It takes Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble nearly 16 minutes to get from “Help On The Way” to the end of “Franklin’s Tower,” and there’s a good reason to give them every one of those minutes. The three-song run, with “Slipknot!” in the middle, opens Live Dispatch Vol. 1: Blues For Allah ’26 the same way it opens the Grateful Dead’s 1975 album. It’s a chance to hear what happens when a Detroit band built around horns, a soul singer, and a rhythm section that knows its funk gets hold of one of the Dead’s favorite vehicles for a long ride.

Was comes to these songs as a bass player who’s spent years inside them. He played alongside Bob Weir in Wolf Bros for seven years, getting to know the repertoire onstage, where the same song could go somewhere different the next night. The Pan-Detroit Ensemble’s 2026 tour paired songs from its debut, Groove In The Face Of Adversity, with a salute to the 50th anniversary of Blues For Allah. After Weir died in January, playing the album carried a second meaning for Was. He was also saluting the guy he’d stood beside night after night.

“The Music Never Stopped” is where the Detroit connection comes through most clearly. Weir’s song already has plenty of funk in it, and singer Steffanie Christi’an and the horns give that groove a little more push. Put it next to “Crazy Fingers,” with its easy reggae sway, and you get a sense of how many kinds of music were tucked into the same side of a Grateful Dead record. Then there’s “King Solomon’s Marbles,” an instrumental that keeps shifting under the players’ feet. For a band with drummer Jeff Canady and percussionist Mahindi Masai, that’s part of the fun.

Was produces the album from performances recorded in Florida, Colorado, and Pennsylvania. He keeps the original running order, right down to the quiet of “Sage And Spirit” giving way to the strange, spacious title track. That’s a satisfying way to end a record that spends so much of its time moving. Still, if you’re coming to Blues For Allah by way of Detroit soul, drop the needle at the start of side two. “The Music Never Stopped” will get you in the door.