Jakob Dylan resurrects The Wallflowers name for his latest album. By Brian Wise
J
akob Dylan is at home in Los Angeles when we catch up online to talk about the new Wallflowers album, Exit Wounds, released in early July. He is about to go out on a twenty-plus date tour that will take the latest rendition of the band through until the end of November. “It’s 73 and sunny, like every other day of the year,” replies Dylan when I ask him what it is like there. Having lived in the city for almost all his life, apart from his first few years in New York and some time in college back there, he adds knowingly, “I haven’t even looked outside but I know that it’s that.” In fact, for several years up to 2019 Jakob had been immersed in one of Los Angeles’ most famous music locations as executive producer, narrator and star in the acclaimed documentary film Echo In The Canyon. The film found Dylan as executive producer, collaborating or interviewing artists such as Neil Young, Brian Wilson, Beck and Fiona Apple as well as being part of the last on-screen appearance by Tom Petty.
“Bands are really
for kids to be in. Once you grow up, they just don’t make a lot of sense for most of us.”
Dylan, was a logical choice as the focus for the film with his obvious feel for the music and his father’s affiliation with many of the artists. “It was unexpected that it would take so long, to be honest but it kept me busy,” notes Dylan. “When you do a documentary, there isn’t a script really. It just unfolds depending on where you go and the interviews you get. So, it just went on and on. There’s not a lot of easy interviews to assemble one after the other. You can’t tell Brian Wilson and Eric Clapton when to be somewhere to film. You’ve just got to wait until they’re available and then there might be three months in between interviews. You just have to be patient.” It’s lucky Dylan restricted the timeframe from 1965 to 1968, otherwise it could have been like a Ken Burns series. In fact, there is another twopart series, Laurel Canyon: A Place In Time directed by Allison Ellwood, that takes up the story into the ‘70s. “Well, if you wanted to make a complete documentary about Laurel Canyon, Ken Burns should do that because it would be a long series,”
“I know that if
you’re in this band and playing with me, you’re probably going to have to accept that all of the energy and all of the output and the vision is going to come from me.
”
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