`Do you want to ask, or should I just go ahead and answer it?” Jakob Dylan asks.
He can see the question coming a mile away (hey, sometimes you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows) and is trying to meet it with good humor and grace. But when you belong to one of the world’s most exclusive clubs, the children of rock stars who are also rock performers, the question is inevitable. People can’t help but wonder what it was like to grow up with a celebrated parent. Julian Lennon, Ziggy Marley, members of Wilson Phillips and Nelson all faced the question-and the inevitable comparisons-and now the same dreary query rings in the ears of the son of famous folk-rocker Bob Dylan.
“What does it mean?” Jakob Dylan ponders. “If you’re bringing it down to the word `famous,’ that doesn’t mean a lot to me. That’s not what I really know. It’s really impossible for me to imagine what it would be like if I’d grown up any other way. I’m just as curious about how you (grew up). Tell me what it was like. It’s no big thing for me. And it only really comes up at a show where maybe someone will yell out an obnoxious call. Or in an interview. Other than that I’m too busy to really pay any attention to it. We rehearse a lot, and I spend a lot of time just working with the band.”
The band in question is the Wallflowers. Together now (first as the Apples and then in slightly expanded form as the Wallflowers) for some four years, guitarist/vocalist Dylan, bassist Barrie Maguire, keyboardist Rami Jaffee, drummer Peter Yanowitz and guitarist Tobi Miller moved into the national spotlight with an impressive debut album last fall and tours since with the Spin Doctors, 10,000 Maniacs and Cracker. (The band just began a debut headlining tour and plays Wednesday at Lounge Ax.) The launching pad was a funky little L.A. spot known as Canter’s.
“It’s a really old deli in Los Angeles on Fairfax,” Dylan explains. “And it’s got a little, really old bar in the back with a piano that’s built into the bar that was really out of tune and had cigarette burns all over it. Rami, our piano player, used to sit down and play it all the time, and he asked if he could have one night of the week where he could invite his friends down to play a little bit in there. And it just escalated with word of mouth. It started out with 30 people, and now, I imagine, five or six hundred people go through there.”
The bands and the music percolating through Canter’s weren’t the usual hard-rock and glam associated with L.A. today. Perhaps the closest Los Angeles referent to the Wallflowers and some of their fellow Canter’s players might be the Knitters, the short-lived country-rock offshoot of X.
But the most frequent comparison is to Dylan pere, particularly in his days with the Band. And while that certainly can be a quick and easy way out of doing a more thoughtful analysis of the Wallflowers, it is not a completely inaccurate portrayal. The band’s debut has a decidedly old-fashioned, folk-rock feel to it. Jakob Dylan’s moody, meandering material (he is the chief songwriter for the group and its lead singer, with a vocal style that could be described as, well, Dylanesque) is heir to the tradition that developed from the ’60s folk-rock boom that Dylan senior was so instrumental in creating. The band’s instrumentation (particularly its use of Hammond B-3 organ) echoes not only the Band but also older R&B, gospel and soul jazz. And the album’s production values have a gritty edge, the result of recording live in the studio.
“We didn’t use headphones,” Dylan explains. “It was all monitors, speakers. I actually sang just behind a glass door with everybody in the other room. It gets a real sound doing that, but we didn’t do that for any old-fashioned reasons or idealistic reasons. People like to congratulate you for it, but we just did it that way because that’s how we rehearse and that’s how we spend time doing shows.
“It was something we wanted to try. We had no idea if it would work. A lot of producers just didn’t want to try it ’cause they don’t know how to do it. It’s kind of an old-fashioned way of doing it. And there’s just not a lot of safety with it. If you mess up, it’s probably going to make it (onto the record).”
Dylan says he is happy with the record and the band. And while he declares himself more than ready to begin work on the next album (“Absolutely. For a long while now. We’re probably on album No. 4 already”), he envisions no major changes in the Wallflowers’ sound or direction. “We’re not trying to make a revolution at all right now,” he says. “I think that’s investing a lot in a rock ‘n’ roll band.”
