What Was Is Now: You Can Teach an Old Don New Licks

Don Was (from donwas.com)

When he's not helping keep afloat the best-known, most influential label in jazz music (Blue Note Records) or sitting barefoot in a recording studio producing legendary artists from Mitch Ryder (new LP coming out this fall) to The Rolling Stones, Don Was is generally considered one of the finest contemporary bassists around. He performs and tours regularly with former Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir & the Wolf Bros., and it's not unusual for him to sneak out from behind the studio knobs to join in a recording session with the likes of Bonnie Raitt or Bob Dylan.

Cavorting with such immortals of popular music can come at a cost, however. "There was this period in the early '90s where in rapid succession I got to work with my heroes: Dylan, Brian Wilson, Kris Kristofferson, The Rolling Stones," Don relates. "All of them, right in the room. But after that, anytime I sat down at a piano to write a song I thought, 'Hey, why even fucking bother, man?' It gave me writer's block for about five or six years.

"Until I finally realized, 'All right...you can't.' I'll never be what Willie Nelson or Brian Wilson is. I'll never be as good as that. But Willie Nelson didn't drop acid and go to the Grande Ballroom and see the MC5 live. Brian Wilson didn't see the Motown Review at the Fox Theatre. So just be yourself.

"And ultimately, that's what I preach to the artists I produce, or artists on the Blue Note label. The thing that makes you different from everybody else is your superpower. So accentuate that, and be the best at that thing."

It's fair to assume there aren't many record company presidents who still enjoy playing as much as Don Was. 

"The hard part is learning to let go when you're playing," he explains. "Self-consciousness is the enemy. You gotta let it go. It's taken me decades to start to get a handle on playing. Since 2018, Bob Weir has been incredibly helpful. You can't think your way through the music. You've got to feel your way through, and it's different every single time. Whatever you did the night before, you can't, you don't repeat it. That's the only rule."

A Detroit native now in a West Coast environment, Don compares the experience to surfing. "When you connect to the force, wherever this energy is coming from, you can't maintain it for three or four hours a night," he says. "But you get these flashes where, just like surfing, it takes you for a ride. You spend a lot of time waiting for the wave, the Great Wave, and I don't know a more exhilarating feeling than having that force come through you. 

"When it happens in a studio, you're in kind of an insular setting. There's no one on the receiving end. But when you play live and the people receive it, and you can feel them feeling it and giving the energy back, when you get that circular thing, you can blow the roof off the motherfucker. You really can. There's nothing like it, man, and it never gets tired. I'm 72 now and I don't know how long my fingers will still be good, but I've had some breakthroughs on the bass."

He's becoming more of an ace on bass, Don says.

Don has assembled the new Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, a nine-piece band comprised of Motor City music veterans that he says he's going to "stick with until I drop." He took the group out for a test drive in late February 2025, a quick six-city Midwest tour that began in Ann Arbor, before embarking on a more extensive world tour after the release of their debut album later in the year. Even at this stage of his musical career, however, Don says he's still striving to improve –– and learning from older, wiser hands.

"I took some bass lessons from Ron Carter recently," he reveals. "We just signed him to Blue Note recently. He's 87 now, and he still plays great."

Even though Carter is a native of Ferndale, Mich., their relationship blossomed in the Big Apple. "What happened was, he came to my gig with Weir at Radio City (Music Hall) a couple years ago and he sat in," Don recalls. "He played my string bass through my breaks, using everything that I use. The only thing that was different was his hands.

"So I called him the next day and asked, 'Why is it that your notes, when I hear them, they're perfectly round and warm and symmetrical, and my notes by comparison sound like they're made out of Swiss cheese?' And he said, real matter of fact, 'Well, I can tell you what you're doing wrong if you want me to.' Whoa! And I said, 'Yes, please.' 

"He gave me a couple of lessons. He told me, 'You're not releasing your notes properly. You have to let go of one before you play the next note so they don't bleed together.' He gave me some exercises to do. and it's changed everything. Just understanding that releasing the note is as important to the function as attacking it, that's probably something I missed by not staying in school. 

"Ron said, 'If you practice this for a month you'll find that not only are you playing differently, but everybody in your band is going to play differently, too. When you leave a space, someone goes to fill it. Then you react to that as opposed to barreling over them.'"

"I wish I'd learned it 40 years ago, because it's hampered me," Don believes. "But hey, I don't regret the way things have turned out."