Legendary producer and musician Don Was speaks about his career with WUTC host Clark Gibson.
Mr. Was shares the inspiration behind "Groove in the Face of Adversity," his recent album with the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, including the influence of the late Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead on the album.
He also reflects on his role as a producer, the evolution of the music industry, the personal growth that comes with aging - and more.
Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble perform at the Big Ears Music Festival in Knoxville at the end of this month.
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Our team at WUTC is once again looking forward to covering Big Ears - see you there!
Interview Transcript (AI Generated)
Clark Gibson: I'm here with Don Was, and first of all, congratulations. I think the album's still recent enough from last October, "Groove in the Face of Adversity," to say congrats on the new record.
Don Was: I accept. Thank you very much, man.
Clark Gibson: So, what was the idea for "Groove in the Face of Adversity," and was there kind of a moment where you knew this record needed to exist?
Don Was: Yeah, it's a weird thing. You hear something in your head—well, I did, anyway. I don't want to speak for everybody else; that'd be presumptuous. But I heard this band in my head about 25 years ago and was never certain of how to get to it. It was an abstract thing. And really, it was playing with Bob Weir in 2018 that helped me crystallize the balance of structure for a song and foundation with, like, total freedom and improvisation. And I like the balance that the Grateful Dead struck. And it took playing those songs over and over with Bob and getting the hang of it before I understood how you build this combination of improvised and structured music. And so that gave me the confidence to call some people up. But you want to know the honest-to-God truth, man? I had a deadline. I never would have made the record without a deadline. My buddy Terence Blanchard, the great jazz trumpeter and composer, opera composer, film scorer, he was curating a series on Detroit jazz for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and he asked if I wanted to put a band together and do one night of it. And it was that deadline—I had nothing six months before. No songs, no band.
Clark Gibson: Do you feel like that sort of structure makes you kind of produce better, like just to get down to it and knock it out? Or are you one of those artists that kind of just needs like, "Hey, put me in a space and let me go"?
Don Was: Yeah, it's hard, you know. That's actually why I've had a career as a record producer, because people need producers. You know, I always thought about it from the producer side. I thought of the artist as being like the kite that Ben Franklin flew, right, in the lightning storm with the key on the end? And you're just hoping as an artist that the lightning strikes and you get some divine inspiration. And the producer's job is to stand on the ground and tether the kite string to the earth and make sure the kite doesn't go floating off into the far reaches of the universe. So it would probably help if I hired somebody.
Clark Gibson: Oh, that's funny. So you produced your own record. What kind of challenge did that give you? I mean, had you done something like that before? Was it easy to kind of step out of being a musician to kind of go back into that role?
Don Was: Yeah, I mean, I started by doing that. Really, the first records that I produced were Was (Not Was) records. So we started out producing our own band. Got to a point where our record company wouldn't let us produce anymore because they wanted us to have hit singles, and we weren't giving them hit singles. And we did hire a producer, and he did give us hit singles. And it was kind of like having a hostile takeover of the band. It was weird. I was kind of a jerk to this guy, Paul O'Duffy, great British producer, and I've apologized countless times for being like the most difficult artist ever. And finally, what happened was once we had hits, they really wouldn't let us produce our own records. And finally, how it happened was I won a Grammy for Album of the Year in 1989 for Bonnie Raitt's "Nick of Time." And I went home and I called the head of my record company, and I said, "Can I produce my own record now?" And he still said no. Oh wow, that's crazy. That is so funny. He was probably right, you know. Yeah, no, it's good to have an objective set of ears in the room.
Clark Gibson: See, I kind of came to you in an organic way, you know, a lot of different sessions I would see videos of and stuff's like, "Who's this guy sitting behind Bob Weir right now? Who's this dude playing with Willie Nelson? What's going on?" So is there a moment to you that kind of made you go like, "What am I doing here? How did I get here? What happened?"
Don Was: Oh yeah, no, every day is like that, to be honest with you. I'm telling you the truth. I'm in Nashville right now making a record. And when I got here on Saturday, I was checking in at the front desk, and I stay in this hotel a lot making records, right? And it was a moment of some combination of gratitude and utter disbelief that someone was still paying for my hotel room. You're just happy to be here, man. I really am, man. You know, there's nothing quite like going to a city, working in a studio where you haven't worked before and with people you haven't worked with before and figuring out the way you're going to do it on the fly and then making some great music.
