Don Was & The Pan Detroit Ensemble

“There’s only two kinds of music, selfish music and generous music.” - Don Was

FEATURED ARTISTS:

Don Was, bass guitar, guitar, vocals, piano, songwriter, producer, 
The Pan Detroit Ensemble 


You could fill both a record store and a hat store with the albums DON WAS has touched and the lids he’s donned on the way to six GRAMMY®s, an Emmy, a BAFTA, and the respect of musicians and fans of all ages worldwide. In nearly 50 years in the music business the Was (Not Was) bandleader has collaborated with an astonishing list of top-flight artists in pursuit of making a truthful, transcendent, healing and joyful noise. As a producer, songwriter, recording artist, music supervisor, documentarian, musical director, radio host, multi-instrumentalist, and President of Blue Note Records, Was has been enthusiastically and fearlessly genre fluid, moving freely across rock, pop, jazz, country, reggae, R&B, and world music.

For his work as a record producer, he has won six GRAMMY® Awards – including Album of the Year in 1989 for Bonnie Raitt’s Nick of Time and Producer of the Year in 1994. Records that Don has produced have sold close to 100 million albums for a wide array of artists like The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, John Mayer, Ringo Starr, Wayne Shorter, The B52s and Charles Lloyd. In 1995 he produced and directed a documentary about the life of Brian Wilson, I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, that won the San Francisco Film Festival’s Golden Gate Award. As a film composer, he won the 1994 British Academy Award (BAFTA) for Best Original Score in recognition of his work on the film Backbeat. He won the 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction for his work on the CBS TV special The Beatles: The Night That Changed America. In 2018 Don was invited to join Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir to form the Wolf Brothers. They continue to consistently tour the US.

In 2011 Was became President of the iconic jazz label Blue Note Records. He fiercely protects the company’s eighty-five-year-old legacy, meticulously caretaking the revered catalog of Black American Music. This includes maintaining the availability and quality of vinyl reissues in the Tone Poet and Classic Jazz audiophile release series. He also signs and produces many of the label’s recent roster of artists including, Robert Glasper, Charles Lloyd, Wayne Shorter, Dr Lonnie Smith, Gregory Porter and Jason Moran.

Don’s deep Detroit roots keep him anchored to the city where, where for the last 15 years he has music directed and played bass in the Don Was Detroit All Star Revue concerts which are part of Detroit’s annual diversity festival, The Concert of Colors. From 2009-2012 Don hosted a weekly Sirius XM radio show on the Outlaw Country channel called The Motor City Hayride. Since 2021, he co-hosts a weekly, live radio show on Detroit’s NPR station, WDET-FM called The Don Was Motor City Playlist. Don is also the voice of Neville the Dog in the hit Amazon Prime Video children’s show, Pete the Cat.