Wooden Wand :: “AZAG-TOTH”
In the Sumerian mythological poem “Lugal-e,” Asag, or Azag, is a monstrous demon, so hideous that his presence alone makes fish boil alive in the rivers. He was said to be accompanied into battle by an army of rock demon offspring—born of his union with the mountains themselves.
The first time I saw Toth perform was in the small town where I grew up, just an hour or so outside of Nashville, Tennessee, in 2014. A state and town Toth has mentioned he loves dearly, a close friend and her family owned a local coffee shop at the time that, like a lot of people, represented this cosmic core for not only our small creative community but also the cultural connection, friendship, esoteric energy exchange, and the almighty artistic pursuit that, at the time, thrived in the 2010s. I remember Toth driving down from Lexington, Kentucky, with his lovely wife Leah, where they lived at the time, in their silver Subura during the “Farmer’s Corner” era. It was a late August night; the sun had just set on the square, and the buzz from the college community starting another year began to stir the summer air as we eagerly awaited their almighty arrival. I’ve spoken to Toth many times over the years since, but I warned him there was a Wooden Wand cult like nothing he had ever seen before and that it might be overwhelming, to say the least, when first entering the aromatic threshold. Before we knew it, there they were, locating a primo parking spot right in front of the building for easy entry and exit in case we were to claw at them for an unreasonable amount of encores, fireside chats about life on the road, and the great beyond.
Photo: Leah Toth
“James Jackson Toth’s got that picaresque quality that Dylan had in his heyday, wherein the shambolic narrator undergoes various travails and epiphanies—harrowing, bleak, and darkly comical—in the course of a narrative, then leaves you mystified, both smiling and sad.”
How “AZAG-TOTH” ties into this story is nothing short of spectacular or anything to write home about, besides this being the first piece of music I purchased directly from Toth after his sublime set of magical melodies that ethereal evening, but a tape that, without a doubt, deserves much more atmospherical attention and sonic study than its ultimately received over the last decade. A collection of songs recorded in the compelling comfort of Toth’s home straight onto his Tascam 8-Track digital alone without producers, engineers, and the abundance of studio saturation. Its stripped-back nature and poetic personality sway back and forth in an almost ritualistic rhythm that romantically represents the home recording culture like the greats that set the bar decades before. The album’s worldly warmth compels its listeners to excavate the eternal depths of the soul by audaciously adjusting the temple’s temperature to the degree of celebratory consciousness. With tracks such as “Waveland," “Tall Dark And Lonesome,” “Collateral Damage,” and the album’s impeccable opener, “The Patriot,” which Toth mentioned is based on Gustave Flaubert's 1877 masterpiece “Un Coeur Simple," and the musical idea of Metempsychosis, the supposed transmigration at death of the soul of a human being or animal into a new body of the same or a different species, “AZAG-TOTH” eagerly exhales from the lyrical lungs of profound perfection and melodic mastery in such a way that separates it from previous releases in Toth’s radically transcendent catalog.
Overcoming the sonic shadows of Dylan, Young, and one of the musician’s greatest influences, The Grateful Dead, the album’s handsomely harmonious structure reflects some of the most cosmically complex characteristics of the human condition without getting too close to the sun’s solar stare, for one to live to tell the tale. Released on the short-lived label Lightning Records, which was established by Seth Olinsky (Cy Dune) of Akron/Family acclaim, and a friend of Toth’s, the label’s catalog is rich and sophisticated with material from the likes of William Tyler, Sir Richard Bishop, the late Dick Dale, Moris Tepper & Captain Beefheart and countless others, “AZAG-TOTH” stands as an atmospheric accomplishment, to say the least.
