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An American troubadour
Jakob Dylan breaks out on his own with
his new solo album, Seeing Things
by Ben Corbett

With a record like this, it was beneficial for me to have somebody around who has a real special ear for performance,” says Wallflowers leader Jakob Dylan. “Rick Rubin is instinctually right more often than most people. I’ve been in situations with lots of different producers where the questions come up: Is that the take? Is that the right position on the guitar? Is that the right key? You may end up just talking about guitar sounds for weeks at a time. I don’t think [Rubin’s] thing has anything to do with any of that kind of stuff. It’s really about performance, and him having a very good ear for when something is convincing.”

Columbia Records is jostling to stay alive, and pairing Rick Rubin with Dylan for a solo record is one of the first experiments in the industry giant’s new musical chem lab. The prolific Rubin, who took over as co-head of Columbia last summer, and Dylan, who hasn’t recorded with the Wallflowers since 2005, might be the beginning of the company’s salvation. Under other circumstances, having a record produced by Rubin — the man responsible for revitalizing the careers of Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond on his American Recordings label — might signify some major comeback. But not in this case. And not that Dylan and Rubin were necessarily thinking about unit sales when they met sporadically over six months in the bearded production guru’s renowned Hollywood home studio. Their concerns were with making good music.

“It was something I wanted to do for a while,” says Dylan about his solo record, Seeing Things, to be released June 10th. “If you’re making records with a band, you’re well aware that some songs are not necessarily your strongest songs, but they serve a good purpose for a band. But if you take that away from the process and you’re left with just focusing on the songwriting, it’s not a question of working harder, it’s just a question of working differently, knowing that only the song is going to be exposed here. A lot of this record was really about not exploring all those things you would normally do in a band. It was really just about being primitive and being only interested in the song, not having much interest in the technique of the recording at all, really.”

In 2006, with the Wallflowers on hiatus, Dylan went on the road, doing a solo opening acoustic act for T-Bone Burnett (producer of the Wallflowers’ 1996 Grammy-winning Bringing Down the Horse), who hadn’t toured in two decades. On tour, playing stripped-down Wallflowers songs, Dylan was inspired to write solo compositions, leading to a couple of new 2006 compositions, including “Here Comes Now.” In 2007, Dylan recorded “Gimme Some Truth” with Dhani Harrison for the Instant Karma compilation. But his sojourn into writing, specifically solo music, led to the 10 songs that appear on Seeing Things, which, with up-close acoustic arrangements, tend to sound more lyrically personal than Dylan’s louder Wallflowers stage persona.

“In a way [the songs are] personal, and in a way they’re incredibly not personal. It’s kind of a case-by-case scenario. They’re personal as in I care a lot about them, but I would never call myself a ‘confessional’ singer-songwriter. That term kind of turns me off. I’m in there. It’s unavoidable. I can only write about what I care about and what I know and what I think and how I see things.”

Between the cataclysmic foreboding of the opening track, “Evil is Alive and Well,” and the rebounding hope of the single, “Something Good This Way Comes,” Dylan jounces moodily with denuded vocals and guitar, reflecting the bipolar social swings of the world at large today. Under the spell of Rubin’s trademark stripped-down production, and wearing his new hat as troubadour, the result is nothing short of powerful.

“Right now it’s unavoidable,” says Dylan of the darker elements of the album. “You put your ear to someone else’s table, and you hear it all around you. The climate feels that way to me. But I certainly don’t feel like I’m standing up on a mountaintop telling the world what they already know. That’s kind of the trick with songwriting all the time. You’re not going to express any grand revelation to anybody, but you’re trying to find a way to say something that might be unique or maybe someone hasn’t said it that way before.”
The album, he continues, “is what it is. It’s not for everybody, and a lot of people may not get it.”

For the solo tour, Dylan will be joined by the Gold Mountain Rebels, a four-piece unit including Wallflowers drummer Fred Eltringham. But what about the Wallflowers? After four shows already this year, the band is scheduled to appear at the Bonnaroo festival, as well as several sporadic dates in the Midwest and Canada, but no major touring is in the works. Those who do attend a Wallflowers performance will notice the absence of original member, keyboardist Rami Jaffee, who has left for other endeavors and has lately been sitting in with Dave Grohl’s Foo Fighters.

“It’s obviously a long story,” says Dylan of Jaffee’s departure. “We’ve been in the band together for a long, long time, and he decided there were other things that he wanted to do. Beyond that, it’s probably no different than the usual things you hear about people splitting up. It’s no more interesting or no less interesting. It’s a long road. Everybody’s gotta make choices, and I would never try to stop anybody from making choices that they want to make.”

With his new solo effort, and amidst a cold spell of new Wallflowers material, rumors are circulating that Dylan could be hanging the band up after continuous personnel changes, and an itinerary that seems to grow shorter by the year. But not so, says the 38-year-old singer-songwriter: “We have some shows to play this summer. The band is good, and as much as I’m looking forward to playing these songs on the acoustic guitar, I also miss my Telecaster. There’s time for all of it. I keep getting asked about ‘going solo,’ but it never occurred to me. This record is quieter and it’s simpler and some of the familiar people aren’t there. But I would never say I made a decision that I don’t do that thing anymore. I want to do all of it.”

Dylan’s summary of the past 16 years of constant writing, recording and touring?

“I’m just getting through it like anybody else is getting through their thing,” he says. “I certainly wouldn’t take the opportunity to say words like ‘matured,’ ‘grown,’ ‘experienced.’ All those kinds of buzzwords turn me off a little bit. I don’t know. I’m still here and it’s something that I care a lot about. I’m glad to still have the opportunity to be playing. In this day and age, that’s something to be glad for alone.”

On the Bill:
e-town presents Jakob Dylan with Joe Ely and Joel Guzman at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, May 21, at the Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St., Boulder, 303-786-7030.

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