Jakob Dylan, fighting to regain the long-lost career momentum he had with The Wallflowers’ 1996 multimillion-selling, Grammy-winning Bringing Down the Horse, is coming to town Saturday night to showcase a new Roots Rock album, Women and Country. To show he means business on this disc, the singer/songwriter reunited with Horse producer T-Bone Burnett.
The new album prominently features Neko Case and Kelly Hogan on supporting vocals, and the two singers will be on stage with Dylan in Covington. Considering Case is a headliner in her own right and Hogan has one of the most appealing and adaptable voices around, it’s like getting three star vocalists for the price of one. Case’s back-up band — dubbed Three Legs — is providing Dylan’s instrumental support.
When the Wallflowers had their breakthrough with Horse, the music press was full of stories about a father bestowing his legacy on a son ... and then getting out of the way. Jakob was the youngest child born to Bob Dylan and ex-wife Sara.
But that didn’t jibe with Jakob’s dad’s plans. After a relative career lull in the mid-1990s, Bob Dylan came roaring back in 1997 with one of his most acclaimed albums ever, Time Out of Mind, and basically hasn’t looked back since, remaining amazingly vital.
His son, on the other hand, has seen much of the bloom fade from his rosy breakthrough, as three subsequent Wallflowers albums brought diminishing returns and attention. (It didn’t help that he waited four years to follow up Horse.) As that band went into a kind of semi-retirement, Dylan chose to release a primarily acoustic album, 2008’s Seeing Things, with producer Rick Rubin. Critically well received, it was nevertheless overlooked in the crowded marketplace.
Now Dylan is signaling that he might be tired of spending time out of (our) minds.
(Buy tickets, check out performance times and get venue details here.)