Clark Gibson: What excites you the most? I know you're the president of Blue Note Jazz, and you probably get to see a lot of these younger cats coming up. So what excites you the most about the new generation of jazz players?
Don Was: Well, I'm trying to think of a way to characterize all of them. Shortly after I first took the gig at Blue Note, the first record that really came out while I was president was "Black Radio" by Robert Glasper, which was a huge commercial success beyond anyone's expectations. He went from selling 10,000 records to selling a quarter of a million records with that. And then I saw all the other people in his generation decide they wanted to start doing what he was doing and put more R&B and hip-hop influences into the jazz. Which, when Robert did it, he did it because that's what's in his head, right? And when subsequent people attempted it, they were just imitating Robert; it wasn't as good. It's a bad idea to do that. I think there's a younger generation of cats who sort of rebelled against doing that. And they're a little more pure in their intentions regarding popularity. And yet as intent as Robert was on pushing the boundaries of the music. So guys like Immanuel Wilkins and Joel Ross or Melissa Aldana, who's not a guy, and Paul Cornish—I mean, there's a whole group, Julian Lage—a whole group of these musicians who are coming from a point of view that's almost uncommercial. They're not thinking about commerce at all, which is fine with me because in the end, I believe that your best business plan is to make an honest record that touches people.
Clark Gibson: Is that something about the music business? I mean, I'm sure you've seen so many changes in this industry and you've worked in so many different facets of this industry. So what—maybe even just the role of a producer or musician—how has that kind of changed from when you started to how it is now?
Don Was: Well, there are different methodologies for creating the music, there are different methodologies for distributing the music, and there are different methodologies for informing people about the music and marketing the music to them, too, that have changed dramatically. But at the core, nothing has changed. You're still trying to make some songs that will get under people's skin and make them feel something and make them, hopefully, help them deal with their own lives, you know? It's crazy being a human being. A lot of pressures, a lot of things you can't explain that we have to just deal with. And I think if music can help you contextualize the challenges of life, or if music can help you remember your hopes and dreams and set you back on track, then the artist is doing something worthwhile. So that doesn't change. Whether you're record company president, a bass player, or record producer, you're still trying to make music that makes people feel something.
Clark Gibson: So when you're in the studio, how do you know when a song or a take is the one that's like, "Hey, this is going to make people feel something," or "Maybe we should scrap this one"?
Don Was: Well, there are a few signs. One is your body's moving involuntarily. You're not trying to dance to it, but the music starts to move you. That's the first sign you're on to something. But it's just a feeling you get. You can tell. I think even though I know the songs and I know the lyrics before anybody starts making a record, when the story connects to you, you can feel it. I've gone through different types of emphasis in my life. I started out making dance music, so it was all about body moving. But then I remember it was really working with Willie Nelson—is the guy who most made me understand it because everything we did was so live. The keeper take is the one where his vocal comes through to you. So then I focused on his vocal and stopped listening so much to whether the high-hat part was right. If he sang the right thing, then everyone must have been playing the right thing, and you just don't go in and mess with it and try to perfect it because you're just going to move away from the point of emotional connection. It's a delicate balance and you just, I don't know, you just learn it over time. How do you know when your eggs are cooked? Right? You can feel it. You can tell.
Clark Gibson: Does it kind of feel like second nature to you at this point with how long you've been doing it?
Don Was: It's—yeah, there's a lot of that, and that can be dangerous because you can start relying on past experience to get you through a new one, which isn't the right way to do it. You should be fresh every time. So sometimes you have to combat—I won't call it malaise exactly, but just routine, formula. "I got a way to doing this"—that's the first sign that something's off if you have a formula. So that's why, like, I'm here now, I'm working with an engineer I never met in my life before, I'm working in a studio where I never worked before, because it's to avoid repetition and beating the life out of something.
Clark Gibson: So you would say like getting out of your comfort zone is really important in your line of work?
