Smokin' Section: Jakob Dylan

“Haven’t there been moments over the last few years when you asked yourself, ‘Am I seeing things?’ ” says Jakob Dylan, explaining to the Smoking Section the title of his first solo album, Seeing Things. While his Wallflowers have been on hiatus, Dylan spent 2007 visiting Rick Rubin's studio, where he laid down minimalist acoustic tracks that deal with the darkness of these times — “Evil Is Alive and Well” and “All Day and All Night” — and more contented tunes like “Something Good This Way Comes.” “This is something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and I couldn’t be happier,” says Dylan. “It had nothing to do with clocking in or clocking out and setting up pinball machines and hiring a secretary. Rick provided the environment and offered incredibly useful judgment about where the songs were headed. It’s intangible, but Rick is right more than anybody I’ve ever worked with.”

- for Rolling Stone Magazine March 2008