Free (At First)
Still recovering from everything: the tour, the marathon, getting sick, growing up. I’ve been feeling a little better: cough’s going away, voice’s coming back. Optimism’s on the rise.
I wrote a piece on The Wallflower’s new CD for MTVNews.com. Their “Bringing Down The Horse” was a big influence for me in the late ’90s. I listened to it non-stop as I road tripped to Graceland the week before I began working for the mighty Viacom. So I was eager to hear their new album, which I dig. The interesting part of the process for me, though, was discovering (again, perhaps) how impossible it is to write these pieces without projecting my story onto theirs (see “Red Letter Days Shows Wallflowers Aren’t Leaving The Dance”).
The article ended up being “How To Endure In The Music Business,” which you, dear reader, will surely recognize as a familiar topic on these pages. My favorite part of the story, ripped straight from the band’s bio, is the following quote which I could have easily said myself (all be it on an up day):
There is that saying that ‘It’s not a race, it’s a marathon.’ I’m not even into that. I don’t see anybody in front of me or anybody behind me, and there is no finish line. You just keep going.
I’ve also been doing some thinking about what motivates me to write songs, record and perform them. It’s a complicated question. Without revealing too much (‘cuz for God’s sake, I have to keep something for myself), I thought I’d share this cool quote from my former creative writing professor — and hero — Tobias Wolff:
“It isn’t just for the product of the story or the novel, but it’s actually for the experience of that bliss that you sometimes do have when you write, as you’re somehow transported or elevated. So that’s what keeps you going back. It comes to you free, at first, and then you have to work for it.”
And… so… I just keep going.
Red Letter Days Shows Wallflowers Aren’t Leaving The Dance
It’s a long and somewhat twisted road that has led the Wallflowers back to record stores this week with Red Letter Days.
The band first met the masses with its 1996 commercial breakthrough Bringing Down the Horse, an album that helped to make the Wallflowers one of the hottest groups in America. Torchbearers for a roots-rock resurgence that included Sheryl Crow, Counting Crows and Joan Osbourne, the band and its “6th Avenue Heartache” crackled on radio and video outlets, where a David Fincher-directed clip ran in heavy rotation.
Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi dropped in for encores at their shows. The Rolling Stones tapped the Wallflowers to open, and the band won two Grammys. From the cover of Rolling Stone to the Billboard Hot 100 to the coveted “Saturday Night Live” stage, the Wallflowers were everywhere.
But when the band resurfaced in 2000 with the equally luminous Breach, the mid-tempo guitar rock that was its foundation had fallen from grace, bumped from the charts by prefab pop.
And now Red Letter Days finds the band — especially its blue-eyed frontman, Jakob Dylan — bruised, perhaps, but resolute in the face of fickle pop-music fashions.
The LP opens with the oscillating synth bass and electronic breakbeats of “When You’re on Top.” Dylan sing-speaks the verses (not entirely unlike his father’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”) over what could be momentarily mistaken for a David Gray or Paul Oakenfold outtake. But when the chorus explodes with the band’s trademark shimmering guitars and richly textured harmonies, it’s like someone put the top down on the convertible.
“I feel fine with the sun in my eyes, the wind in my hair, falling from the sky” Dylan sings, “I’m doing better than I thought I would but nothing’s ever as good as when you’re on top.”
“[It's] the first thing that really got the group excited,” Dylan said of the track. “[We] realized that we were reaching somewhere different from just louder or softer or faster or slower. [It] really set the pace for the group that we were on to something.”
The band turned to original Wallflowers guitarist turned producer Tobias Miller and his partner Bill Appleberry (Adema) to helm the project.
“We had the finger on exactly what we wanted to do, [so] there was really nobody better,” Dylan said. “He was truth to me. Knowing that this is a guy I went to grade school with, he’s as good as anybody else out there with a four-star name, really.”
The song’s ProTools-enhanced flourishes demonstrate something of a new direction for the Wallflowers. But the balance of the CD, from the staccato electric guitars of “Out of the Water” to the more plaintive, acoustic-driven “Here in Pleasantville,” suggests the band understands its strengths and is sticking to its guns. Lyrically, Dylan the singer/songwriter wrestles with the fickle nature of fame, and wins. The signposts are everywhere.
“I’m not looking for a warm embrace, I’m not looking for a friendly face,” Dylan sings on “Everything I Need.” “On the way down is when I found out I’ve got everything I need.”
Capable of adaptation but confident in its skill set, Red Letter Days demonstrates that the quartet is in the rock band business for the long haul.
“It’s too late to quit, too soon to go home,” Dylan sings in “Too Late to Quit,” summarizing the band’s position in the corporate pop landscape.
“There’s that saying that ‘It’s not a race, it’s a marathon,’ ” Dylan said. “[But] I don’t see anybody in front of me or anybody behind me, and there is no finish line. You just keep going.”
This article first appeared on MTVNews.com.
