Jakob Dylan Follows In His Father's Footsteps

Source: www.thestar.com - David Bauder, Associated Press

(June 26, 2008) NEW YORK–At 38 years old and the father of four, Jakob Dylan won't be taking any backpacking trips through Europe. A musician's equivalent of that, however, inspired his first solo album.

Asked by friend T-Bone Burnett to be his opening act on a tour last year, Dylan eagerly accepted. It was a break from the rock band he fronts, the Wallflowers, and a chance to hang out backstage with musicians he admires such as Burnett, drummer Jim Keltner and guitarist Marc Ribot.

"It was the opportunity I was kind of waiting for," he said in a recent interview. "I was kind of confused. I didn't want to get right back on the treadmill and write another record for the band. Relationships with the record company (Interscope) had dissipated. It was a bad relationship. Not a crossroads, but we just weren't sure what to do next."

Dylan landed at Columbia, his father Bob's label, and told label chief Rick Rubin he was writing some songs without the band in mind.

He couldn't have gone to a better person. Rubin has produced his share of rock and rap, but his ability to rip protective layers off an artist to get to the essence of a song – his work with Johnny Cash, for instance – is the defining characteristic of his control room talents.

So Dylan entered the School of Rick Rubin, leaving with the disc Seeing Things. The stripped-down affair highlights Dylan's voice and acoustic guitar with only a few musical colourings.

Stark and impressionistic, the songs on Seeing Things require concentration. With no band behind him, Dylan needed to carry them on his own. For the most part he does.

He likens his compositions to paintings, with rich imagery the brush strokes. War is a frequent backdrop to these songs, although the author is quick to say it's not necessarily the current one. He's not much for explaining songs, anyway, feeling listeners have the right to take what they want from them.

Dylan going acoustic is sure to invite comparisons to pop, who, you might recall, had some success in that arena. Musically Jakob is his own man, however. The new song that most makes you think of his father is the opening "Evil is Alive and Well," which structurally and thematically sounds like an inverse to "Gotta Serve Somebody."

Whether his father's work influenced his interest in doing Seeing Things is the one question he knows will come up in virtually every interview. He's easygoing and funny about it.

"I probably let my vanity down in that department a long time ago. If that was my concern, there wouldn't be a lot of options for me to do, period, in my life. If you talk to some people, somebody will tell you he actually invented soup."