Wooden Wand - Music is my radar

With Hank Williams, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings in his head and in his heart, James Jackson Toth seems poised to become yet another martyr of American country music. This is borne out by the latest albums released under the Wooden Wand name, and especially by the excellent “Death Seat“, released on none other than Michael Gira's Young God Records. Despite this, and even though he bears the stigmata of the outlaw and the provincial bard etched into his soul, Wooden Wand's approach is less a sincere adherence to the canons of country than a pure fascination with the iconography and sounds of American Southern music. The result is an unorthodox take on the material, one that has allowed his records to be appreciated even by that large portion of the indie crowd with little familiarity with more traditionalist country. In the interview you're about to read, we retraced the stages of James Jackson Toth's musical journey, starting with his psychedelic beginnings in Vanishing Voice and discussing his musical and literary passions. Enjoy the read.

Ever since you were a kid you've always had a strong attraction to the arid landscapes of the southern United States, where you moved to live with your wife some time ago, but despite your unsuspected "southern" accent you were born and raised in the Big Apple…

To tell you the truth, I don't really have a southern accent, at least not when I speak. Fairly early on I cultivated a non-regional dialect – like a TV newscaster – because I decided I didn't want to sound like Rodney Dangerfield [American comedian with a marked New York accent, ed.]. Having been raised in New York and having spent the last ten years living in the South, I occasionally slip into something that resembles an accent. When I sing, I feel I have a blank check to sing however I feel the song should be sung. Whether that means singing like Joey Ramone or Johnny Rotten or Steve Earle, my only "accent" is rock and roll.

Tell us something about your New York days. What were your first encounters with music?

New York was a great place to grow up as far as musical discoveries go. My first love was heavy metal, and then hip-hop followed. There was access to all of it. My family had always been into heavy metal, and hip-hop was everywhere where I grew up. When Wu-Tang Clan blew up, that was the peak. I still love Wu. And I still love Deicide.

When did you realize you wanted to be a musician? Was it a sudden realization or the end point of some kind of path?

I've only ever wanted to be a musician. In my fifth-grade yearbook, I mention wanting to play bass in a heavy metal band. Music was the only thing I ever cared about. My dad bought me a bunch of 45s one day and that was that.

Judging by your sprawling output, your creative vein always seems to be running hot. Where do you draw inspiration from? How much of your songs is personal?

I think there's autobiography in everything any of us writes, to some extent. I read a lot and listen to a ton of music, and of course, through some kind of osmosis that stuff works its way into what I write, but above all, we all act like radars. I pick up phrases around me and collect them. Songs aren't exactly invented so much as captured, let's say. The trick is to always be listening and to never ignore the muse when it comes knocking.

With Vanishing Voice you played a free folk steeped in heavy psychedelic tones. Do you feel closer to Summer of Love psychedelia, Texas psychedelia, or the urban trance of the New York school (Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, etc.)?

I don't really make those kinds of distinctions, but yes, I love Roky Erickson, and yes, I love Sonic Youth and Lou Reed. I don't think that's anything exceptional. I'm not sure I'd enjoy listening to a rock musician who wasn't inspired in some way by one of those artists. But psychedelic music can just as well be reggae, jazz, or blues.

What legacies of your New York upbringing had the biggest impact on your music?

As I said, simply access. I've worked with people who grew up in tiny out-of-the-way towns in the United States, people who had no access to magazines, no MTV, no college nearby, no older brother or sister or cousin around to teach them about Camper Van Beethoven and R.E.M., or whatever it might be. I somehow took a lot of that stuff for granted. I've been going to shows since I was eleven. I first found myself moshing in front of a stage at twelve, at a Kreator show. I guess kids in Kansas don't experience that kind of shit.

How would you place yourself in relation to the various music scenes around you? Do you feel part of the free folk movement that developed in the United States starting in the early 2000s?

The "movement" is an illusion created by journalists. Personally, I don't align myself with any movement. I have a lot of friends who've also been lumped into that "freak folk" thing, but none of the people I know have ever attached their name to something like that. I think the common thread was that we all owned acoustic guitars and most of us liked Pentangle, or whatever it was. Can that really be considered a movement?

A long-standing collaboration and friendship ties you to Sonic Youth. How did you meet?

