One Eleven Heavy

After bonding over their love of classic jam bands and American noise artists, longtime friends James Jackson Toth (aka Wooden Wand) and Nick Mitchell Maiato (guitarist for Desmadrados Soldados de Ventura) finally joined forces in 2016 to form supergroup One Eleven Heavy. The band looked to heroes of fried boogie rock and cosmic Americana for the soupy grooves and spacy soloing of their 2018 debut Everything's Better. Toth and Maiato met in 2008 when Wooden Wand was touring the United Kingdom. They got into a conversation that eventually revealed their shared love of Neil Young's ragged backing band Crazy Horse, the Royal Trux, the Grateful Dead and other staples of jam band and noise rock history. The two remained friends over the years and in 2016 they got together to record a song for a Bert Jansch tribute album that never materialized. With Maiato still living in England, One Eleven Heavy's first album came together in a week of focused rehearsals and recording. With both Maiato and Toth singing and playing guitar, the band was rounded out by Royal Trux bassist Dan Brown and avant percussionist Ryan Jewell with keyboard assistance from Hans Chew. These quickly processed sessions resulted in the band's first album, 2018's Everything's Better. They toured in support of the album and regrouped less than a year later for second album Desire Path, released in the fall of 2019 on the Beyond Beyond Is Beyond label.
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