The DIY Carpenter

James Jackson Toth doesn’t know how many records he’s released. Counting cassettes and limited editions, it’s more than a couple dozen. Toth—who performs and records as Wooden Wand, Wand or under his own name—has worked with producers like Michael Gira of Swans and Lee Ranaldo, but until this year, he hadn’t had the producer credit on his own albums. In part, that’s because, when not working with indie-rock legends, many Wooden Wand releases have been DIY, home-recorded affairs. And Toth, 36, says he “doesn’t consider that production.” For Farmer’s Corner, Wooden Wand’s latest, Toth presided over the sessions, which took place in Lexington, Ky., St. Louis and Nashville, Tenn. Once the recordings were underway, Toth realized he was producing. “Having the credit on there, what it indicates is that I’m responsible for it,” he says. The record coheres, despite being recorded in bits and pieces, because there’s a unified sound—a brooding and pensive early-‘70s, country-tinged vibe, with hints of banjo and moaning pedal steel in surprising buried places. Toth says that some of his favorite albums were not the products of single, sustained studio campouts, but they still create overarching feels. “It’s all gonna come through your own weird filter, anyway.”