I met Thurston in the backstage at a Decaer Pinga show in New York, sometime toward the end of the nineties, and we've been friends ever since. He's been a great supporter of my music over the years, and I'm eternally grateful to him for that. Those guys, that Sonic Youth... sometimes you meet the members of a band you worshipped as a kid, and as soon as you get that access, it starts to diminish your being a fan a little, for whatever reason. My experience with Sonic Youth is exactly the opposite – I love them now more than I've ever loved them, and I've always considered them one of my favorite bands. Lee Ranaldo might be the most underrated songwriter in all of indie rock. A huge source of inspiration.

Your music, especially in your most recent work, reveals a strong bond with that dusty, damned strain of country that digs its roots into tradition while shunning Nashville's glitz. Which artists have had the biggest impact on your development in that direction?

As far as country music goes, the artists who influenced me are the usual suspects – "Waylon and Willie and the boys" [a line from Waylon Jennings's "Luckenbach, Texas," ed.], but also Jerry Jeff Walker, one of my all-time favorites, and 70s honky-tonkers like Michael Martin Murphy and Gary Stewart. There's very little country music I don't like. The same goes for delta blues. It's just my own take on formalism, I think. I'm endlessly fascinated by it. It draws me in on so many levels. I even like Nashville's glitz, as you call it.

How do you approach pre-war country blues?

With admiration and reverence. I try to play guitar along with those records and end up desperately frustrated. It's some of the greatest music in the world.

Your most recent album, "Death Seat", was flawlessly produced by Michael Gira. What was it like working with him? What did you take away from that experience?

Michael is a visionary. He's a producer in the classic sense of the word. His approach to arrangements is astonishing, fascinating and educational. In the studio, his vision is absolute. Working with him was difficult but rewarding. He's a very dear friend and, as far as I'm concerned, the exact definition of a true artist.

The cover image of "Death Seat" conveys a sense of dark unease that's in tune with the twilight mood of the songs, which carry a bleak, melancholy undertone. How did this album come about?

The cover art was Gira's idea, and he also designed it. I generally like image-driven artwork, so that was the part I chose. But the album itself is a collaboration between me and Michael. We carefully combed through 172 songs to decide on the batch we'd use for the album. It was a rigorous process, and an unpleasant one at times.

Was it hard to make that selection? Were the songs that ended up on the record chosen by you alone, or did Michael Gira have a say in it too?

Concessions were made on both sides, as you'd expect from any collaboration, especially one between two people as stubborn, inflexible and immovable as me and Gira. But one way or another we're still on speaking terms, so I'd call it a great success. Now, if only more people bought the record...

Is there a common thread running through the songs?

Since some of the songs date back more than ten years, I can't say there's a shared theme, only that they were songs Michael and I liked enough to include on the album.

After a long string of projects and pseudonyms that's almost hard to keep track of (The Blood Group, Golden Calves Money Band, Wooden Wand and The Vanishing Voice, Wooden Wand Hassara, up to the more recent Wooden Wand), in 2008 you released what could be called your first solo album, "Waiting In Vain", under the name James Jackson Toth. Do you think there might be a follow-up, or do you plan to keep going only under the Wooden Wand name?

Wooden Wand is the name I can't seem to shake. But it could be worse. I like the phallic implications of that name.

The album released under the name James Jackson Toth was an experiment that ended in catastrophe. I should have trusted my instincts instead of deferring to others. Mistakes were made. My fault.

Do you have any new projects on the horizon?

Yes. The new record is a rock and roll album, it's what I've been trying to make since "Second Attention", and I'm very proud of it. It'll be released under the name Wooden Wand & the Briarwood Virgins and will come out before the end of the year.

What's your relationship with your songs? Do you love them (all of them)? Do you listen back to them years later?

I like very few of them and love even fewer. I rarely listen to Wooden Wand albums once they've been released. Once an album is finished and there's no way to change it, I don't really care about it anymore. All I hear are mistakes and compromises. Next. Writing and recording are the fun part.

A lot of alt-country musicians draw on the literary imagery of the southern gothic in their lyrics and in the mood of their songs, taking cues from writers like Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Erskine Caldwell and so on. What are your favorite books? Are there any writers you particularly love?

