Don Was bringing his new Pan-Detroit Ensemble to Ann Arbor's Blue Llama this weekend

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20-02-2025

Musician and record producer Don Was is one of Detroit's creative giants.
The multi-Grammy-winning impresario has produced albums for a wide range of artists, with sales totaling close to 100 million albums. Since 2011, he has served as president of the mighty Blue Note Records label, and for the last four years, he's also co-hosted 'The Don Was Motor City Playlist,' a weekly, live radio show on WDET-FM.
This weekend, he'll bring one of his most recent projects, the nine-member Pan-Detroit Ensemble, to Ann Arbor's Blue Llama Jazz Club for two evenings of musical exploration. The band includes longtime collaborators like Blue Note artist Dave McMurray on sax and Eminem's Oscar-winning collaborator, keyboardist Luis Resto. Additional musicians include trombonist Vincent Chandler, trumpeter John Douglas, drummer Jeff Canaday, percussionist Mahindi Masai, guitarist Wayne Gerard, and vocalist Steffanie Christi'an.
Was said the band's formation was inspired by a call he got two years ago.
'Last May,' he said, 'we did a show at Orchestra Hall. It was part of a series Terence Blanchard was putting together on Detroit jazz, and he called me two years before, when they were booking the series, to ask if I wanted to do a night. I said, 'Of course,' but I didn't have a band together. About six months before, I started to panic: 'What are we going to do for this thing?' So, following the advice I dispense to artists I'm producing or artists on the Blue Note label, I thought, 'Well, pick the things that make you different from everybody else and make that your superpower.'
'So, I thought, the thing I've got for me is there aren't that many people who dropped acid and went to the Grande Ballroom to see The MC5 play, who are still making records, so just be yourself. Go back to Detroit, get in a room with people who grew up listening to the same stuff as you, who knew the Grande Ballroom, but also knew Electrifying Mojo, and also knew Donald Byrd, and also knew John Lee Hooker, and also knew Mitch Ryder, and play like they came from Detroit.'
Was assembled the band just for the Orchestra Hall gig originally, but the group found they enjoyed playing together so much that they booked an entire tour and are still at it.
'I just picked musicians I've worked with who listened to each other,' he explained. 'There are only two genres of music, as far as I'm concerned – there's selfish music and generous music. Selfish musicians get up there saying, 'Look how many notes I can squeeze into one bar of music'; they're showing off for you. Generous musicians are listening to everybody else who's playing and trying to create something that touches people, that helps them. It gets under their skin and makes them feel something.
'These were all generous musicians. That was the common link; that's what I look for. 'Who do you want to play music with for two hours a night?' It's really like going to a party or just being in a conversation, or inviting people over for dinner. Who would you like to spend time with? Because playing music is like conversation.'
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Was said the band will perform a mix of originals and covers during their Llama stop.
'We've thrown in a couple of Was (Not Was) songs,' he said. 'There's one from a movie score that I did, but there's also a Yusef Lateef song and a Curtis Mayfield song, and a couple of Grateful Dead songs. And they all kind of fit together. It's not like some weird anthology record, because we do it in the style of these nine people playing together. There's a real unity to what we're doing. I think it's pretty unique, although it's not easy to describe to people. I guess you could call it maybe soul jazz.
'They're great songs. I've toured with (Grateful Dead founding member) Bob Weir since 2018, and so much of what I learned from Bobby is applied to this band in terms of having the structure, but then having that structure be fluid. As (another founding Grateful Dead member) Phil Lesh said, 'Never play the same thing once.' It's a great line, but even if we play the same song two nights in a row, we do it really different each time, and you can't take the spirit of adventure out of it.'
Was also reflected on his highly successful run at Blue Note Records and is looking forward to further big scores there.
'In these days, it's a great accomplishment just to keep the doors open on a record label,' he said, 'but we're doing really well. Last year, we had a lineup of albums I would stack up against any year in the company's history. I think we've got a roster that rivals what people consider to be the glory days of the 1960s – young, innovative artists. I'm really proud of the musicians we have, and I'm pleased with the way we keep the catalog in circulation for everybody to hear in all sorts of ways, from audiophile to just low-grade streaming, if you want that. It's a lot of work, but it's been one of the great joys of my life to be able to serve that music.'
Running perhaps the world's best-known and prestigious jazz label affords Was a highly unique view of the genre's past, present, and future.
'When I first got the gig at Blue Note,' he recalled, 'one of the things we had to figure out was why the music recorded even 60, 70 years ago at that label still seems relevant and vibrant and current. It still works, but it doesn't sound like a museum piece, and I think the main reason for that is that the founders of the label signed artists who had mastered the fundamentals of music that preceded them, but then used that knowledge to create something brand new and push the threshold of music.
'You can see that in the music they recorded in 1948 with Thelonious Monk. You can hear it in the music that Art Blakey and Horace Silver made to create hard bop in the Fifties. You can hear it in what Herbie (Hancock) and Wayne (Shorter) were doing in the Sixties, and Ornette (Coleman) and Eric Dolphy. You can hear it in 'Afro Blue' on 'Black Radio,' Robert Glasper's groundbreaking album that kind of changed the face of music. So that's where it's got to go. If there's going to be a future, it can't turn into a museum piece where you rehash what went before. You learn what came before, but then you use that knowledge to expand the music.'
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He said that future will also depend on the people who make the music.
'It depends on what they listen to, leading up to the moment you press the record button. What's floating around in their heads? That's the beauty of jazz. It really depends on the individuals. If you listen to Robert Glasper, you can hear everything that he's listened to in his life when he solos. You can hear everything from Monk to Bonnie Raitt to McDonald's commercials get quoted in the course of one solo.'
Was called jazz 'a rebellion against the status quo.'
'There's no question about it,' he said. 'It's music that's popular in all these really disparate cultures. All over the world, people relate to this music, but it comes from people being sent over from Africa and having their culture and language and tradition stifled. (Music) became a secret language for expressing that frustration. That's what those scales and the feel of that music is based on, and even though it's become a lot more sophisticated, that's still the root of it. And I think that's why it speaks to everybody.
'Look, the guys who founded Blue Note were guys who fled Nazi Germany. Yeah, completely different circumstances – but the reason they loved American jazz so much was because it addressed exactly what they were going through. It's a universal kind of struggle, and it's a universal language.'
Despite touring, the Pan-Detroit Ensemble has also been hard at work on an album Was described as 'about 75% finished now' and aims for a release in the first half of this year, if he can block out time to finish.
'We really love being in this band,' he said. 'It's weird – that doesn't always happen. Some of these guys I've known a very long time, but we had never all gotten together in one room to play before. From the second we started, there was just this chemistry, which I really believe comes from growing up in Detroit and absorbing the rich tapestry of sound that's available to everybody there, and we just clicked.
'So I'm gonna stick with this band until I drop.'
Don Was & the Pan-Detroit Ensemble will play at Ann Arbor's Blue Llama Jazz Club (314 S. Main St.) on Friday, Feb. 21, from 7-8 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. -10:30 p.m., and Saturday, Feb. 22, from 6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. and 9-10 p.m. As of press time, all performances are sold out. Visit bluellamaclub.com for information.
Contact Free Press arts and culture reporter Duante Beddingfield at [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Don Was bringing his Pan-Detroit Ensemble to Ann Arbor's Blue Llama