Photo Credit: Gabi Porter

On Friday, Jan. 31, Don Was served as the musical director during the MusiCares Person of the Year gathering, honoring the Grateful Dead at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Following the impressive occasion, the Blue Note Record president and member of Bob Weir’s Wolf Bros. took part in a new interview, where he unveiled secrets behind the night, including the song Dave Matthews and John Mayer had agreed to cover before Matthews’ cancellation stemming from family illness. 

When asked about conceiving a setlist out of the band’s vast catalog of originals and covers, Was told The Hollywood Reporter, “I think you have to be sensitive to the artists who are going to sing the songs. We try to get them to choose a song that they feel an affinity for. And if they’re stumped, we could make suggestions. But the difference between doing a karaoke version of a Grateful Dead show and doing something with soul and feeling is to allow the artist to choose a song they can sink their teeth into and find something new.”

The night delivered wide-ranging offerings of covers, including a series of collaborations: War & Treaty performed “Samson & Delilah” with Mick Fleetwood and Stweart Copeland; “One More Saturday Night” mused My Morning Jacket and Maggie Rose; “Ripple” found Norah Jones and Bela Fleck together; “Bertha” featured Marcus King and Zac Brown; in addition to Sierra Ferrell and Lukas Nelson’s shared task of performing “It Must Have Been the Roses.”

Before Matthews withdrew from the FireAid benefit concert and MusiCares, he was supposed to team up with Dead & Company’s John Mayer. According to Was, “He was going to do ‘Sugaree’ with Mayer acoustically but had an illness in the family and had to cancel his appearance at MusiCares and at FireAid the night before.”

Speaking to Mayer’s stripped-down take on “Terrapin,” Was revealed, “There was a technical problem with John’s acoustic guitar, which was plugged into the wrong socket for ‘Terrapin.’ We tried to fix it and then they cut away to a tape or something. It took a couple minutes to get it restored on stage. And at that point, the adrenaline was just annihilated. So when we came back to John three to four minutes later to play the song, we were all relaxed, and the song went someplace totally unexpected. So I’m glad we had a technical snafu because we might have been too excited. I thought John sang it beautifully. I was in awe, actually.”

Touching on the longevity of the night, Was said, “Well, they’re all shot and recorded on multi-track, I think it’s just getting clearances from everybody. Sometimes people don’t give clearances for it, but every one of them I’ve done — Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Neil Diamond and Fleetwood Mac — was shot to be a TV show.” 

Read Relix’s recap of MusiCares Honors the Grateful Dead for additional content.