Don Was, leader of Pan-Detroit Ensemble, on the importance of celebrating music from Detroit

Detroit is about 2,000 miles from Phoenix. That may seem like a random fact, but for The Show's next guest, it’s extremely relevant.

Don Was is a bassist; he’s also a music producer — he’s worked with artists like Bob Dylan, Elton John, the Rolling Stones and Bonnie Raitt, among others. He’s also the president of Blue Note Records, a jazz label.

But back to the distance between Detroit and Phoenix — he’s also leader of a group called the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, which, as the name suggests, celebrates the music of his hometown. The group is performing Monday night at the Musical Instrument Museum, and Wednesday night at La Rosa in Tucson.

The Show caught up with Was earlier and asked how he describes the Detroit sound.

Full conversation

DON WAS: I think the Detroit sound is characterized by, first of all, a kind of raw honesty. The — to me, the leading exponent of the Detroit sound is John Lee Hooker. Everything you need to know about Detroit is kind of in his music. It’s — it’s really raw, but yet it — it grooves like crazy, you know? And you think it’s sloppy and it’s going to fall apart, but it never does. And he’s just conversational and direct, and he tells you what he’s thinking, and he — and he doesn’t hide it.

And I think that’s the key to Detroit music. It’s an honest population, you know? It’s a one-industry town. Everybody’s — well, certainly when I was growing up, everybody’s fate was determined by the success or failure that year of the auto business.

So it really was the kind of city where there was no point in putting on any airs, no point in being pretentious, because everybody knows who you are, where you’re coming from, and knows we’re all in the same boat. So the music kind of reflects that lack of pretension and lack of gloss.

MARK BRODIE: So when you are talking about and playing Detroit music and trying to introduce it to other people, do you find that you have to sort of get people to move beyond what they know about it in terms of things like Motown?

DON WAS: Well, let me put it this way: If I was teaching a Detroit musicology college class, I would definitely move everybody beyond Motown, which I love, you know? Motown’s incredible, but it’s a piece of a much larger picture.

But when we’re — when we’re playing, we just play, you know? We don’t think, "Hmm, what would a Detroiter play in this bridge?" You know, we — everybody in the band lives in Detroit, everybody in the band grew up in Detroit, everybody grew up listening to the same radio stations, playing in the same bars, playing for the same audiences with the same other groups of musicians. So we don’t really discuss how to Detroitize the music, we — we just kind of naturally — it’s the way we play.

I think the thing that makes it work and the surprise when we first put it together was that I would say in the first 10 to 15 minutes, you could tell that these nine people playing together had a character to their playing. That sound — it felt like we’d been playing together for a decade. But that’s just because we — we speak a common musical language.

[MUSIC CLIP PLAYS]

When that happens, you’d be well advised not to take it lightly, because it doesn’t happen too often in the course of a lifetime that you can build that deep of a musical conversation. So we were just rehearsing for one show, but by the end of the first day, it was, "Uh, maybe we should book a tour around that one show." And we’ve been pretty much moving around since — you know, for the last two years.

MARK BRODIE: Is that what you mean by "don’t take it lightly"? Like, don’t just do one gig, like make sure you can get this music to as many people as possible?

DON WAS: Yeah, absolutely, man. You have to — when fate smiles on you, you’ve got to recognize it and seize the moment.

MARK BRODIE: Why is it so important to you to get the music of Detroit out? I mean, you have done like everything and could probably do anything. So why is this so important to you?

DON WAS: Well, Detroit is important to me. It’s like not just like home, but like family. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but, you know, just a — it’s like parents who brag about their kids.

MARK BRODIE: You brag about Detroit?

DON WAS: I’m proud of where I grew up.

MARK BRODIE: In listening to some of the tracks, the thing that struck me was your use of horns, like a kind of a big sound, like a big, loud sound. There’s some jam breaks in there. I assume all of that is very intentional on your part?

DON WAS: Well, it’s the way it came out. You know, sometimes — sometimes you just accept the way things come out. This was how this band sounds playing these songs. I know where I’d like to take it. I’d like to get more intimate. I’d like to get — the next batch of songs that we record will hopefully be a little more personal.

Look, I think our goal ultimately is not just to promulgate the indigenous sounds of our hometown, but to make people feel something. At some point, you’ve got to be a real artist. You can’t just be a geography lesson.

[MUSICAL CLIP PLAYS]

I think it’s the artist’s role and responsibility to get under people’s skin and communicate something to them — a feeling that you have that’s going to register with them. Maybe not the same way you intended it, but in a way that helps them make sense out of a very chaotic and confusing life.

MARK BRODIE: Well, how do you try to do that? Because it sounds like, as you reference, the sound that you’ve come up with is very organic. So how do you try to maybe change what you’re doing, or have it evolve in some way to make it a little — maybe a little smaller, a little more intimate?

DON WAS: Write better songs. I joke, but it’s not a joke. I mean, that’s — what a good producer does. Good producer finds — makes sure you record good songs with — with good artists.

The thing has evolved so much over the last two years. When I I compare the shows we’re playing now to what we did two years ago, I’m real pleased at the the way the musical conversation among the band has deepened. And also the way our relationship with the audience has.

At first people were just showing up out of curiosity, like, "What the hell is this going to be?" And now they kind of know, and they interact. I can feel the difference, that they’re interacting. What we’re doing is registering, and we get energy back from the audience. When you get that kind of situation going, the audience becomes a member of the band. How they react actually impacts the next notes you choose to play. I actually don’t know a more exhilarating feeling in life than being part of that.

MARK BRODIE: Well, that sounds like kind of getting to what you’re trying to do with the audience — make them feel something, get them maybe more a little engaged with what you’re doing rather than just watching — watching the ensemble play.

DON WAS: Yeah, exactly right. I’m — I’ll be 74 in September, and I know that I’ve got, you know, if I’m lucky, 10 years of good fingers left. And I got a lot to learn, man. So there’s an urgency to the mission now. It’s like, I got to get as good as I can get on this instrument before — before my fingers start to fail me.

MARK BRODIE: Don Was is a bassist, music producer, and president of Blue Note Records. His group, the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, is performing tonight at the Musical Instrument Museum and on Wednesday night at La Rosa in Tucson.

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