Wallflower Is Just an Artist Who Happens to Be Named Dylan
He's a Legend's Son, but Jakob D. Prefers His Own Kind of Rock

3.5.93 By By Brian McTavish for The Kansas City Star

Rock singer Jakob Dylan, son of rock legend Bob Dylan, doesn't get recognized much.

Why should he, when the cover of the debut album by his band the Wallflowers shows the group only from the waist down standing on a cracked sidewalk?

"There's no big attitude pushing it," Dylan said from Seattle before the Wallflowers set out on a 15-hour bus ride to the next gig.

On the bus, "you try to read, you try to write, you try to fall asleep," Dylan said. Only in interviews does he find himself discussing his relationship with his father and the old man's influence on popular music, including the kind performed by the rootsy, late '60s-flavored Wallflowers.

"If I sat around all day long and let this kind of thing infect my brain, it would just be over," Dylan said. "I would be a vegetable."

Instead, the focus is on "my band, rehearsing and playing, and just trying to breathe some clean air outside."

The Wallflowers, which opened for 10,000 Maniacs last year at Memorial Hall, will headline at 9:30 p.m. Saturday at the Grand Emporium, 3832 Main St. Tickets cost $5 at Ticketmaster centers (931-3330) and $6 at the door.

Besides journalists bringing up his dad, "somebody at a show might yell out a song title, thinking I might do it," Dylan said. "I don't think they think they're being rude. They actually think like they've got some kind of bond with me, I imagine."

So how does it feel to be viewed as the Son of Bob?

"A lot of people are obviously just gawkers," Dylan said. "They read a lot of trash magazines, and that's the very type of subject that interests people - a non-subject, almost.

"People are looking for a movie of the week in my house. There really wasn't."

Bob Dylan's most important influence on his son was as a "positive parent," Dylan said. "And, indirectly, probably everyone I admire was influenced by him," including Van Morrison and especially The Band, which backed Bob Dylan on several albums and concert tours.

"I like The Band a lot," Dylan said. "I know those records fairly well - really well, actually."

That affinity is reflected in the music of the Wallflowers, a hometown Hollywood band characterized as much by its invigorating Hammond B-3 organ accents as by Dylan's scratchy vocals weaving their way through the loose song structures of "Shy of the Moon" and "Sidewalk Annie."

"It's just a real organic sound, music that you can imagine in your head," Dylan said. "A lot of (techno) music that comes out now, you can't even imagine what they're doing, how it gets there.

"It's not a conscious effort to be roots rock or whatever they want to call it. I don't even call it. I call it 1-2-3-4, and start the song. It just seems like a normal kind of attitude to playing. Just relaxing, setting up and playing those instruments."

Just wondering: Has Big Bob offered his offspring any advice on a music career?

"I'll give you a one-word answer that I think will sum it up for you," Dylan said. "Obviously." OK, I deserved that.