My favorite authors, or at least the ones I go back to most, are Breece Pancake, Pinckney Benedict, Larry Brown, Cormac McCarthy, Rudy Wurlitzer, Larry McMurtry and J.G. Ballard. I've also taken in a lot of non-fiction, occult texts, true crime stories, biographies, and so on, at various points in my life.

It's all in there somewhere, in my music. Tom Waits said: "whatever you absorb, you'll eventually secrete".

Over the course of your career you've released a huge number of limited editions (more than 100!). The latest in the series, "Wither Thou Goest, Cretin", released shortly before "Death Seat" came out, is actually the 300-copy vinyl reissue of an even more exclusive CD-R, of which only 200 hand-numbered copies exist, each one mounted on a wooden support (needless to say, both are sold-out). What do these limited editions mean to you?

They're limited only because of resources and demand. As for the CD-Rs, we spent several days putting them together. Two hundred was enough. I had glue on everything I owned. Blackest Rainbow released three hundred copies of the LP because we probably felt that was a reasonable number to break even. I'm a supply-and-demand kind of guy. I don't really get into fetishizing limited stuff. Ideally, anyone who wants a copy of a Wooden Wand release should be able to get one.

What's your relationship with the physical side of music? Do you generally like to personally handle the cover art and packaging of your releases, or do you leave it entirely to others?

I like to be involved, obviously, and for most Wooden Wand albums I've drawn or at least conceived the cover art ("Death Seat" and the later Wooden Wand & the Vanishing Voice albums are exceptions). But I'm not really a visual person. I can't draw or paint or sculpt or anything like that. I usually defer to talented friends. It's not something I'm obsessed with. All I ask for is final say.

And as a music listener, what aspects of a CD or vinyl record strike you the most? Do you like collecting albums?

Of course I collect albums! It's a sickness and it's probably kept me out of worse trouble. I love the way an LP sounds and I love the way it looks. I love the crackle you hear when you open a gatefold for the first time. I love reading the liner notes and making connections and trying to figure out why track 2 is track 2 and why track 10 is track 10. I'm an obsessive person, and the thing I'm most obsessive about is music. It's basically a religion.

Let's play a game. Suppose Wooden Wand suddenly had a mainstream breakthrough (like what happened to Bright Eyes). What do you think would change in your approach to music and in your life in general?

I'd probably disappear after one or two albums. I'm not interested in that level of recognition, so to speak. I'm just trying to build a body of work. That said, it would definitely be nice not to have to fix roofs or paint houses anymore.

What are you listening to these days? Is it true you're a black metal fan?

I love black metal, though not as much as other kinds of metal. Lately one of my favorites has been Clair Cassis, who's the guy from Velvet Cacoon, one of my favorite bands. As far as metal goes, I listen to a lot of Portal, Wold and Bone Awl, and I always find myself going back to the Earache stuff I grew up on. "Altar Of Madness" by Morbid Angel and the first Deicide album still sound incredible to me. I've gotten really into recent Darkthrone lately – those albums are insane! – and into a sort of instrumental/doom band from Michigan I just discovered called Beast In The Field. Fantastic stuff. The Raspberry Bulbs LP out on Hospital is mind-blowing, and I really like the new Liturgy album.

Metal aside, I've been obsessed with the George Mitchell Collection released on Fat Possum, and also with some more obscure work by Robert Nighthawk as a sideman. I love the new Cass McCombs record, and Cass McCombs in general. I really like the new Gang Gang Dance, and this electronic group called Raime – and a ton of Blackest Ever Black stuff in general. I like Demdike Stare when it's even more twisted than usual. Right around now my friends are also making fantastic music – Ray from Castanets just sent me his incredible new album, and it completely blew me away. Southeast Engine, Glossary, Black Swans, D. Charles Speer, Everyone Lives Everyone Wins – I'm lucky enough to have so many talented friends making such great music.

If it's true, as Tom Robbins claims, that love is the last outlaw because it answers to no fixed rules, do you think music could be the second-to-last outlaw?

That's a good question, but I like rules. I think it's important, if not crucial, that people pay their debts. So I'll see your Tom Robbins and raise you a David Briggs: "the more you think, the more you stink." Words to live by.

(07/05/2011)

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google