This Dylan Is NoWallflower (But He Really Is) : Bob’s youngest son, Jakob, leads L.A. band the Wallflowers, which has an album out on Virgin. He’s more accessible than his father.

Bob Dylan has spent virtually his whole life alternately creating and destroying myths about himself.

His youngest son, Jakob, wants nothing to do with myths in his own nascent musical career. He’s the leader of the Los Angeles band the Wallflowers, which released its first album, simply titled “The Wallflowers,” on Virgin Records last year.

Interviews with the elder Dylan have often been cryptic game-playing and surly jousts with journalists. A conversation with Jakob is anything but that. He’s a genial young man and gentle conversationalist with an easy smile.

He knows, though, that plenty of other people are eager to do some myth-making for him, measuring his every move against his father, to whom, for better or worse, he bears a physical and vocal resemblance.

“The truth is, I’m too busy to pay attention to all that,” Dylan, 23, said recently in a Hollywood rehearsal hall where the band was preparing for a U.S. concert tour. “Once you get in the business of defending yourself and the band in the press, you’re in bad shape.”

And he certainly has no interest in being seen as the kind of cultural oracle that many have made his father. “I’m not trying to tell people what to do,” he said. “God knows there’s been too much of that.”

But he accepts that people will always compare him to his father, and that the connection may be the primary reason that many pay any attention to him in the first place.

“If people buy the record or come to a show for whatever reason, that’s that,” he said. “And if you take the record for what it is and just listen to it, that would be fine.”

When they listen, though, Dylan hopes people will not try to make more of his songs than what he puts into them.

“I’m just trying to play and write songs about the neighborhood,” he said. “It’s an old job, an old business, and I’m not trying to change anything.”

Actually, to him it’s a relatively new business. He played guitar in high school bands, but didn’t start writing songs until four years ago.

Dylan and a childhood friend, guitarist Tobi Miller, started to develop their music more formally at that time in a band, then called the Apples, inspired primarily by the Clash and the Replacements. With the addition of keyboardist Rami Jaffee and a broadening of influences to include the likes of Neil Young and Van Morrison, the Wallflowers--rounded out by bassist Greg Richling and drummer Peter Yanowitz--started to get serious.

The group took a low-key approach, avoiding the L.A. clubs and industry showcase scene, eventually and quietly sending demo tapes to a handful of record executives. Virgin finally offered a deal.

The album has not been a big seller, but constant touring and a reputation for loose, free-flowing concerts has brought the band the attention of the same young fans who have been following such bands as the Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler.

Most of the material for a second album has been written, but the band will stay on the road for a while longer to try to expand its fan base before recording again. The key, the leader says, will be whether people can keep an open mind rather than trying to impose the Dylan mystique on the act.

“This is not a tough band to get,” he said. “What you see is what it is.”