Private press album from Mister James Jackson Toth aka Wooden Wand aka Wand. Recorded on the lam downwind of some fairly destructive personal/artistic episodes, rejected by his record company, fuelled by bad blood and mental cobwebs, Born Bad is both the most intimate, the most bloody-minded and the most revelatory album by Toth to date. The sound is very stripped down and lot more countrified than the bulk of his catalogue. Imagine Nicodemus or Jim Collins playing Gram Parsons “Hippie Boy” (reputedly Dylan’s favourite Parsons track), or how about Townes Van Zandt circa the nihilistic/black hole style of “Nothing” given a one-chance live album for Siltbreeze or how about just Dylan circa The Basement Tapes, prowling his Woodstock home with a shotgun while fans creepy-crawl across the roof? Either way this is a stark postcard from the void and won’t stick around for long. Edition of 500 copies, already sold out at source, hand-screened covers, limited numbers available. Recommended.

Excellent collection of demos, home-recordings and out-takes from James Toth, recorded to portastudios between the years 2002-2007. Up-close, intimate atmosphere on this and combined with the quality of Toth's throwaways (which for anyone else would be prima material) this almost has the feel of his Nebrasaka, a series of dark, loner postcards from the other side of America that would bolster and explode traditional country, folk and ballad forms. Excellent. "To quickly address the elephant in the room - certainly, collections of demos, outtakes and home recordings are mostly bogus, but obviously you're reading this, so obviously I've somehow been coerced into releasing this batch of tunes, and you've bought it or stolen it or borrowed it or gotten a promo or whatever, so let's cut to the chase. In my defense, all of the cuts contained herein are 'songs' in the traditional western sense - my experiments in "surf harmonica" and "doom zydeco" will not be chronicled here, deep and plentiful as those archives may be. Everything here was recorded by me on either a Roland BR-8 digital 8-track or it's flashier, more cosmopolitan cousin, the BR- 1600, with incalculable assistance from Jexie Lynn, who accompanies me on many of these songs and who's encouragement and creativity allowed many of them to be. Most of the recordings were done at my then-home in beautiful Knoxville, TN between October 2002 and January of 2007, just prior to the retirement of the Wooden Wand name.  You've already pardoned the narcissism, now pardon the cliche: I stand behind these songs as snapshots and enjoy them despite their many flaws. I hope you do, too." - Wand.

Second limited edition (with slightly different sleeves) of this much-anticipated new private press album from Mister James Jackson Toth aka Wooden Wand aka Wand. Recorded on the lam downwind of some fairly destructive personal/artistic episodes, rejected by his record company, fuelled by bad blood and mental cobwebs, Born Bad is both the most intimate, the most bloody-minded and the most revelatory album by Toth to date. The sound is very stripped down and lot more countrified than the bulk of his catalogue. Imagine Nicodemus or Jim Collins playing Gram Parsons "Hippie Boy" (reputedly Dylan's favourite Parsons track), or how about Townes Van Zandt circa the nihilistic/black hole style of "Nothing" given a one-chance live album for Siltbreeze or how about just Dylan circa The Basement Tapes, prowling his Woodstock home with a shotgun while fans creepy-crawl across the roof? Either way this is a stark postcard from the void and won?t stick around for long. Recommended.

Edition of 500 copies compilation LP with exclusive tracks from Akron/Family, Joanne Robertson & Matthew Ashworth, Wand, Natural Snow Buildings, Married In Berdichev, Moon Duo, The See See and Seadog. Comes with a full colour zine featuring artwork by Jake Blanchard, Pete Fowler, Andrew Rae, Will Sweeney, Sarah King, Olange Gularte, James Trimmer/Mirt and Mat Pringle.

Glorious new privately released album from Wooden Wand with a virtual goddamn big band line-up that features guitar, pedal steel, plenty of organ, drums and slide. Wand has really hit his stride recently after a wobbly period around the Ryko LP and this might just be his most fully-accomplished and all-out gorgeous recording yet. The band have that constant, unfolding/revelatory style of The Hawks/The Band circa ’66 or Dylan’s studio band on Blonde On Blonde, allowing Toth to really roll with the phrasing and his songwriting here has a similar visionary/infinite aspect as classic late-60s Dylan, pushing past simple verse/chorus arrangements in favour of a constant unfolding. His lyrics are still some of the smartest/funniest/rawest of anyone of his generation and the degree of underground smarts and hard-won knowledge he brings to the table – he served time under Matthew Valentine fer gawd’s sake – means even the straightest of pounders are surreptitiously bent. The backing band are fantastic:  powerful, euphoric, hard rocking and the combination of off-the-cuff backing vocals, ripping guitar solos and epic beams of organ makes this the most rewarding singer-songwriter record of the year. In a righteous universe Wand would be the dude on the front cover of Mojo but in a world where dweebs like David Gray are touted as the heir apparent to Bob Dylan, well, I’ll continue to file him alongside Arthur Doyle, NNCK and The Bummer Road and feel damn good about it. Edition of 500 copies, ‘official’ version reputedly due on Fire Records sometime in the future. On coloured vinyl. Can’t recommend this enough. 

Reissue of a bunch of key documents – the Golden Calves Money Band LP and Century Band 12”  – from this pre-Wooden Wand/Vanishing Voice freakout jam band led by Mr James Toth and released in the mid-90s. The sound has that classically fractured post-ESP Disk Siltbreeze feel fully down, with Skip Spence style oblivion ballads further dislocated by almost Shadow Ring-styled idiot avant and drug-dazzled cultic jam blasts ala early Tower Recordings. The spirit of Jandek hovers over the bulk of the recording and Toth makes expressive use of Sterling Smith’s barbed guitar sonorities while orbiting the kind of cultic downer ballads that he would base much of the Vanishing Voice material around. A beautiful sound from a beautiful time. Comes with some hilarious in-depth liners where Toth fesses up to the multiple inspirations behind these still-magical recordings. If you’ve never heard these before then it functions as a key to a whole lot of what was to come later. Highly recommended.