It’s a true toss up to pick what part of Don Was’s unending list of musical accomplishments is most impressive. There’s the 1988 trampoline bounce from an obscure producer to the top of the wish list for music elites to work with. Winning two Grammys for producing The B-52s immortal hit Love Shack and Bonnie Raitt’s album Nick of Time in a two-month span will do that. More improbale than Was’s rapid ascent is the fact he’s still riding that same wave today. He hasn’t stopped. Six Grammys in, and Was’s influcence on music in the last six decades is immeasurable and will likely never be matched.
In part two of Slide&Banjo’s extensive look at Was’s legendary career, he offers insight into his innate ability to keep the momentum perpetually moving forward. He also shares some of the incredible rock and roll stories that literally happened in front of him. Including an impossible lightning in a bottle moment where a meeting between Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and John Mayer in his office would create the band Dead and Company. Unknown to him at the time, it would keep in motion his own unique musical collaboration with Weir. A career altering excursion and immersion into the world of the Grateful Dead.
Although he’s soared to musical heights few have flown, Was tells Slide&Banjo he would have been happy just making ends meet as a musician. “All I’ve ever done is play music. My goal in life was simply to never have a job.” Was muses. “I would have been fine playing Detroit bars for the rest of my life. I caught some breaks. I love being in the studio and always have. I started making records in the 70’s in Detroit. I wasn’t having much luck. I thought we were making records that people would like to hear. They weren’t getting the opportunity to hear them. It was a little frustrating. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong.”
“In 1988, it happened back-to-back. In August 1988, I produced half of The B-52s album Cosmic Thing. The one with Love Shack. In September, I produced Nick of Time with Bonnie Raitt. Those two things together were hit records and won Grammys. So, in a pretty short period of time, I went from being a producing pariah to someone whose phone is lighting up. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t doing anything different than I was a year before. If you want to be a successful producer, work with great artists. I hadn’t had the opportunity to work with someone like Bonnie Raitt before that. That changed things. I’m still riding the wave of those two albums.”
Now blessed with the opportunity to choose from the prime cuts of musical projects, Was made a wise and important career decision. Don’t pigeonhole yourself. While his work with Raitt wasn’t finished, Was was resolute. He wasn’t going to be to be tied to one type of music. So, in 1989, he went nuts. Not literally but given his productivity and the people he worked with, he must have come close. “There were certain strategic things to avoid being typecast.” Was recalls. “It was deliberate. After Nick of Time, I’d get offers to produce female, blues guitar players. They were talented, good artists. I thought uh-oh, they’re going to set their sights on you, lock you in and you will be done as soon as this musical style isn’t fashionable.”
“In 1989, I went from Iggy Pop to Paula Abdul, to Bob Dylan to Neil Diamond to Bob Seager. It wasn’t to avoid being typecast. They were fun adventures. What you don’t want to do is keep repeating yourself. You just become boring that way. I was trying to have some fun adventures and work with my heroes because that seemed like a fun thing to do.”
A couple of years later Was worked on fellow bassist Rob Wasserman’s album Trios. The project allowed Wasserman to introduce Was to the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir. Wasserman was a part of Weir’s side project Ratdog at the time. That 1994 meeting sent a jolt of electricity through the cosmos that would change Was’s on stage career two decades later.
Was begins the tale of how that meeting would eventually collide with his work with pop superstar John Mayer. A seismic shift in the music world leading to the formation of three bands… Dead and Company, Bob Weir and Wolf Bros., and Bob Weir & Wolf Bros Featuring the Wolfpack. The final projects of Weir’s storied 60-year career. “It was in the 90’s. Rob had an album called Trios. I did the Brian Wilson and Sam Phillips song. I got to know Rob then. He and Bobby were doing a duo at that time. They came to play in Pasadena and Rob said come have breakfast with us. So, he introduced us.”
“Years later, I had produced a couple of albums for John Mayer. Every time I got in his car, he had the Grateful Dead channel on. He didn’t have to look at the screen to identify the show. He was like, ‘Jerry didn’t get that Maestro pedal until August of ‘78, so it’s got to be the fall tour.’ It was surprising. He turned me on to a lot of the nuances in the music I hadn’t been aware of.”
In addition to his decades long resume of working with music royalty, Was is the president of Blue Note records. Blue Note is the elite jazz record label. Its roster of musicians is pretty much all of jazz music and its long history. One random day, Weir had a project to pitch. Who better to turn to than the legendary Was. He continues. “I’d run into Bobby from time to time. I had become president of Blue Note, and he called me out of the blue. He and Mickey came to see me regarding putting out his solo records. When Bob and Mickey came to visit me in my office, John just happened to be downstairs recording at Capital Records in Hollywood. I called him up and said you better get up here right now. You won’t believe who is in the office. He came up. Bob, Mickey, and John started talking. Everything just clicked. Bobby invited him up to his TRI studio to jam. I drove up there with John, and that was the birth of Dead and Company.”