Don Was: Yeah, I think that's where the good things—you have to keep your antennae open, kind of. After 1989, when I produced Bonnie's "Nick of Time" and "Love Shack" by the B-52s in order, things started changing. I got to work with all of my heroes in very short order. And I remember being in the studio with Bob Dylan and just asking him one night, "How come you can write 'Gates of Eden' and I can't?" And he said, "Well, look, if it makes you feel any better, I remember moving the pencil over the paper," but he said, "I didn't really write it. It came through me. I was more like the scribe, but I don't know where it came from." Wow. At the time, I thought he was just being kind of sweet and he didn't want me to feel bad that he could write better songs than me. But then I heard that come from everyone else I respect: Brian Wilson, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Mick and Keith. They all talk about the same thing. They talk about something coming through you. And it became pretty clear early on that it's important to keep your antennae working and to be receptive to these signals when they come to you. I forgot where we got off on a tangent. What'd you ask me?
Clark Gibson: To be honest with you, I got a little lost in that too, but it probably had something to do with keeping your antennae open.
Don Was: Yeah, for sure. It almost makes you believe that certain people are kind of born with this ability, that they just have an antenna that some people just might not have, you know? Yeah, no, I agree 100%. I don't know why some people have it and others don't, and the degrees to which people have it. I used to—the metaphor I used to envision was that all the songs are up floating in this ether way up high, right? And the good songs are all at the top, and you reach up to grab them, but some people just have longer tentacles and they can get to the good songs that are at the top. Everybody has the ability to reach up there and pull something down, but, you know...
Clark Gibson: Do you believe in the theory that you have to write a hundred bad songs to get one good song?
Don Was: Well, I believe in the theory that you have to keep writing. You've got to get in the groove of doing it, and it really has to do with overcoming self-consciousness and letting yourself go, right? And so you have to stay in shape to be creative, to be receptive. It's just like being a tennis champion: you've got to practice. So I would say that if you stay in shape, yeah, probably one in a hundred songs is worthwhile, but I would look at the other 99 as being a setup, you know? It's just like hitting a bucket of balls before you go out on the golf course.
Clark Gibson: So when things aren't working in the studio or a session kind of gets off track, what's something that, like, one of the first steps you take to be like, "Alright, let's maybe restart or go take a break"? What's your method behind getting an artist back on track, or maybe yourself?
Don Was: Well, you talk through it, I think, you know? What do they have in mind? That's really something you should do before you start the record. At least for me. Look, there are a million ways to produce records, you know? And there are brilliant auteur producers who an artist goes to and says, "I love the musical landscapes that you construct. Drop me in the middle of that." And that's a perfectly legitimate way of doing business. From Phil Spector—put you in his wall of sound—I think Daniel Lanois builds a space that's incredible. I think Prince did that, you know? That's not my forte. That's not my strong suit. My strong suit is trying to figure out where the artist wants to go and helping them get there. So you just have to—what I do if we're not hitting something, I'll maybe say, "Let's put your demo back on and figure out why we liked this song initially and what you were going for and where it's going wrong." And you can figure that out. It happened yesterday. We were cutting something, and it didn't feel right, but it should have felt right; that much hadn't changed. Then it turned out the drummer had turned his—the snares off on a snare drum and he was playing it like it was a tom-tom, and it was tuned to a note that was not only dissonant to the chords that were in the song, but it was eating up all the air in the thing. So it felt like there was just this monolith blocking the road. And when we went in and listened to the demo where he had the snares on, "Oh, right, well, it's that note that's..." and then we pulled the note out. You know, it was that simple. You just make small adjustments until you land on the thing.
Clark Gibson: Is there something about music that still excites you and gives you that magical feeling after all these years?
