A headline in Rolling Stone magazine last week caught our attention here at St. Joe Live: “Jakob Dylan planning Wallflowers reunion.”

Naturally, we had a few questions we wanted to ask Dylan, who kept busy during The Wallflowers’ years-long hiatus by releasing two solo records.

The announcement’s timing couldn’t have been better. Dylan will perform with the Los Angeles-based roots rock band Everest at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 13 at Kansas City’s Midland Theatre.

We caught up with the two-time Grammy-winning artist to talk about the hiatus, what he’s been up to of late and what he has in mind for the future.

St. Joe Live: As I’m sure many people did, I read in Rolling Stone last week that you’re going to be reuniting The Wallflowers. Why did you want to bring the band back together, and what makes this a good time to do it?

Dylan: Well, we’d never broken up, we just, I guess you’d call it a hiatus. We all just got busy doing different things. We’d been together since I’d started working on that group in 1989, so kind of an extended break was due, kind of recharge everybody’s batteries and refocus. I don’t know if it’s a good time or not. I just always liked being in that group, and I think it’s really a valuable group. When I’m not doing it, I miss it. We’ve been trying to find time for a little bit, everybody’s just gotten very busy.

SJL: It’s been about six years since your last album?

Dylan: With The Wallflowers, yeah, I think so.

SJL: I want to get into your solo material as well, but first, are there any plans in place for a new Wallflowers record our tour?

Dylan: For The Wallflowers, we’re going to get in the studio in January and then the plan is to hopefully be able to tour next summer. That’s what we’re shooting for.

SJL: Do you have a new direction in mind for The Wallflowers, or are you going kind of pick up where you left off?

Dylan: Every time you make records you’ve got new concepts and ideas you’re trying to bring in, and I would just kind of pick up where we left off. I think once we get in the room we could start to envision what we could do. I don’t have a new theory right now on how to approach it. We’re going to go in there and just explore that when we get there, see where the songs take us.

SJL: Will it be the same lineup as before?

Dylan: Yeah, it would be the most consistent Wallflowers lineup, the one that has been together the longest — Rami Jaffee and Greg Richling and Fred Eltringham. It would be the same lineup as the last record, and two of those guys have been with me since ’92.

SJL: To get to a little bit of what you’re doing now, you’ve been touring with a band called Everest. One of the things they asked you in Rolling Stone was how you found this band, but can you, for our readers, tell us what you like about his band, why you like touring with them?

Dylan: Well, I haven’t toured with them yet. They’re from L.A., and we’ve had a lot of friends for some time and I’ve heard of them and I’ve checked them out before, and I thought they were great. We looked for an opportunity to get something to do together and we wound up in the studio a few months ago. We shot the idea around of going out and doing some shows, which I’m always looking to do. I’ve been writing a lot, and I haven’t played in a while. I don’t have my own consistent band outside of The Wallflowers to go out and play with, so things kind of fell together very easily. We did a couple rehearsals and just realized it was great, especially the songs from my last two records, giving them a real electric feel that they didn’t have in the previous tours with these records. If I’ve done what I wanted to do, my songs are very pliable, and after listening to them play, they are more pliable than I even imagined. I’m just taking the opportunity to get out and play, which I miss. Minus a show here or there, I haven’t really played a run of shows since last year. That’s what I like doing. I like making records, I like touring. So in the meantime, before I get started with a new Wallflowers record, I want to get out and play.

SJL: What were working on in the studio with Everest?

Dylan: It was a song for a TV show that the timing worked out well. That hasn’t been released yet. I’m not sure when it will. But I was asked to write a song for a TV show, and I thought that was exactly what would get me in the studio with these guys.

SJL: On this tour with Everest, you’ll be performing solo material from 2010’s “Women and Country” and 2008’s “Seeing Things”?

Dylan: We’ll be doing Wallflowers songs, too. My band’s never been that precious about me going out and playing those songs. They’ve always been OK with that and comfortable with that. We’re going to be playing just about everything, whatever we’ve been working out in these rehearsals. It sounds great. My last couple of tours, because of those records, were fairly acoustic based, but this is a four-piece rock band that’s given me a chance to reinterpret a lot of these songs. Almost in a, I don’t want to say more exciting stage, but it’s a little more electrified. I’m not treating these shows as acoustic. I’m not representing those records anymore, I just want to play those songs, and I’m playing the ones that really stretch out and can be addressed by a rock band more so than what I did on these last previous tours.

SJL: Did you approach songwriting any differently when you started working on your solo material.

Dylan: You definitely do. You have a lot more responsibilities in a band, there’s a lot more visions to be shared. That’s what makes groups great and that’s what makes them special, is it’s a collective. You make these records like I’ve done these last two, and it’s really a singular vision. I took a different opportunity to be quieter and let my voice sit on top. It’s a different opportunity than being within a band, and if I ultimately had my choice, I’d like to do both. There’s certainly things I can do on these records that I don’t feel I can do in the context of a band, and vice versa. There’s songs that I can write for The Wallflowers that I don’t think can be played well without them.

SJL: I also wanted to ask you, do you feel that you’ve evolved as a lyricist as well since the hiatus with The Wallflowers started?

Dylan: I don’t know. Do you think? (laughs) I know it’s evolved. People respond to what they respond to. It’s really hard to tell. I’m sure it’s evolved. And that’s part of the excitement and the enjoyment of starting new records. I haven’t gotten to the point where I start writing songs and feel like I’m retreading the same territory. They come to me in bucketloads. I’m not really somebody who writes throughout his life in a daily effort. I tend to focus in blocks, and I’m always excited to hear what’s coming next. I’m never done being surprised how it does advance and how it does evolve.

SJL: You also told Rolling Stone that you never wanted to be “just the guy with the guitar out there.” So I guess the question is, what do you enjoy most about playing with a band as opposed to doing solo performances.

Dylan: One, there’s camaraderie in a group. You tend to share everything on an equal level. You cannot replace that, certainly on your own completely solo or with hired musicians. It’s just a different bag you deal with. I think there’s great, positive things I could say about each, but I think ultimately, my upbringing in music, it did involve having lots of people around that were sharing the same experience. And something’s to be gained by that for everybody. There’s a preciousness that happens to quote unquote “solo shows” that I’m not always interested in doing that. There’s more of a chaos factor that I like about being in a band, that every night, every show is different expectations and different things unfold. There’s an anticipation that I like with that, probably more than the predictability of an acoustic guitar and playing it, where all the pressure becomes about the songs. That’s just not really why I started or how I got into it. I’ve always highly appreciated songs and thought that was my biggest contribution to being in a group is writing the songs. But at the same time, it’s not enjoyable to me when the whole evening becomes just about the songs. Not as a performer, and as an audience member that’s not what I would respond to as much either. It’s just not something that I worked and honed in as much as being in a band, which is where I came up with. I’m glad to do both. There’s a space for all of it. If you do it all, there’s room for all of it. I did the other one for a number of years now, and I look forward to playing with a band.

SJL: Is there anything else you want our readers to know about any of your upcoming plans with The Wallflowers or anything else you’re doing?

Dylan: The only thing I would just hope people would get the idea of is these shows I’m doing, they’re not about my last two records, “Women and Country” or “Seeing Things.” Those are very somber records, and I kind of got that out of my system. These shows I have coming up with this group are, it’s a very loose, energetic show. Which is going to be good for me and probably more resembles the energy of a Wallflowers show than my most recent outings.