Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble

Superstar producer, composer, podcaster, musician, and Blue Note Records president Don Was brings the distinctive musical flavor of his Motor City hometown to the Lobero. His Pan-Detroit Ensemble is made up of many of the city’s great jazz musicians – including longtime collaborator Dave McMurray and Luis Resto – as well as Vincent Chandler, John Douglas, Jeff Canady, Mahindi, Wayne Gerard, and Steffanie Christi’an.

Taking inspiration from a wide range of Detroit jazz, blues, funk, and rock legends including John Lee Hooker, Donald Byrd, Joe Henderson, George Clinton, Mitch Ryder, and The Stooges, Was’ Pan-Detroit Ensemble contains multitudes. Their repertoire spans a mix of new originals and resonant interpretations of songs written by exploratory Detroiters Yusef Lateef, Olu Dara, and Henry Threadgill, as well as material from Was’ personal projects Orquestra Was and Was (Not Was).

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.

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.

In Was’ own words, “There’s a unique sound and feel to Detroit that permeates the music in a way that resonates all over the globe. There is a rawness, a lack of pretension and an unmistakable, underlying groove that reflects the people and culture of the city.” Join us for this special evening with an American original.

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