Interview: Grammy-winning producer Don Was brings Pan Detroit Ensemble to central Indiana

The Grammy-winning bassist and producer Don Was has produced recordings for some of the biggest stars in pop music, and he’s charted hit records with his own band Was (Not Was).

Was will perform in Indiana on February 28 with his latest project, The Pan Detroit Ensemble.

During a recent conversation with WFYI’s Kyle Long, Was said the group’s music is inspired by the culture and history of his hometown, Detroit.

This transcript was edited for style and clarity.

Kyle Long: Tell us a bit about this new project and what we're going to hear on February 28.

Don Was: It’s a little hard to define, which I think is the beauty of the show. But if I were to find an umbrella for it, it's kind of soul jazz from Detroit, and the Detroit part is super-important. I grew up in Detroit in the 1950s and 1960s. Detroit, post World War II, attracted workers from all over the world who came to build cars and they brought their cultures with them.

So you had this incredible cultural jambalaya going on that, after a generation or so, started meshing together. So that, being the case, you have a very honest, real, raw kind of population, and the music reflects that.

John Lee Hooker is the epitome of Detroit music, as far as I'm concerned. You know, he's so raw that the music almost falls apart, but it doesn't. It just grooves like crazy and it's extra soulful. You can listen to Detroit music in every genre, whether it's the jazz that came out of there, which is just phenomenal, from Donald Byrd and Kenny Burrell and Joe Henderson and Yusuf Lateef, the list goes on.

It's a ridiculous inordinate number of legendary jazz musicians who come from Detroit. But you hear it in the rock and roll of the MC5 or the Stooges or Mitch Ryder. You can hear it in the R&B of George Clinton and Motown Records.

We grew up in the midst of all this and people my age and younger have this kind of blur. The genres aren't quite so important. I see genres just being like the Dewey Decimal System. Did you ever meet an author who said, “I think for my next book, I'm going to write a number 600 series.”

You write what's inside you, you know, and whatever comes out, comes out. I think that's what the Pan Detroit Ensemble Sounds like.

Long: Do you think you would be the musician you are today and have had the kind of career you did without that upbringing in Detroit and being exposed to that melting pot of sounds and styles in the city?

Was: I don’t think I would be the same. You know, I went into kind of a crisis. I guess it's going on like 30 years ago, when I started becoming successful as a record producer. I got to work with all my heroes. So in a very short period of time, I had made records with Bob Dylan, and I’d been in the studio with George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

I had produced the Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, and Brian Wilson. Then when I sat down at the piano to write a song, I'd get like, 20 seconds into it, and I'd think, “What's the point of this man? You know, when Brian Wilson lives just down the street from me, why not have him write a song instead?”

I really couldn't write anything for about five or six years. Then it finally dawned on me that I'll never be as great as Willie Nelson as a songwriter. But Willie Nelson can't be me. He didn't grow up in the 1960s and go see the MC5 jam with Pharaoh Sanders’ band tripping on acid. So just be that guy. Be the thing that makes you different.

The thing that makes you different as an artist is your superpower, that's your strength. So play to your strengths. Be the thing that no one else can be.