Don Was produced the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Ozzy. At 73, he found his voice in Detroit -- and the Dead

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Set us as preferred The bass legend and superproducer Don Was didn’t expect to be covering Curtis Mayfield’s Civil Rights-era anthem “This Is My Country” on the road in 2026.But lately, the chaos in the United States made the song seem regrettably apropos.“It wasn’t supposed to still feel potent.

It was supposed to be something that served a moment,” said Was, who included the defiant single on his 2025 album “Groove In the Face of Adversity.”“It’s shocking to be here in 2026 and, whatever distance we traveled from 1966 until now, to see it all get reset,” Was said.“That song’s a more powerful statement now than it was then.

It was inconceivable that it would still be relevant — this is supposed to be the utopian age of Aquarius.This is not the way it was supposed to turn out.”Was remembers the tumult, violence and hope that came out of that era in his hometown of Detroit.

The city’s music, famed for rough-hewn virtuosity from blues to soul to techno, is the spring that waters “Adversity.” It is, remarkably, the 73-year-old’s first solo album after a career spanning the pioneering electro-pop band Was (Not Was) and deep producer relationships with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt.He also spent years in Bob Weir & Wolf Bros with the late Grateful Dead founder, and will play from the Dead’s landmark “Blues for Allah” on his tour that stops at Lodge Room on July 7.Music Bright Eyes’ tour, playing two of its biggest albums, stops at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday.

The band’s frontman went through some things to get here.With a backing band of studio killers dubbed the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, “Adversity” has an expansive modern atmosphere, yet a lived-in, filament-bulb quality in the playing that carries through funk, jazz, rock and R&B.

It’s largely a...