RESOURCES:
Don Was & the Pan-Detroit Ensemble at the Blue LLama
TRANSCRIPTION:
Jeremy Baldwin: I am very lucky to be joined here on the phone by Don Was, a fantastic bass player, producer, director, fellow DJ and president of Blue Note Records. Don Was and his new band, the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, are going to be coming to our area in February for two days: Friday, February 21st, and Saturday the 22nd--two shows each night at the Blue LLama Jazz Club in Ann Arbor. More information at Blue LLama club.com. Don Was, thank you for joining us!
Don Was: Hey, a real pleasure to speak with you, man!
Jeremy Baldwin: Well, happy to have you here and really excited that you're coming to the area! I got to see the new group, the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, back in the spring in Detroit. But it's great that you're coming to Ann Arbor!
Don Was: I heard only great things about it. And I'm really pleased to play in an intimate setting like that, too. You know, there's so many of us. We all don't fit on stage, so some of us would be like half in the audience. And it should be a really cool show!
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah, it's a beautiful little room and the sound is good and everything is nice and the food is good and everything else. Well, tell us about this band and how it came together and who's playing in it.
Don Was: Well, Terence Blanchard, which is a good friend of mine, he was doing a series with the Detroit Symphony show that you were at, in fact, last May. But he called about two years in advance to book it to see if I wanted to do it. And when we were about six months out, I realized I hadn't had a band together in decades. So, one of the things I always tell artists if I'm producing them, or if they're signed to the label, is that the thing that makes you different from all the other people making records is that's your superpower. So, accentuate the thing that makes you different. Well, I had a period in the early '90s where I got to work with a whole bunch of my heroes all at once, guys like Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson and Brian Wilson and the Rolling Stones and Kris Kristofferson--great writers! It gave me writer's block for about 6 or 7 years because every time I sat down at a piano to write something, I thought, "Well, what is the point of doing this if Brian Wilson was just down the street and he can do it ten times better than I can?"
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah, that's hard to live up to.
Don Was: Yeah, so I just walk away from the piano. And it finally hit me. You know, I can't be as good as Brian Wilson and what he does. But he didn't grow up in Detroit in the 1950s and the 1960s. He didn't go to Baker's Keyboard Lounge. to hear Charles Mingus. He didn't even hear local artists like Donald Byrd and Joe Henderson playing. He didn't go to the Grande Ballroom and see the MC5. So, the fact that very few people who did do that are making records today. So, I thought, "All right! That's my superpower! Go back to Detroit. Get in a room with some like minded musicians and play the way you grew up playing." So, that's what I did. And I called a couple of guys who have played this for 45 years. Dave McMurry, great saxophonist.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah.
Don Was: And Luis Resto, who's a brilliant keyboard player. I heard him for his first recording session when he a teenager back in 1979. And so, we know each other real well and all the other people in the band is John Douglas on trumpet and Vincent Chandler on trombone, Jeff Canady playing drums, Manhindi Masai playing percussion, Wayne Gerard playing guitar. Steffanie Christi'an is the singer. I've known all of them for a long time, and we've played together at various times, but never got that group of nine people in the room together before. So, when we tried it out in preparation for Terence's show last May, we just clicked immediately because we all grew up listening to the same music. And there is a sound to the music that comes from Detroit that is very distinctive and that we know resonates globally. You know, people love Motown records all over the world. They love Fortune records all over the world. They love Kenny Burrell all over the world. They love Funkadelic all over the world. They love The Stooges all over the world. They love Mitch Ryder and John Lee Hooker. So, we sound like Detroit to me, but it sounds like the kind of musical jambalaya that I grew up in the middle of when, after World War II, everyone came up to Detroit looking for work and brought their cultures with them. And it was very much evident and on display when I was a kid.

Jeremy Baldwin: And tell us. So, you've got original material in the band and then covers as well from some of those sources?
Don Was: Yeah. We do whatever we feel like doing. We do Yusef Latif song and a Henry Threadgill song, but we do Curtis Mayfield songs. We do a couple of Grateful Dead songs, some originals. A couple of Was (Not Was) songs. And we'll be changing the set up from what we played last May.
Jeremy Baldwin: And are you guys in the process of recording or is that in plans to record a record?