Don Was: Yeah, so much about it, man. You know, I can tell you in terms of playing live, again, what I started experiencing with Bobby was the Grateful Dead fans are a very receptive audience. And they hear what you do and they react to it, and you can feel the energy coming back to the stage and the reaction just by looking at them or feeling them, you know? You can feel it coming. You can't necessarily see everybody in the back, but you can feel them. And you can feel the response. You can feel the building of a kind of collective ecstasy that happens in the audience. And when that comes back to you, it actually changes—it impacts your choice of the next notes. You start interacting with the audience. And if you get a band where everybody's listening to each other and that's a conversation, and then that whole band is engaged in a conversation that includes the audience, you get this cycle of energy going that's—it goes through the ceiling, man. It's euphoric. And so that never goes away. Every audience is different. Even if they're Deadheads, every night it's a different combination of people in different moods, and it's a Wednesday night instead of a Saturday night. So every night, if you go in with a blank slate in your mind and stay open, you're going to have that experience repeatedly. The other thing that happens is you keep learning stuff. It's a really weird thing. It's like between every two points, there's another point. No matter how good you get on the instrument, you become aware of the next obstacle, the next thing you've got to overcome. And it can be just shifting your fingers around one millimeter, or the angle that your fingers are on the strings. By making an adjustment there, all of a sudden a whole new universe of notes opens up to you, or at least colors. So it's constantly challenging, and it keeps you young, I think. I'm 73. I don't know a lot of 73-year-olds just start their own band from scratch with no fan base.
Clark Gibson: Man, you don't look a day over 72 and a half, Don. Come on, man. No way 73. That's crazy, man.
Don Was: Well, I wasn't looking for that, but thank you very much. Yeah, no, but it—I don't know what 73 means. You know, I don't really feel any different than I felt when I was 42, you know? But if you keep yourself challenged and you keep moving, keep learning, and keep the adventures coming, you stay vibrant.
Clark Gibson: I was going to ask if there was a piece of advice you would give the Was (Not Was) late-80s version of yourself, knowing what you know now. What kind of advice would you give that young man?
Don Was: Stay away from cocaine and don't sweat stuff. It gets better all the time. This is my favorite time of my life, but I would have told you that five years ago, I would have told you that ten years ago. It absolutely gets better, especially after 50. You hit 52, something really good happens. You've got to survive to that and try to do it with a modicum of grace. After 52, it's real good. Man, that makes me really happy to hear, actually, because I'm pushing 30 and I was already starting to get in that "it's all over, man, it's all over" phase. No, you're just getting there. Just hang in there. Late 30s, 40s—everyone goes through a weird little change, you know? Stand-up comedians joke about midlife crisis, which is kind of a clichéd way of looking at it, but Carl Jung wrote good stuff about it. And you basically have to come to terms with the parts of you that you stifled in order to get over as a young person, right? If you like crazy shoes and people start teasing you because of your shoes in school, you stop wearing the crazy shoes. But the person who liked the crazy shoes is still living inside you, and you kind of build this armor to contain the parts of yourself that aren't getting over. Right? But somewhere around your late 30s, early 40s, mid-40s, the armor holding all that stuff in starts to rust, and the light starts poking through, and you start remembering the parts of yourself that you squelched a little bit, and you have to come to terms with that part of Clark. And it doesn't necessarily mean you've got to quit your job and open a Ben & Jerry's in New Hampshire or something like that. It just means you have to make some adjustments in life and you kind of have to change the way you look at things. But you get a healthy reset in midlife that's a good thing, gets you back on track, but you've got to acknowledge it and take action.
Clark Gibson: So you're playing Big Ears coming up here at the end of March. Super exciting time for all of us here at the station. And is there anybody this year that you're most excited to hear play, if you have the time?
Don Was: I want to go hear Julian Lage's group with John Medeski. Yeah, that's going to be a killer show. That's one I'm planning on, yeah, for sure. No, there's so much cool stuff there, man. You know, definitely want to see David Byrne's show. I'm getting there early so I can see that. Dave McMurray, our saxophone player, and his group are going to play the night before. Pan-Detroit Ensemble plays—I'm looking forward to seeing that. Yeah, no, there's a lot of cool stuff. I don't normally show up at the gig a couple days early to see everything else that's going on, but for Big Ears, yeah. I think it's the best festival in the world.
Clark Gibson: I really do too. Yeah. I hope you enjoy your time in Nashville, man, and get to Knoxville safe soon. And I really, really appreciate the time today, Don.
Don Was: Great. Very nice to chat with you, man. Thank you.
This interview transcription was generated by AI. WUTC regrets any errors or inaccuracies. Listen to the full interview for the best version.
