Legendary bassist, executive and producer Don Was is heading back out on the road this fall with his Pan-Detroit Ensemble celebrating blues, jazz, Detroit and the Grateful Dead and promoting his latest album Groove in the Face of Adversity.
Despite his numerous successes as a producer and as president of Blue Note Records, Don has always considered himself an artist in his own right. The new album features a luminary cast of all-star musicians, crafting jazz/reggae/funk fusion in a way only Detroiters can.
But inspired, novel compositions haven't always come easy. Don admits to Q104.3 New York's Out of the Box with Jonathan Clarke that years of honing other artists' work left him barren of his own ideas for a time.
"What happened to me was somewhere around the early-'90s I got to work with a bunch of my heroes in rapid succession," Don recalls. "I went from being unemployable — a pariah in the music business — to producing Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson and Mick and Keith and Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Leonard Cohen.
"They're all, you know, probably the greatest writers of our time, right? And it gave me writer's block for about five years (Laughs). Because every time I sat down to write something, I'd just think, well, what's the point of this when these guys are right here?"
Despite an all-time hot streak in terms of getting work, Don wasn't happy with his own musical ideas. He says it was during a session with Nelson when his muse returned. Don thought about how unique his musical upbringing in Detroit really was, and he decided to celebrate it when he started writing again.
"...[A]s we look at it sometimes in the music business, the thing that makes you different is not a marketing problem; it's your superpower," he says. "So you want to be the best version of you.
"When it came time to put a band together a couple of years ago, I thought, don't try to compete with your jazz artists on Blue Note Records. You're not that. But go back to Detroit, where you come from. Get in a room with people who grew up listening to the same radio station as you and playing the same bars with the same musicians for the same audiences, and speak the musical language of Detroit."
Check out the full conversation via the player above!
Listen to Groove in the Face of Adversity here.
Go here for Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble tour dates!