Keyboard player says singer/songwriter Jakob Dylan's new material is 'powerful.'
Senior Writer Gil Kaufman reports:
With nearly six months of sporadically interrupted rest from touring under their belts, multi-platinum Los Angeles rockers the Wallflowers are getting ready to enter an L.A. studio and record the follow-up to their 1996 smash, Bringing Down the Horse, according to the group's keyboard player.
"We're heading into the studio soon," keyboardist Rami Jaffe said recently. In San Francisco along with fellow Wallflowers Greg Richling (bass) and Mario Calire (drums) to back up their friend, acclaimed singer/songwriter Joe Henry, for a pair of shows at the Noe Valley Ministry, a relaxed-looking Jaffe expressed relief that the band had come off the road long enough to recharge its batteries for the sessions.
"Jake [Dylan] has lots of powerful new sh--," Jaffe said of some of the songs that the band's singer, Jakob Dylan, has written since the group came off the nearly two-year-long tour in support of Horse. That album featured the breakthrough hits "6th Avenue Heartache," "One Headlight" and "The Difference."
The group was tempted to continue touring into early 1998 -- hitting Europe again, as well as Japan and other areas in Asia that it hadn't conquered yet -- but cooler heads prevailed, Jaffe said. "I was ready to just do it and really build up an audience in Japan and those kinds of places," said Jaffe, wearing his trademark fedora and dark sunglasses. "But the rest of the guys were like, 'no, we need to just take it easy. Enough is enough.' And I'm glad now that they said that. Who knows what the hell would have happened to us if we'd have kept going?"
The Wallflowers, formed in Los Angeles in the late '80s by Jaffe and Dylan -- the son of folk-rock legend Bob Dylan -- achieved breakthrough success with the rootsy rock of Horse, the follow-up to their poorly received 1992 self-titled debut. In addition to spawning a number of radio hits, Horse garnered the group a Grammy in 1998 for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for the song "One Headlight."
With the exception of June's Tibetan Freedom Concert in Washington, D.C., and a few charity gigs, Jaffe said the band's members have been resting, relaxing, hanging out with their friends and families and waiting for Dylan to give the nod for the start of the new album's sessions.
"We're waiting for Jake to just say he's ready to go," said Richling, who, along with Jaffe, will be heard on the track "Fat," on the forthcoming (January '99) Joe Henry album, which Henry said would delve even further into his recent experimentation with loops and strings. "It's definitely Jake's thing, but I think this time around it might be a bit more collaborative."
Although a producer has not been chosen yet, both Jaffe and Richling said they were hopeful that the album would be completed this year and released by the spring of 1999.