Don Was: Yeah. Yeah. We're, I would say, about 75% to 80% done.
Jeremy Baldwin: So, hopefully in the next year?
Don Was: Oh yeah. I think the first half of next year, we'll get something out.
Jeremy Baldwin: Fantastic! Well, you know, as a radio host, I always got to ask about that. When's the recording coming out?
Don Was: I appreciate that! That's good!
Jeremy Baldwin: And you have some history in Ann Arbor as well, I read. Tell me about this. You actually attended University of Michigan.
Don Was: I did. I got history in Ypsilanti. I was going to music school at the University of Michigan in 1970.
Jeremy Baldwin: Uh huh.
Don Was: And I dropped out because, at that time, you were either in the symphony orchestra or you weren't in the music school. And I knew what I wanted to do. It wasn't playing stuff in the orchestra. In retrospect, at age 72, I wish I'd have stuck it out. And I had an incredible bass teacher, a guy named Lawrence Hurst, who's like, really....I don't know if he's still alive, but he was super highly regarded. And he tried a whole lot of great bassists over the years. And I had access to him, and I chose to drop out because I wanted to be in a band like the MC5 or The Stooges in 1970. And the only gig I could find was in Ypsilanti. I played at an Italian restaurant called Vigo's. I really doubt that it's still there.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah, I think that's gone. But I'm going to ask around about that now.
Don Was: It was attached to a bowling alley, and the main thing I remember is that the piano always sounded funny. It was an upright piano, and we kept asking Mr. Vigo to fix it, and he never did. So finally, we got there early one Saturday night and took it apart. And there was a bowling trophy stuck down there.
Jeremy Baldwin: That'll do it.
Don Was: We took that out, and the band got a little better.
Jeremy Baldwin: I'm going to have to ask about Vigo's. There must be some people who remember that.
Don Was: Maybe not alive. It was a long time ago.
Jeremy Baldwin: Well, even though you dropped out of music school at Michigan, you seem to be doing alright for yourself out there in your music career. And, in fact, since 2012, I think is correct, you have been the president of Blue Note Records.
Don Was: Yeah, this is true!
Jeremy Baldwin: Well, I don't want to say it's unlikely because actually it makes a lot of sense, and you're doing a great job. But did you ever imagine something like that happening?
Don Was: Never in my wildest dreams! And in fact, my goal in life had been to never have to have a job. I never thought of playing music or producing records as being a job. I'd do it for free, for fun. But I made it all the way to 58.
Jeremy Baldwin: That's not bad!
Don Was: It came out of nowhere, man! But what had happened was I was in New York. I was producing a John Mayer album in 2011, I guess. And we had a night off and I looked at Village Voice and I saw that there was a singer who I'd heard on the radio in L.A. named Gregory Porter. He wasn't that well known, and he had just released a first album. I was totally blown away by this album. So, I had a night off, and I went up to a club called Smoke, way up kind of near Harlem, and it's still there at the club. And I sat through all three sets, and it just it was one of the best shows I had ever seen. And the next day, I was having breakfast with an old buddy of mine, a drummer who had worked his way up the ladder and had become the president of Capitol Records. And I said, "I saw this guy last night. Gregory Porter. Great singer. Blue Note is still part of Capitol Records. You should sign him!" And he said, "No, you should sign him!" And he offered me this gig right there. And, man, I never want to work for a record company. They're the enemy, as far as I was concerned. And I never wanted to work, period. But I was such a fan. I bought my first Blue Note album in 1966, and I grew up listening to Ed Love's radio show on the old WCHD and WJZZ. And he used to back announce all the records. And I was such a fan of Blue Note when I was a teenager. We would ride the city busses to get to any record store just to find a copy of very Young Unity.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah.
Don Was: So, the offer to be president of Blue Note Records was irresistible, although daunting, because I had absolutely no skills in management.
Jeremy Baldwin: Right. Well, it seems like things are going well and putting out lots of great new records over these years.
Don Was: Yeah.
Jeremy Baldwin: Anything that you can share on tap for 2025 from Blue Note?
Don Was: Well, we just signed Branford Marsalis.
Jeremy Baldwin: Oh well, legend!