According to Was, Mayer would completely check out after this meeting to prepare for the jam session of his lifetime. “It was about three months from the meeting in my office to when John went up there to play. He shut down the record he was starting to record, took all his equipment home and did nothing but play Grateful Dead songs for three months. He didn’t try to figure out the core of the Dead, but how he could play like himself and do the job of being the lead guitar player in that band. When we got to TRI, he blew everyone away. It was clear in the first ten minutes that Dead and Company was going to be a band. They just gelled. It was because John had done his homework. Really immersed himself in the songs.”
Thanks to that magical meeting in Was’s office, in 2015 Dead and Company would debut. Featuring original Grateful Dead members Weir, Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann alongside Mayer, Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti, the band would play hundreds of shows ultimately coming to an end with Weir’s passing in early 2026.
Two years after Dead and Company was rolling, Wasserman (who passed in 2016) would come to Weir in a dream with a message that would change Was’s life. He explains. “Bobby called me out of nowhere. He said Rob came to me in a dream last night. He said the reason he introduced us in the 90’s is that you were supposed to take his place in the band when he was gone. So, do you want to start a trio with me and Jay Lane? I was like, fuck yeah. From that same dream, Bob had the name of the band. He said I dreamed it was called Wolf Brothers, but spelled Bros. Bob turned out to be a very important player in my life.”
Having witnessed his pal Mayer’s seamless transition into Dead and Company, Was followed the same approach by immersing himself in the music. “After he called and invited me to start a trio, I went up there with John and played one of the days. Mike Gordon from Phish had been up there playing and had to leave. So, I played. I didn’t really know the songs well.”
“I thought, learn from John. I went to New York City and locked myself in a room at the Bowery motel with a borrowed bass. I asked Bob to give me six songs to learn. I practiced those songs ten hours a day until they were etched in my soul. I flew to San Francisco and got to TRI. Of course, Bobby didn’t play any of the six songs he told me. We played on an A-minor chord for twenty minutes.”
Just as it was for Mayer, Was’s connection with Weir was immediate. “It was clear we liked playing together and had an affinity for each other’s playing. So, he booked a tour. He was willing to go in front of people with a bass player that wasn’t fully assimilated and invest the time to get tight. The only way to do that is to get in front of people. Wolf Bros. evolved tremendously in the first couple of years. It takes a minute. You can’t just read these songs or put the music in front of yourself. It’s about learning a language and speaking it fluently to people who have been speaking it for 60 years.”
Was also learned to apply the lessons he was learning on stage with Weir to his still unending list of musical projects. “Part of the allure of Wolf Bros., is I was going to take an extended masterclass with one of the great improvisors of our time. To be a great improvisor, you have to be fearless. I knew I’m going to learn about fearlessness by playing in a band with Bob Weir. It’s gonna be such a good lesson. I’m going to extend it beyond the bass. I’m going to apply fearlessness in every aspect of my life. I thought it was going to be a transformative experience. It worked. That did happen.”
Continuing the tradition of most of Weir’s musical projects, the original idea of the three piece Wolf Bros. changed. Thanks to the Covid shutdown and plenty of time to practice, the trio expanded, adding piano, pedal steel, and a five-piece horn section. The Wolfpack was born. Like Dead and Company, this project would continue until Weir’s passing in 2026.
Shrouded with the knowledge and experience learned from his bandmate Weir, Was has charged forward musically since his passing. He and his band Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble are touring the country showcasing their album Groove in the Face of Adversity while also celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Dead’s album Blues For Allah by performing it nightly.
With a decades long list of unmatched accomplishments in the music industry, Was closes by reflecting on the direction he wants to keep riding the wave he’s been on since the eighties. “It’s not a list of accomplishments. What I want to do. I’m 73, and I don’t know how long my fingers are good for. They’re in great shape now, but 10 years from now they won’t be. So, I’ve got a limited period of time to become as good as I can be on the bass. It’s like I can see the train pulling into the station on this one. Time is running out so I’m determined to get better at it. No matter how good someone is on an instrument, there’s always a new place to go. A new level to rise to. Music will never let you down. If you stick with it. It will always challenge you. I want to get better at it. I want to develop harmonically. To move around and get things inside my head, out. The thing I really got hooked on with Bob was that energy exchange with the audience. Where they’re so tuned in with what you’re doing, you can feel it coming back at you. It gets inside you and starts moving your fingers. That exchange is maybe the most exclusive thing I’ve experienced. If I could play 300 shows a year, I would. I’d live on a bus. I have no doubt about that.”
Below is a photo gallery from Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble’s performance at the Germantwon Performing Arts Center on March 29th 2026.