Picks of the week
Consolidated, New Fast Automatic Daffodils and the Goats, Friday at the Metro: Those industrial provocateurs in Consolidated take their musical soapbox on the road following the late-’92 release of their fourth album, “Play More Music.” The shows (and the records, which are built around audience comments culled from previous tours) are contentious rock town meetings about women’s rights, gay rights, animal rights and the thread that Consolidated says ties them all together, “the unity of oppression.” Don’t expect a love-in, though. If the band’s angry rock-and-rap (when they do get around to playing some music) doesn’t ignite things, the crowd’s willingness to engage in contentious debate will.
Eleventh Dream Day, Saturday at Lounge Ax: This might originally have been intended as a record-release party, but the long-delayed third album from Chicago’s great alternative hope has been put off once again, this time to April 6. Still, expect this show to highlight music from the band’s diverse and introspective new set, the aptly titled “El Moodio.”
Bad Manners, Tuesday at the Metro: The loopy rhythms of ska inspire a certain goofiness, but few bands manage the zaniness (the band did call one album “Loonee Tunes!”) of Bad Manners. Led by the bald and bawdy Buster Bloodvessel, the band skanked its way onto the British charts with four Top 20 albums and 13 hit singles. Typical industry/label difficulties sidelined the group for most of the second half of the ’80s, but when it returned in ’89, Bad Manners was as rude as ever. Back now with a sixth album, “Fat Sound,” the claim still holds.
Other shows of note
Bon Jovi and the Jeff Healey Band appear Friday at the Rosemont Horizon. AOR staples Bon-o and the boys hit the road for the first time in four years following their reunion on disc with “Keep the Faith.” Opening is the trio headed by blues-rock guitarist Jeff Healey. The band scored a hit this winter with “Cruel Little Number” from its mainstream “Feel This” album.
Last week, Concert Line highlighted a record-release date with Rob Fulks at Deja Vu. That date was incorrectly listed for last Friday, when the show in fact is set for tonight. This guitarist/vocalist, former member of the Burning Hunks of Love and Special Consensus Bluegrass Band and host of the monthly “Trailer Trash Night” at the Vu is releasing his first single, “Little King” b/w “Jean Arthur,” a rootsy rock slice with a tinge of country. Special guests (including former bandmates), giveaways and goofiness are still planned.
Antenna, an offshoot of the Blake Babies (with Blake Babies guitarist John Strohm and drummer Freda Love joined by bassist Jake Smith), hosts a record-release party Friday at Lounge Ax, celebrating its new guitar-driven Young meets Grunge meets Coltrane second set, “Hideout.”
It’s “creature features” night Saturday at the Vic with a twin bill of “horrific” hard-rockers, White Zombie and Monster Magnet.
Zachary Richard plays Wednesday at the Rialto Square in Joliet. Along with Beausoleil’s MichaelDoucet (a former bandmate), Richard was one of the earliest Cajun rockers to emerge from the Louisiana roots renaissance and though he is one the most aggressively rocking Cajun performers working today, he manages to remain one of the most authentic as well.
Black 47, a terribly earnest and political Celtic rock band (which released a Ric Ocasek-produced debut EP in the fall and has a full-length disc due in March) plays an early show at China Club Wednesday.
Tito Puente & the Latin Allstars do the late show Wednesday at China Club. This original Mambo King occasionally lets his flair for show-and-salesmanship get the better of things. Here it would be easy to assume the billing means Puente’s musical support comes from the high-powered Latin jazz ensemble that appeared on his latest “Live at the Village Gate” album. In fact, it is his regular working band.
And, yes, the Grateful Dead are back Tuesday through Thursday at the Rosemont Horizon. Sorry, but all shows are sold out. Cheer up, though. Word is the Dead will rise again this summer, and Chicago could be one of the few dates in which Sting opens. Also sold out is the Sundays/Luna show Tuesday at the Vic. For a full listing of this week’s concerts, see This Week in this section.
