Wooden Wand

Says Swans frontman and head of Young God Records Michael Gira, James Jackson Toths got that picaresque quality that Dylan had in his heyday, wherein the shambolic narrator undergoes various travails and epiphaniesharrowing, bleak and darkly comicalin the course of a narrative, then leaves you mystified, both smiling and sad.

Wooden Wand, a.k.a. singer-songwriter James Jackson Toth, has released a vast amount material under such collectives as Wooden Wand & the Vanishing Voice, Wooden Wand & the Sky High Band, and Wooden Wand & the Briarwood Virgins. Toths style has drawn on a variety of both conventional and experimental folk, country and rock influences, including psych folk, acid folk, free folk, and indie. The heavily Neil Young and Crazy Horse-influenced Briarwood, released in November 2011, is perhaps Toths most lyrically accessible record to date.

Briarwood finds the New York native mining the remarkably fertile music scene in Birmingham, Alabama, including two members of the now-defunct VerbenaLes Nuby, also the producer of Briarwood, and Duquette Johnstonmembers of Plate Six, Through the Sparks, and Delicate Cutters. Recent Wooden Wand tours have featured a stripped-down version of the full band, including Janet Simpson-Templin, who has also recorded with Jeffrey Lewis. -lastfm.com