After decades of working with some of the most iconic names in pop music — Carly Simon, Bonnie Raitt, The B-52s, Iggy Pop, Bob Dylan, Elton John, Bob Seger, Glenn Fry, Roy Orbison to name just a scant few — winning six Grammys and an Emmy Award, playing bass in a band led by a founding member of the Grateful Dead and presiding over one of the world’s pre-eminent jazz record labels, you would think Don Was had pretty much checked all his music boxes.
Not even close.
On Wednesday, Aug. 5, the Detroit native will introduce Tucson to his latest project, Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, at La Rosa, 800 N. Country Club Road.
The nine-member jazz ensemble, assembled last year from some of Detroit’s finest musicians including singer-songwriter Steffanie Christi’ann, saxophonist Dave McMurray and drummer Jeff Canaday, will spend the first half of the show performing its months-old debut album, “Groove in the Face of Adversity.”
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The second half will be dedicated to the Grateful Dead’s 1975 “Blues for Allah” album.
Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble bring their maiden tour to Tucson's La Rosa on Wednesday, Aug. 5.
“We play the whole album in its entirety. It takes about 40 minutes,” said the 73-year-old Was, who played bass for eight years for Grateful Dead founding member Bob Weir’s band Wolf Bros.
Until he joined Weir, Was admitted he wasn’t much of a Grateful Dead fan.
“I saw him play in 1972, but I would never want to follow a tour around,” he said. “I didn't know all the songs, but I do now.”
Don Was was a member of the late Bob Weir's Wolf Bros rock band, which the former Grateful Dead member launched in 2018.
The nod to the Dead has been part of the Pan-Detroit Ensemble’s live shows since the beginning. But it played a bigger role last year when the band was booked to play a Grateful Dead festival in Buford, Georgia. The organizers suggested the band play the Dead’s “Blues for Allah” album cover to cover to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its release
“I thought, all right, that'd be ambitious. This sounds like high adventure,” said Was.
But Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble didn’t want to do “karaoke Grateful Dead” by performing the songs just as the Dead had recorded them.
“You have to play from the heart and play the songs the way you would play them,” he said, recalling advice he has given to some of his Blue Note artists over the years and has taken to heart himself.
Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble bring their interpretation of the Grateful Dead's 1975 album "Blues for Allah" to Tucson on Wednesday.
Back in 2018 when Weir invited Was to be a part of the Wolf Bros., the “specter” of Grateful Dead founding bass player Phil Lesh loomed large, as did that of Bob Wasserman, the legendary bass player who was part of Weir’s post-Dead band RatDog.
“They're all virtuosic bass players, and I approached the song in a really different way, and I didn't know how to play like Phil,” Was recalled.
Two nights in, Weir took Was aside.
“You know, the thing about Phil is that he was playing like Phil. He was just being himself,” Was recalled Weir saying. “That's all any of us were doing. So if you try to imitate Phil, you're not doing it right. You got to be you.”
That advice gave Was “license to be myself.”
“I was able to embark on a period of discovery on these songs, and it took a while to find my own way into it, but we were getting there,” he said.
“Blues for Allah” was a bit of a turning point for the Dead, an album that showcased the jazz-fusion that the band had tiptoed into on two earlier records and added experimental sounds influenced by Middle Eastern music. Critics also praised its emphasis on jamming and improvisation.
Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble take that notion of improv to heart in their live performance of the album.
“Some of these ‘Blues for Allah’ things, we really had to Detroitize them a little bit to find a groove, and we did find a way,” he said, using the track “Crazy Fingers” as an example.
“ ‘Crazy Fingers’ has got this kind of … reggae-ish feeling to it that we couldn't play with any kind of heart and soul or authenticity,” he explained. “But what we could do is turn it into something in six-eight, kind of more like the feel of ‘Dreams to Remember’. … We play that song like that, and at least it feels (like) it rings true, and we can give an honest interpretation every night. That's really what you want.”
The band’s performance in Buford in 2025 inspired Was to prominently feature “Blues for Allah” on the band’s first-ever national tour, which kicked off Jan. 10, 2026, at the Blue Llama Jazz Club in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
An hour before the show, Was got the call that Bob Weir had died; he was 78 years old.
“We had a house full of Deadheads and I had to tell them all that Bobby was gone,” Was said.
Grammy-winning producer Don Was brings his new project, the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, to La Rosa on Wednesday.
He considered canceling the show and the tour altogether, “but it turned out that Grateful Dead fans were looking for a place to be together and grieve a little bit,” he recalled.
“They actually started coming to our shows, and I'd go out in the audience afterwards and hang out with them and let everybody talk about Bobby,” he said. “It actually was quite cathartic for me, and I think for the audience members.”
When he’s not on the road, Was can be found in the offices of Blue Note or in the studio producing other artists. His credits include Bonnie Raitt’s 1989 Grammy-winning breakout album “Nick of Time” and The Rolling Stones’ 1997 Grammy-winning record “Bridges to Babylon.”
Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble open the late summer leg of their tour in Phoenix on Monday, Aug. 3, before the La Rosa show in Tucson at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. Tickets start at $45.19 through larosatucson.org.
Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@tucson.com. On Bluesky @Starburch
Cathalena E. Burch
Reporter
