Flume exec tail -f date on apache log

I'm trying to setup a flume source using the exec type and using tail -F on a log file that will be date stamped. The docs indicate typical unix commands would work, but this is not working at all.

agent.sources.apache.command = tail -F /usr/local/apache/localhost/logs/access_log.`date +%Y%m%d`

If I use "tail -F /usr/local/apache/localhost/logs/access_log.`date +%Y%m%d`" at the shell it works perfectly, but used inside the flume.conf for this source, I get nothing.

Is there a way to use the unix date formatting in the source definition in flume.conf?

-- Guyle