish I had a pilot’s license.
What is next for you after this tour?
Just more adventure. I want to keep going. When you play live, and you leave a good chunk of the show open to improvisation every night becomes a new adventure.
So, you don’t necessarily have to go mountain climbing at night in Iceland to have an adventure. Just tackling a song with an open mind night after night is a pretty great adventure. I guess that’s all I’m looking for, just chasing a rush. | Rob Levy
Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble are performing at the Wildey Theatre in Edwardsville, Illinois on Saturday, January 24th at 8:00 p.m. For more information visit: https://www.cityofedwardsville.com/m/newsflash/home/detail/691