Don Was: Yeah. And he's just such a great musician, man. And so, I just heard that album. That's going to be a killer.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah.
Don Was: It's a beautiful record. We've got a great new album, the first album out next year is Artemis.
Jeremy Baldwin: Oh, who are great! Yeah. Saw them in Detroit.
Don Was: And this is their best record ever, I think. That's coming, I think, at the end of January. And, yeah, actually, we've got a great release schedule for next year.
Jeremy Baldwin: We were just talking here this morning actually at the station. Are you guys putting out a solo record from Gabrielle Cavassa this year?
Don Was: Yeah. Well, not this year. She got bumped.
Jeremy Baldwin: But some time.
Don Was: Josh Redman and I are going to produce it. We're going to do it in Woodstock, New York in the middle of January.
Jeremy Baldwin: Fantastic!
Don Was: So, it should be great. We got Brian Blade and Barry Grenadier and Jeff Parker as the band.
Jeremy Baldwin: Wow! Well, that's pretty hard to beat.
Don Was: I don't know how you beat that.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah.
Don Was: And Josh, I'm sure, will bring a saxophone along. So, we picked all the songs. She's something else, man!
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah, yeah.
Don Was: I think it's going to be a cool record.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah. Boy, I'm looking forward to that! Well, as one of several resident Deadheads here at WEMU, I got to ask you about playing with Bob Weir. Over the last few years. I've got to see you guys play together some. Tell us about the Wolf Bros and what's going on with them and playing with them.
Don Was: On December 26th, I'm going to Florida. And we had six shows lined up on New Year's Eve in Fort Lauderdale.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah.
Don Was: And then, we're going to play in Mexico. You know, I don't think I could've assembled this band, the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, without everything I learned from Bob since 2018. I really learned how to be confident about playing songs differently every single night.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah.
Don Was: And how to be fearless about just leaping in and playing what comes to mind and not trying to recreate what you did yesterday. Phil Lesh has a saying. "You should never play the same thing twice"....or I'm sorry. "You should never play the same thing once."
Jeremy Baldwin: That's very Phil!
Don Was: Yeah! And I would try to use that as a motto for the Pan-Detroit Ensemble. But I love playing with Bobby. And I've learned a tremendous amount from him. One of the reasons I wanted to take the gig, and it really had nothing to do even with music, I thought that the way the Grateful Dead leaping fearlessly and just improvise from scratch on these songs every single night and played for four hours a night and be fresh and innovative.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah.
Don Was: I thought, "Man, if I could learn how to do that playing, I can apply that to every aspect of my life and live a better life." So, that was really my goal. I don't know how well I've done applying it to other parts of my life, but I think I'm making some inroads as a bass player and it's led to some experiences. One time, we were playing at Radio City Music Hall, and Brian Kern became the sit-in.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah.
Don Was: And he played my bass--my upright bass--and played it to my amp and didn't change the settings or anything. So, I was able to get a recording the next day of Ron Carter's eight-track solo and then me playing the next song. I could hear the difference, right? So, I called him up and said, "How come your note sounds like perfectly round and symmetrical and warm? And my note, by comparison, it sounds like it's made out of Swiss cheese with, like, big holes in the tone. And Ron Carter, who does not suffer fools, he said, "Well, I can tell you what you're doing wrong if you want." But no, that's why I'm calling. So, he gave me a couple of bass lessons that blew my mind.
Jeremy Baldwin: Wow!
Don Was: And he opened a whole new...just nuances. But they opened a whole new universe of ways to approach songs.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah.
Don Was: Just little technique things that made such a difference. And then, with Bobby playing four hours a night, you have some time to work on these things.
Jeremy Baldwin: Right, Right.
Don Was: It's high adventure and--
Jeremy Baldwin: And making mistakes is part of it, right? I mean, there are no mistakes in a way in that situation.
Don Was: There are no mistakes. It's very similar to jazz that way, like Miles Davis. I'm sure you've that famous clip of Herbie hitting the clunker.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah.
Don Was: And Miles just looking at him. And instead of being pissed off, he goes with the clunker and changes with the notes he's playing.
Jeremy Baldwin: We'll go that way then.
Don Was: That's it! Exactly! So, that's part of the fun of it.
