“There really isn’t a difference,” Jakob Dylan told American Songwriter in 2021, referring to his 30-plus years of music with The Wallflowers and what he has written as a solo artist. “I don’t really know which hat I’m going to put on.”
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In between The Wallflowers’ seven albums, Jakob Dylan has also released two solo albums, Seeing Things in 2008 and the 2010 follow-up Women + Country. Throughout the past 20 years, Dylan has also written and recorded songs for film and television, including three songs for the 2011 feature A Little Help, two more for the vampire series True Blood, and another for NCIS.
In 2018, Dylan also hosted the documentary, Echo in the Canyon, which explored the musical fixtures of Laurel Canyon throughout the 1960s, including Joni Mitchell, the Mamas & the Papas, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and many others.
[RELATED: The Wallflowers Closing the ‘Exit Wounds’]
“You don’t want these songs to live for a moment that you recorded them in an afternoon, and now they’re on a CD or record for the rest of your life,” said Dylan. “You want songs that you can hopefully perform live and that you’ll want to sing in 10 or 15 years. I try to keep my eye on that. You don’t want to be trapped with songs from records that you don’t want to play.”
Dylan’s musical collaborations also span work with Percy Sledge, The Jayhawks, Jesse Malin, Willie Nile, Jordan Zevon, Lucinda Williams, and more
Along the way, Dylan has even written a few songs outside his core catalog. Here’s a look at three songs Dylan also wrote for other artists.
1. “Hope Against Hope,” Rosanne Cash (2003)
Written by Jakob Dylan and Joe Henry
Rosanne Cash recorded her final duet with her father, Johnny Cash on “September When It Comes,” on her 2003 album, Rules of Travel, which was released several months before his death in September of that year. Also featured on Rules of Travel is the mid-tempo story of regrets and should-have said, “Hope Against Hope,” co-written for Cash by Dylan and Joe Henry.
It’s all coming back to me now
But try as I have to keep
The taste of you off of my tongue
Your face from my fitful sleep
And I wait and hope against hope like before
And I wait and hope that I won’t anymore
This won’t stop till I do
Until I learn to kill the thought
Of everything I could have said
Of everything I wished I had not
2. “Oh, Mama, Come Home,” Jakob Dylan/Hank Williams (2011)
Lyrics by Hank Williams; completed and composed by Jakob Dylan
In 2006, a notebook of Hank Williams’ unfinished lyrics was unearthed. By 2011 a collection of artists completed and recorded Williams’ unreleased songs on The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams.
Helping bring Williams’ lost songs to life for the first time were Bob Dylan (“The Love That Faded”), Rodney Crowell and Vince Gill (“I Hope You Shed a Million Tears”), and Patty Loveless (“You’re Through Fooling Me”), Alan Jackson (“You’ve Been Lonesome, Too”), and Lucinda Williams (“I’m So Happy I Found You”), among others.
[RELATED: 3 Songs You Didn’t Know Hank Williams Wrote for Other Artists]
Jakob Dylan also finished Williams’ “Oh, Mama, Come Home” with some of the lyrics below.
Now I woke up this morning and I looked all ’round
’cause then I realized she’d left this town
Oh mama come home oh mama come home
Oh mama come home your daddy is all alone
There’s no one now to warm my bed at night
All my days are long and sad and filled with trouble and strife
Oh mama come home oh mama come home
Oh mama come home your daddy is all alone
Your daddy is getting worried so blue I can’t see
Cooking for these youngins is slowly killing me
Oh mama come home oh mama come home
Oh mama come home your daddy is all alone
But baby I’m so lonely nothing going right
Blues they hang around me both day and night
3. “Seven Times the Charm,” Shawn Colvin (2012)
Written by Jakob Dylan, Shawn Colvin, and John Leventhal
On Shawn Colvin‘s eighth album, All Fall Down, are collaborations with Patty Griffin and Emmylou Harris. Colvin also co-wrote one song “Severn Times the Charm” along with Dylan and Rosanne Cash’s husband and longtime collaborator, musician and songwriter John Leventhal.
The first rose to rise up in the ruins of the flood
You brought me down like a hawk to your glove
But a poor girl is made out of sorrow and blood
Some hearts survive but mine isn’t one
And we go once down the aisle
Twice ’round the stars
You had all the persuasion of a snake on my arm
And seven times the charm
My dreams grew like feathers and fell all at once
Much too heavy but never enough
To lay down beside you and cover you up
Only God should deserve so much love
Photo by Yasmin Than / New West Records
