Coming of age in the Lollapalooza era of the late '80s and early '90s, Harper Simon wasn't inclined to make music in the vein of his famous father -- you know, the literate little guy who used to sing with Garfunkel.

Rather, Harper set out to plot his own course in a more aggressive side of the music scene.

"Punk rock was probably the first music I liked as a young teenager," he says. "In the '90s, it seemed to be all about very loud punk revival. I tried that stuff, but it didn't seem to work for me very well. I guess I just wasn't mature enough as an artist, wasn't able to compete then. Also, my voice doesn't work so great for it. I'm just a soft singer and my voice worked better over a softer thing. I mean, if I could scream like Frank Black I would, but I just don't have that kind of voice."

Although he's releasing his debut album at 37, music has always been in the cards for Harper, from the time he sang with his dad on "Sesame Street" at age 4. As a teenager, he appeared as a guest guitarist with Paul's band on the "Graceland" tour. Later, he went to the Berklee College of Music but dropped out, disillusioned with the style of teaching. Among his recorded output were two projects with his stepmom, Edie Brickell, first on her album "Volcano," then as the band The Heavy Circles. His band projects never went far, though, including a stint with "voodoo folk" band Menlo Park.

"I was very reticent about being a solo artist," he says. "I hoped I could be in a band. I thought I would be happy if I just wrote for a band and played guitar and didn't have to carry the whole thing. But at a certain point, I just never found a band that was good enough to make me happy. I had to figure out how to step up to the plate and become a solo artist, which meant kicking up my skill set several notches."

And giving into his more gentle and melodic DNA. The self-titled debut on his own label sounds like a long-lost Paul Simon album -- surprisingly, a good Paul Simon album, maybe one that would bridge his S&G and solo years. Somehow, Harper Simon has a bright, pretty voice that sounds like Simon crossed with Garfunkel.

He has a similar lyrical introspection and sense of humor, turning phrases like one in "Tennessee," where he sings, "It's a place of moderation, common sense and decency/Well, it's nothing like the way I am/but it's how I'm gonna be."

"Well, I think it was when I was younger," he says of sounding like his dad, "I was very reluctant about that whole thing. Now I have enough sense of self to where that doesn't matter anymore."

Based on the credits, making a bad album would have been a small miracle. The process started in Nashville, where he managed to enlist 77-year-old Bob Johnston, the legendary Columbia producer who worked on the old Bob Dylan and S&G albums, among others.

"I kind of dragged him out of retirement a little bit," Harper says. "I was going to Nashville and I wanted to see who was around from the era I was interested in, that being the '60s, and not knowing those guys, I just thought, 'Somebody find me Bob Johnston.' "

Simon reached him through BMI, and Johnston showed up with vintage session players such as Lloyd Green, Mike Leech, Charlie McCoy and Hargus "Pig" Robbins, guys who had played with Dylan, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, etc. They recorded about 20 tracks in Nashville and then Harper came back north, because he "wanted to see what happened when I mixed it up between those Nashville players and friends from my generation from the alternative rock scene." They would include such ringers as Marc Ribot (Tom Waits), Steve Nieve (Elvis Costello), childhood friend Sean Lennon, and fellow rock progeny Inara George (daughter of Little Feat's Lowell George).

At some point, Dad jumped into the mix as guitarist and co-songwriter on a few tracks.

"After I recorded the tracks in Nashville," Harper says, "I took them to New York and stayed at my father's place, because he's got a home studio there and I thought I could work on the tracks and save some money. He would kind of come by and listen and he got interested in one track and he wanted to try to write over it, a track called 'Ha Ha,' which I thought would be an instrumental. It seemed like kind of a fun thing to do together. He wrote that song and then he worked on another one and he did a little lyrical re-write on a third one. It just happened. We enjoyed it. We had never done it together."

The songs range from flowing folk-rockers such as "Wishes and Stars" to lush, airy S&G-style ballads, like "Berkeley Girl," with a few country romps such as "Tennessee," a nod to his mother, Peggy, Paul's first wife, who is from Newport, Tenn.

"I would go down there in the summer sometimes growing up," Harper says. "It's not like my mom is into country that much -- or my dad. It's really me that likes it. It might just be in my DNA."

Despite the odd similarities to his father's work, Harper Simon's record has been greeted by positive reviews and he backed that up with an impressive spot on "Letterman" that let loose a crack touring band featuring members of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Cat Power.

Simon revealed a stage presence not unlike his father's with a distinct touch of Dylan in his delivery.

"The thing about delivery is you experiment," he says. "Sometimes I want to have the delivery lean a little toward Bob Dylan, sometimes a little toward Keith Richards, sometimes it could lean toward my dad or Neil Young. I don't know, as a singer, I hope it just sounds like me. I'm just playful with my delivery. It's whatever I feel like."

Obviously, Harper has a tough road ahead having to prove, much like Jakob Dylan, the Lennon boys or Rufus Wainwright, that he can break out of a big shadow.

"There's just a lot of people who would like to make up their minds about me ... I don't know ... I find there's a lot of contempt prior to investigation. There's a lot of prejudice and I understand why -- there's a lot of people who might want to put out a vanity project that's not quite credible. They're suspicious about kids of rock stars -- and they probably should be -- even though some of them are great, I think.

"Everybody's just trying their best, you know. But people seem to be particularly ungenerous in the rock world. They don't seem to give a [expletive] about it in Hollywood. But I don't mean to complain because everyone has been very generous about my record so far. I just hope people think it's a credible record and I tried really hard. It's an honest record, the lyrics are honest. I hope people like it."

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