at this link<\/a>.<\/p>\nAs if that wasn\u2019t enough, since 2011 Was has served as President of the venerated jazz label Blue Note Records.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
St. Pete Catalyst: You\u2019re a studio rat, but you\u2019re also a live performer. How do they work together? What\u2019s the balance?<\/p>\n
Don Was: Whether you\u2019re producing a record, you\u2019re the artist or you\u2019re the record company, you\u2019re doing the same thing: You\u2019re basically trying to be a part of delivering music to people that\u2019s going to get under their skin, and make \u2018em feel something, and make \u2018em feel better about life, bring \u2018em some comfort in times of chaos and confusion, and just help \u2018em understand some of the existential craziness of being a human being alive on earth, right?<\/p>\n
You\u2019re in a bubble in the studio. Which is kinda nice \u2013 you can create in an unfettered manner in that environment. But there\u2019s really nothing like being onstage with people who are listening in the audience. Having a great conversation, musically, among the band, and then including the audience in that conversation.<\/p>\n
And when they start sending energy back to the stage, it actually impacts your choice of notes. Whatever you\u2019re going to play next is influenced by the audience\u2019s energy. You get this energy exchange going, it\u2019s one of the most exhilarating things I\u2019ve ever experienced in my life, man, you can blow the roof off the theater.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s talk about the band you\u2019re bringing here, the Pan-Detroit Ensemble.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what happened to me: Somewhere in the early \u201890s, I got on my first roll as a producer. And in very short order I got to work with a lot of my heroes \u2013 Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Leonard Cohen, Mick & Keith \u2026 and it gave me a tremendous writer\u2019s block, man, because every time I\u2019d sit down at the piano to write something I\u2019d just think \u201cAhh, what\u2019s the point? Brian Wilson lives 10 minutes away, just give him the lyric.\u201d And it took about five years to get over that.<\/p>\n
One day I was in the studio with Willie Nelson, and I was again bemoaning the fact that I could never be Willie Nelson, and then it hit me: Willie Nelson can never be me. He didn\u2019t grow up in Detroit in 1967, and drop acid and go see the MC5 at the Grande Ballroom. And he didn\u2019t have George Clinton come and play a sock hop at his junior high school. That kind of thing.<\/p>\n
So I thought all right, the thing that makes you different, which often times in the music business is considered a marketing nightmare, is actually your superpower. It\u2019s not a problem. I can\u2019t be Willie Nelson, but I\u2019ve got something he hasn\u2019t got.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Parenthetically, I love Across the Borderline, the album you produced for Willie.<\/p>\n
Thank you, man. I really appreciate that. Of all the albums I\u2019ve worked on, I think that is my favorite.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
OK \u2026 so you\u2019re drawing on your teenage years in Detroit \u2026<\/p>\n
Well, I\u2019m just drawing on who I am. And when it came time to put a band together I thought \u201cDon\u2019t try to be like the other guys. What\u2019s the thing that makes you different?\u201d I grew up in Detroit in the \u201850s and the \u201860s. Go back, find some musicians who grew up listening to the same radio stations s you, who played in the same bars, for the same audiences, and who speak this musical language of Detroit. So that\u2019s what I did.<\/p>\n
And in the very first rehearsal, about 10 minutes in, it felt like we\u2019d been playing together for a decade already.<\/p>\n
Why did taking the job behind the desk at Blue Note appeal to you? And tell me I\u2019m wrong about the desk thing.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re definitely wrong about the desk thing [laughing]. The allure was, I\u2019d been collecting Blue Note records since 1966. A huge fan. And what I pictured was \u201cOh man, everyone\u2019ll knock off at five o\u2019clock, I\u2019ll be able to go down in the basement, put on the master tapes, smoke a joint and listen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Is that what happened?<\/p>\n
No, of course not! All the master tapes are stored in a mountain someplace. They\u2019re super-safe. If I want to hear one reel of something, 15 minutes of something, I have to requisition it. And it takes weeks to get to me.<\/p>\n
[still laughing But I can access it, though. I\u2019ve heard stuff that hasn\u2019t come out, that blew my mind.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But you are making decisions for the company \u2026<\/p>\n
Oh yeah, it\u2019s not a goofy job. I actually feel a tremendous responsibility to be the custodian of this incredible legacy of music that means so much to people.<\/p>\n
Up until that point record companies, they were the enemy to me. They were the guys that came down to the sessions, brought it to a halt, gave you terrible suggestions \u2026 and if you managed to sell records in spite of their suggestions, they\u2019d steal your money. [laughing] That was what I thought of a record company.<\/p>\n
I had to revise that thinking once I got inside, because that\u2019s like a caricature; that\u2019s not what really happens. If you really want to know what a record company is, it\u2019s a bunch of 30-year-old kids who just love music, love musicians and are willing to stay in an office till 11 o\u2019clock at night to work on a record where they may not even know the artist, but they just love the music, and they love the label so much.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s really just a bunch of dedicated music fans. And I had to open my mind up. And I also had to learn how to do the job properly. I\u2019d never had a job in my life. I never thought about producing records as being a job, or playing music as being a job.<\/p>\n
But this was a gig where I had to answer to somebody, and we had benefactors who needed a return on their investment. It took about five years to figure out how to do it in a style that matched who I was. That was copacetic with my life. This is my 15th year.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
You\u2019re one of those producer\/musicians who\u2019ve frequently said that producing records isn\u2019t really a job.<\/p>\n
Well, it\u2019s a cool job. Around the year 2000, Bob Dylan was getting the Kennedy Center Honor. I was in the band, and they invited me to the dinner at the State Department the night before. I got off the elevator with Bruce Springsteen, and I thought I was pretty hot shit. The elevator door opened, and there\u2019s Walter Cronkite talking to Edward Kennedy. I thought OK, now we\u2019re in a different league of hot shit here!<\/p>\n
There were people at that dinner whose politics I really disagreed with. Somewhere in the middle I looked around the room and there was musicians, actors, or artists in general, and politicians. And I thought aw, what the f\u2014, man, it\u2019s just a bunch of guys who didn\u2019t want to lift heavy boxes for a living. Which I could relate to.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t really have a choice in these things. You are who you are. If you\u2019re lucky, you figure out a way to be yourself, and feed your kids.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a record producer, Don Was is an A-lister. He might even be the whole A list. He\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-147449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-st-pete","9":"tag-st-pete-headlines","10":"tag-st-pete-news","11":"tag-st-petersburg","12":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","13":"tag-st-petersburg-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}