Singer-songwriter James Jackson Toth has been rambling through God’s country with his guitar and rag-tag bands of musicians long enough to have released over 100 pieces of recorded music in the last decade. Currently performing under the moniker Wooden Wand (or sometimes just WAND), the nomad from New York has found a home in the southland, spending the last few years mulling through Knoxville and Murfreesboro, Tennessee, before making camp in Lexington, Kentucky. His second album with the British-bred Fire Records, Blood Oaths of the New Blues, is a poised curtsey to the psychedelic folk mood Toth has refined and polished to near perfection. Blood Oaths could be the most well aged batch of music Toth has released yet. And now that he’s rolling it out, it’s best to pour a glass, blow some smoke, and listen to the man with a fitting namesake and stories to tell.
Toth’s musical outfit has changed often; however, on Blood Oaths he’s found some consistent chemistry, recording for a second time with the Alabama-based Briarwood Virgins. Only peripherally aware of his vast catalog of work, Toth’s voice as Wooden Wand seems mature and focused. He’s been around, seen the world, and while he’s been out there rolling through the dusty hills and down dirt-caked roads, he’s found himself: a grizzled southern soothsayer. Blood Oath sticks to its guns, drawing from related genres and blossoming into a beautiful union of country, acid folk, and Americana. As I listened to the record, I couldn’t help fantasizing about Toth jamming with Simon Joyner or Conor Oberst, grinning in drunken rapture. There’s something to Toth’s presence on Blood Oaths that transcends genre and sets him apart as a storyteller. It’s soul.
You can almost hear the wood floor creak under Toth as he skips from story to story about pure love, bank robberies, and witches. “Dungeon of Irons” and “Southern Colorado Song” are the most narrative-driven tracks, gently paced by the beautiful transitional track “Dome Community People (Are Good People)” and the lengthy opening score “No Bed For Beatle Wand / Days This Long.” Toth delivers his best on the softhearted cry “Supermoon (The Sounding Line)” that features Briarwood’s Janet Elizabeth Simpson. The duet’s visceral harmonies are crushing as Toth sighs at old regrets, “You were to me a ringing fever in my head, an old letter tucked inside a book I’d never read. I made it home someplace you’d never want to stay, three hundred miles, a hundred leagues away.” The other stand-out number “Jhonn Balance” shines as Blood Oaths’ most thoughtful track as Toth questions life after death, singing, “I’d sooner chalk this trip up to existence and leave only my bones.”
All in all, Blood Oaths is a refreshing touch of southern charm. Never too lyrically heavy-handed, Toth has wrangled together a set of stories that sound familiar and appeal to listeners who aren’t familiar with his music or folk in general. Whispers of ambient noise and hallway conversations navigate the albums background, tying together Blood Oaths’ tonal shifts and settling a masterful range of emotion and memory that end with hope. Toth’s wayward drawl and wisdom flow through the final verse of this impressive album as he sings, “No debts, no liens, no postponement of dreams. Smooth sailing now.”
4 / 5 bars