Jeremy Baldwin: Well, I was going to say, the fact that you helped orchestrate getting Ron Carter and Bob Weir to play together on stage, that's success right there no matter what!
Don Was: It's one way to get a bass lesson from the maestro.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah, yeah. I was thinking as you were talking too and now that you got Branford Marsalis on the Blue Note roster, you got to get those two maybe in the studio together--Weir and Branford together. I know they've played together.
Don Was: Yeah!
Jeremy Baldwin: That would be a combination that should be documented forever. Yeah. So, think about that. That's my idea.
Don Was: All right! I'm gonna take that to heart.
Jeremy Baldwin: All right! Well, Don, thank you so much for taking all this time to talk to us about all these things happening. Anything else happened in 2025 you want to let people know about? I mean, I was going to ask you. Are you and Bobby going to do more of those--and the Wolf Bros--going to do more of those orchestra shows, hopefully in the future?
Don Was: Yeah, yeah. They haven't been announced yet, but we've got some.
Jeremy Baldwin: They're coming up. Yeah. Well, I saw some of that, and that was a pretty impressive combination.
Don Was: Which one were you at?
Jeremy Baldwin: I was in Cincinnati and in Chicago.
Don Was: Those were good, man!
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah!
Don Was: That Chicago Orchestra. That's....
Jeremy Baldwin: The Philharmonic.
Don Was: Yeah, that band is in a different league from everybody else, man. You know, we've done a bunch of these shows, but that's an extraordinary orchestra.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah.
Don Was: But they're pretty difficult charts.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah.
Don Was: They're hard to play. There are a lot of notes on these things, and I thought they pulled it off. I like those shows. I have good fun with those. We got more next year.
Jeremy Baldwin: It seems like there are these times when you guys are really laying back, but much more than you ever would in a normal show. And then, sometimes, when everybody's playing, pretty interesting stuff.
Don Was: Well, Bobby's ideal is to introduce improvisation into the vocabulary of the orchestra, which is not easy to do. We've actually tried this at a rehearsal. Bobby turns to the orchestra and said, "You know? If any of you are here to play, just go ahead and do it!"

Jeremy Baldwin: Which is probably a little odd for most of these players, you know?
Don Was: Oh man! You've never seen such a look of terror on 80 faces before. But he's actually working on ways to make it a little smoother, so that it's not us playing back until the orchestra drops out. And then, we play more. And we try to make it a little more organic.
Jeremy Baldwin: And integrated. And I figure in any orchestra there must be one or two Deadheads or or at least jazzheads, in there that have some experience with this kind of improvisation that's not so normal in the classical world.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah, usually. And to hedge our bets, that's what this section together called the Wolfpack that we've been touring with now for three or four years. And it was designed, so that we could have orchestral instruments soloing in the symphony shows. But we like playing with it so much, that we do shows with just them.
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah, all the time.
Don Was: Yeah.
Jeremy Baldwin: Well, it's cool stuff! Well, looking forward to seeing you, Don on February 21st and 22nd at the Blue LLama Jazz Club in Ann Arbor. Two shows each night. That should be a lot of fun! And you're also doing a larger tour around those shows as well, right?
Don Was: Yeah, yeah. We got, in a little over a week, we're going to Lansing and then Milwaukee, Chicago, Indianapolis, a couple of other gigs.
Jeremy Baldwin: Well, you'll be here for all that great winter weather!
Don Was: Yeah, that's right!
Jeremy Baldwin: A little snow here today in Ypsilanti. Well, thank you so much for speaking to us, Don! We appreciate you very much! And you're always welcome here at the station to come on by if you want to come by and play some music or hang out and check it out.

Don Was: Yeah, I'd love to!
Jeremy Baldwin: Yeah, maybe in February if you have time. We'll see. But we'll work that out if we can.
Don Was: Fantastic! Very cool!
Jeremy Baldwin: And hopefully, I'll get to see it at the Blue LLama one of those days and we'll talk to you soon!
Don Was: Please come say hi to me.
Jeremy Baldwin: All right. All right. Thanks, Don! Have a good one! Appreciate you very much!
Don Was: Thank you! Thank you so much!
Jeremy Baldwin: All right. Bye bye.
Don Was: Adios!
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