I chatted with The Wallflowers in November during the week their new album, "Red Letter Days," was released. The band will swing through the Theatre of the Living Arts, Philadelphia, on December 6 as part of a two-week warm-up tour for the new album. Additional Pa. dates may be added in 2003 as part of the band's summer tour. -ed.

The Wallflowers know pressure. They know all about it. Consider, for example, the pressure of living up to expectations as a singer-songwriter when your dad is Bob Dylan. Consider the pressure of having your debut major-label album fall flat on its face (barely moving 40,000 copies) and getting dropped from your label. Or, consider the dizzying bipolarity of selling over 4 million copies of your next album (1996's Bringing Down the Horse), picking up two Grammys, and landing your face on the cover of Rolling Stone. Consider, too, the pressures of fame, the pressures of writing a follow-up album, and the pressures of failing miserably with an album like Breach (2000), which barely went gold (500,000 copies sold). The Wallflowers know pressure. But, despite the fact that they were coming off the heels of a perceived flop, the band didn't blink much when the time came to record its newest release, Red Letter Days (November 2002), a remarkable mix of moody, experimental, rainy-day rockers and hook-heavy, sing-along pop tunes reminiscent of the band's flagship hits like "One Headlight" and "6th Avenue Heartache." The Wallflowers are in bloom, and are not afraid to speak their mind about their new album.

"It's fucking delicious," exclaims Rami Jaffee, keyboardist and co-founder of The Wallflowers (with frontman Jakob Dylan), during a recent Fly interview. "It's that simple. It's just so good. It's the kind of thing that you just keep listening to, something you can keep eating. It's not like the fancy, rich, dark chocolate that you have once a week and it's amazing. Or that shrimp with a drizzle sauce. It's just, like, fucking delicious. You could do it all the time, you can listen to it all the time."

And the critics agree. From Rolling Stone to USA Today to Billboard, reviewers are hailing Red Letter Days as a return to the pop aesthetics of the band's earlier albums. But Jaffee, for one, feels the album is a natural progression from Breach rather than a retreat to the poppy stylings that brought the band success in the '90s. "I've been hearing that too, a lot. I don't think any of the guys said that. It just must have been one of those radio programmers - or one of you guys!" Jaffee laughs. "Just because Breach didn't sell 10 million records, hey man, that was still a great record. The band doesn't think, 'Oh, that was a bad record.' It's like, 'Man, that was amazing.' God, the lyrics and the songs - I thought there really was something great there. But on the other hand, when you see the articles and people saying that, 'Oh yeah, [Red Letter Days] is a return back to Bringing Down the Horse,' if that's what's going to make them feel good, then God bless them. ... Can it have those sales, too? We're returning to that. We're returning to 4 million people buying our album."

The recording of the new album began while The Wallflowers were still touring in support of the previous record. "Backstage, we'll just record all day, between sound check and doing nothing. We get out there, and Jake just starts laying them down. He's like, 'Well, here's one. Here's another.' Boom, boom, we're all working together, no producer in our way," Jaffee explains. "We were all on the same page, all really excited to be recording, and Jakob's songs were just amazing, coming out one after another. So we had this telepathy going on. It's a relationship between the band and Jake, where we know where he's going just by him pointing to an instrument. "We totally had a really great band-bonding recording," he continues. "We do a song, everybody's jazzed, everybody's loving each other. We get on the road, and all we do is listen to that song. ... Every night after our show we'd drive to the next town and be like, 'Yeah!' And I'm like, 'This is good. We need to do more of this.'" Jaffee, whose recording credits include albums by everyone from the Go-Gos to Garth Brooks, formed The Wallflowers with Dylan in 1990. "We did our first show as The Apples. I met him in L.A. through a friend of a friend, hanging out at a deli late-night," he says. "The rest is history. He had some demos he played me, and I was so blown away, and I just said, 'OK, when do we rehearse?' And he was like, 'Tomorrow morning!'"

Since then, The Wallflowers have enjoyed their share of drama between fluctuating album sales and a revolving door of backing members. Perhaps most heavily felt was the recent departure of guitarist Michael Ward. "We knew Michael was on his way out, because when we were recording on the tour, he was doing other things, like riding his bike," Jaffee laughs, shrugging off the incident with, "We were never guitar-heavy. ... And Jake's a great guitar player. He's amazing." Any void left by Ward was easily filled on Red Letter Days with a spectrum of guest guitarists including Pearl Jam's Mike McCready.

With the release of Red Letter Days, Dylan is solidifying his role as a formidable songwriting force and putting the cap on the can of worms that his identity as Bob Dylan's son has become. "When you're meeting fans and stuff, you know that they have no idea who [Bob Dylan] is. And they know who Jakob is. Right there, we were like, 'OK, I think it's pretty much cleared up right now,'" Jaffee says, lamenting the fact that Bob Dylan is lost on much of the younger generation. "It's like, 'Wait, but you must know who he is. Go get his records now! I don't care if you're 10!'" he laughs. As for Jakob, Jaffee assures that The Wallflowers' famous frontman is just starting to hit his stride. "You've got songs like 'Closer to You,' songs like 'I've Been Delivered,' songs like 'One Headlight' - he's definitely done his share to add to rock and roll," he says. "And there's probably lots more coming."