Wooden Wand :: “Harem Of The Sundrum And The Witness Fig”
Like Dylan and the Dead, could there be a sonically “safe” starting point when accessing some of music history's most cosmically complex and poetically prolific catalogs? Depending on your desired degree or sense of worship, as a fan, our responsibility is to achieve the ultimate atmosphere in academics by inhaling as much of the irresistible alchemy-scented aromas from such artists as we can. Fogging up the cosmic church windows while effortlessly enjoying its soundproof space, with crippling carbon monoxide exiting our bodies, as its doors spring open from a whispering wind, revealing yet another student of sonic sorcery and stellar songwriting superstitions, James Jackson Toth. A man by many names like DUNZA, Grim Jim, Jimmy Jack, Wand, and Hassara, but the melodic moniker of Wooden Wand/Jehovah most famously sported, has bee Toth’s shapeshifting status in soothing sensibility and storytelling, which has conquered the unique universe of songwriting and its esoteric ecosystem for over two decades now. Whether compiling stones to build a tonal temple with The Vanishing Voice, The Sky High Band, The Briarwood Virgins, or The Omen Bones Band, his oscillating output has transcended space and time in a way that is so sophisticatedly dedicated to the craft of creating that it makes you wonder, where the fuck does any of this come from? Let’s take a brief yet botanically blissful trip back to 2004/2005, where politics, movie rentals, global bullying, fast food fortunate tellings, cable TV, and the simplest of times dwell, with our prolific protagonist, who released a staggering body of work in just those two years alone.
Unleashing one of his most compellingly dark and harmoniously haunting pieces of work, “Harem Of The Sundrum And The Witness Fig,” an album that should be acknowledged as a perfect place to start or revisit when entering the “Toth Zone,” stands as one of his earliest break-through solo albums, if not the very first, outside of his countless collaborations with a community of cosmic immunities. Toth’s melodic meditation within the fragile fibers of the album admits to a stir-crazy attitude towards the burning threshold of personal perspective and the esoteric energy used to sonically summon the visceral volume-based vehicle used to travel such distances without any limitations or specific direction in sight. Dedicated to friends and bandmate Glenn Donaldson of Flying Canyon, Jex Thoth and The Skygreen Leopards, and Mike Connelly of Hair Police and Wolf Eyes, Toth takes the tonal torch of medieval mystery and leaves no stones unturned in his whispering wake. While occupying the “New Weird America” scene in the early to mid-2000s, there are countless reasons why Toth is one of his generation's most unique and talented forces of creative chaos to date. Whether it is his anatomical ability to master the melodic metamorphosis both in music and life or the sophistication of summoning the dead for inspiration, his early days in Murfreesboro and Knoxville, TN, to the mesmerizingly matured roots he planted in Kentucky are lucid details in the journey of him becoming a songwriter in that his location plays a significant role in his poetic process and cosmic connection to something ultimately divine.
Across the album’s ten-track lifespan resides this mythical mystery that blows in from the whispering West Coast and eventually settles someplace esoteric in the East. Where neither team wins or loses, “Harem Of The Sundrum And The Witness Fig” brings the jester and the king together in a brotherhood ship that effortlessly echoes into the volumeless void of space and earthbound rhythm that can still be heard two and a half decades later. Conceived in LA, where the songwriter had traveled in search of something deep and rich to apply to his dynamic diet of magic and poetic possession, Toth had been obsessed with his recent findings, which he called “other California sound,” during his alchemical adventures bewitching beaches and stomping around the Hollywood Hills in search of the radical rapture into the renaissance of reason. With numbers like “Babylon The Great, Pt. 3,” the dreary isolation of “Spiritual Inmate,” the album’s optimistic opener "Leave Your Perch," and the atmospheric anthem of “Eagle Claw” all causing a great disturbance among the sonic spirits Toth has bravely conjured, “Harem Of The Sundrum And The Witness Fig” has become a universally underground classic like that of Drake’s “Pink Moon,” F.J. McMahon’s “Spirit Of The Golden Juice,” or Jim Sullivan’s “U.F.O.” Celebrated for its celestial capabilities, Toth captured something completely extraterrestrial, while simultaneously unlocking the steel gates of the human condition just as his peers had done in the decades prior.
