Photo courtesy of Don Was
Don Was
Don Was
Over the past three decades, Don Was has been one of the music industry’s most important behind-the-scenes innovators. Throughout the ‘90s, the Detroit native was L.A.’s go-to producer, beginning with Bonnie Raitt’s multi-platinum comeback Nick of Time and going on to other high-profile albums by Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and Iggy Pop. He will perform on August 21 at Alpine Valley as part of the Outlaw Music Festival Tour.
He also co-founded the mutant-funk band Was (Not Was) – which scored an unlikely Top 10 pop hit with their quirky “Walk the Dinosaur” single—and is now president of the prestigious Blue Note Records, a position he’s held since 2011.
There’s more. Recent years have found him out on the road playing bass with Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros, Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band and his own Don Was & The Pan-Detroit Ensemble, whose 2025 debut album Groove in the Face of Adversity was described by “Relix” as “a gritty, soulful masterclass in the Detroit sound.”
Live with the Dead
The group’s recent shows have included a funkified rendition of the Grateful Dead’s Blues for Allah album in its entirety. Next to Anthem of the Sun, it’s the Dead's most improvisational studio album, which might make performing all 45 minutes of it seem like a fool’s errand.
“It’s the album’s 50th anniversary, and I’ve spent a lot of time playing that music with Bob in the Wolf Bros,” said Was in a recent interview. “When you really get under the hood of Blues for Allah, you realize it’s not the 'noodling' music people associate with the Dead. And once you strip away the 1975 production, these songs are built on a bedrock that feels totally at home in Detroit. It’s a journey that reveals the soul inside the psych-rock.”
Granted, there were other obstacles along the way that went well beyond production values. “The biggest challenge was the time signatures,” Was observed. “Part of it is that it's in 7/4 time. It's less fun to play. So we sort of 'Detroit-ized' it. We tapped into a hint of a hook line from Marvin Gaye's 'Mercy Mercy Me' and put it in 4/4 to give it a Detroit kind of groove. We followed the form of the song as written, but we took some liberties to make it sound like it could have come from our own album.”
Eclectic Setlists
The Blues for Allah performance typically has come midway through eclectic setlists that are frequently bookended by Was (Not Was)’s “I Blew Up the United States” and Curtis Mayfield’s “This Is My Country,” two songs that could hardly be more different. It’s a journey from destruction to reclamation, played out in the span of two hours.
Was pointed out that while the title of the first song may seem aggressive, it was written and released well before the events of 9/11. He explained that it isn't a song about advocating for violence, but rather a warning about the danger of letting "materials" fall into the hands of "lunatics."
The goal, he said, is to go from town to town letting people know they aren’t alone in being “freaked out” by chaotic and confusing times. “I think it’s important for citizens to be active,” said Was. “I’m hoping that we let people know that it’s worth fighting for, worth standing up for.”
Sense of Service
That sense of service was on his mind recently at the University of Michigan, where he received an honorary Doctor of Music Ph.D. Despite his own long career, Was admitted he felt a serious case of “impostor syndrome” during the ceremony. He shared the stage with Diane Nash, a legendary figure in American activism.
Nash, who lives in Chicago, was involved with the Freedom Riders, the Selma voter registration drive, and was a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She organized lunch counter sit-ins at a time when Curtis Mayfield was first writing "This Is My Country."
“I felt dwarfed by the courage and generosity of her spirit over a lifetime,” Was said. “I don’t think we can touch that as musicians or as a band, but I think we can try to do our part which is just to engage people and make them know that there are things worth fighting for.”
Deeper Meanings
To that end, Was talks about the “Trojan Horse” strategy that Was (Not Was) came up with to hide deeper, sometimes political meanings inside infectious dance grooves. A prime example was the group’s “Tell Me That I’m Dreaming,” a No. 1 Billboard dance hit which included a “cut-up” sample of Ronald Reagan saying, “Can we who man the ship of state deny that it is somewhat out of control?”
“If you just wanted to do some poppers at Paradise Garage and dance all night, that was fine,” Was said. “But if you wanted to think of what it meant for the president of the United States to say the ship of state is out of control, you could think about that, too. The idea was to Trojan horse some deeper meaning along with a great dance groove.”
The band’s ultimate subterfuge was their soulful tearjerker “Where Did Your Heart Go,” which Wham! would go on to cover. It’s hard to know if George Michael fans picked up on lines like “come down some time, we’ll eat a can of rusty corn” or “I stepped into the river and drifted out of sight.”
“I only met him once,” Was said of the Wham! leader. “I ended up seated next to him at the Grammys one year and I was able to thank him for buying my family its first house, which is what that cover did. It was a big thing for us. I thought he did a great job of it.”
Long History, New Approaches
Even with his long history, Was still changes up his approach from album to album and tour to tour. Currently, he’s playing an upright bass instead of electric, which complements the jazz-influenced tunes, but also holds its own on a funk-fueled Pan-Detroit Ensemble original like "Insane."
That pursuit of artistic evolution is something he shares with Bob Dylan, whose “Under the Red Sky” he produced back in 1990. As with many of his projects, Was recruited a remarkable cast of rock royalty, from Elton John and George Harrison to Stevie Ray Vaughan and Slash. Three decades later, Was still draws inspiration from Dylan’s commitment to innovation.
“I listen to a lot of his live shows on YouTube, and if I zero in on his vocals, he’s extremely present and trying to come up with new ways into the songs every night, looking for a new and better way to tell it each night.”
For Was, the goal is a “circular energy exchange” between performer and audience. “There’s really no feeling in life that’s better than that collective ecstasy that happens,” said Was. “You’re just chasing that high for the rest of your life.”
