Don Was

Don [Was] is like the oracle. You can check it against him. You're checking it against the real thing. 

So you can always go to him and say, Is this the real thing? Did those guys do that? Or, Do you buy this? And if he bought it, it was cool. There was more time with him telling me it was okay when I didn't think it was, than it was him telling me it wasn't when I thought it was. Which for me is really powerful. I need that. I need someone to say, What are you going for? And there were several times when he'd say, What else are you trying to get? And I'd say, I guess I'm not chasing a sound, I'm chasing a feeling. And we already have the sound, and who needs the feeling. Right? That's tricky.

And then there were times, which is the great part about working with another producer, it that I'd go, Let me just keep trying, let me just keep trying. And I would come up with something better. But the point there is you have someone else to hold the rope. You have someone else to let you go a little deeper down into the cave, but they can always pull you out. I think if I were doing it without him, I would have been in many a flat spin, many a night. But having him there to sort just check everything against. Even just having him say, "Give it an hour. Go look for an hour." At least that hour was spent purely exploring, not half exploring half saying, I got to get out—these people just want to go home.

JM: No I was—this is when I couldn't talk at all—and, I guess Don [Was] gave me Working Man's Dead back when I was making Born and Raised, but I didn't really pay attention to it. I paid attention to "Wooden Ships" by Crosby, Stills & Nash and then I got on a Crosby, Stills & Nash kick—those two records are just insane.

“The songwriting on the record is decidedly modern—there’s no throwback sensibility,” says Don Was, a producer who has worked with Bonnie Raitt, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, and who has helmed two Mayer albums in addition to “Sob Rock.” “As a musician and a songwriter, he’s as good as anybody at finding something that’s going on in his emotional inner life and expressing it eloquently.”

Well, these songs all came out pretty quickly during the pandemic. I'd say around April until June. I tend to write in these concentrated little trances, and when I know I had an album's worth of material, I thought it was the perfect time to make a record, seeing as there wasn't anything else to do that could be nearly as constructive. I remember thinking "I need Don to help on this one," because you have this way of keeping me from feeling lost or helpless as I'm putting an album together. The way I think about it is that you sort of let me tether myself to you creatively, and then I can be free to dream really big without feeling like the whole thing is a waste of time, which you know as an artist, that feeling can creep in pretty quickly with little provocation.

Q: Where on Sob Rock do you see Don Was's hand the most clearly?

A: @donwas goes under and through the entire album; he's the one who lets me go into the unknown and keeps this sage, watchful eye. He'll ask me what I'm going for, let me go looking, then with just a couple of sentences, lead me closer to the mark if I need it. Without him, I'd probably get lost and throw things.