Wooden Wand

Wooden Wand  Looked at in the cold light of discographical concern, James Jackson Toth's career over the past decade has been one of furious activity. A songwriting vagrant in the new music wilderness, Toth has, geographically, rarely stayed anywhere for too long. The constant—a place beyond his jobs laying floor in Murfreesboro or elsewhere—is his deeply haunting folk-blues, documented in a trail of proper albums, cassettes, CD-Rs (and mini-CD-Rs, mind you) created for various labels, tours or friends.  

Most recently, he's back to being Wooden Wand, the nom de plume that graced the first spaced-out releases from his Staten Island homebase and was affixed to the front of his free-floating band, Vanishing Voice, during his Brooklyn days. Like an under-the-radar Will Oldham, though, Toth has spent the better part of his time emerging in different undergrounds, both tucked away in the nether-zones of cassette subcultures (like Chrondritic Sound) and in the mainstream (including an adoption by the Sonic Youth crew for 2007's James and the Quiet).

Each time, Toth has come away with a new iteration of his work, the most recent of which, Death Seat, represents his stay in the South. Joined by Nashville indie staples, including Lambchop and Silver Jews guitarist William Tyler, Death Seat also represents a process of heavy editing by Michael Gira, Swans leader and Young God Records magnate.

"There's wide open spaces and quiet and all your neighbors are firefighters or they own gas stations and you just feel more like a real person," Toth told Interview last year. "You feel like an individual, 'cause you're the songwriter! Rather than like, everyone saying, 'What band are you in?'" Like Bob Dylan in his Nashville Skyline days, Mr. Wand—now a Kentucky gentleman—has toned it down. The haunt, though, remains. —Jesse Jarnow