Welcome! Here’s Some Sausage and Cake

Going to see the Welcome Wagon play Space 38|39 in Manhattan was a special treat.  The tickets were cheap ($11) but limited (only 60ish).  I am an avid reader of PASTE magazine and have every one of Sufjan Stevens albums, even the hard on the ears electronic album Enjoy Your Rabbit, so when I saw The Welcome Wagon and Sufjan mentioned on PASTE’s December cover I started checking websites to see where they’d play a show.

Two years ago I had listened to a single track from a band The Welcome Wagon on Mews Too: An Asthmatic Kitty Compilation and tried to find some information on them, but alas, the track on the record label compilation was their only recorded track.  They didn’t tour either.  They lived in Brooklyn and were church planters.  Intriguing, I thought, but when no new music came out I quickly forgot about them.

So when they showed up on the cover of PASTE I remembered them from the compilation and wondered at how they were making the "big splash" so fast.  I live fifteen miles away from them, so if they had been playing shows I should have heard.  They just kind of came out of no where.  They have good PR, I suppose.  Sufjan is instant PR, after all.

When I bought the tickets I wanted to see The Welcome Wagon, but I also had a sneaking suspicion Sufjan would make a special appearance.  I had missed out on tickets to the one-time-only BQE show in Brooklyn where Sufjan had orchestrated a live score for a documentary he made about the BQE (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway).

Sufjan did not appear.  I wondered how the show would be.  I had read the cynics and critics about how The Welcome Wagon was Sufjan’s way of making a Christian label without mixing it up with his more mainstream (though completely saturated with Christian imagery) music.  The Welcome Wagon was a facade, in other words.  I had serious reservations about whether that would be something an artist would actually do, especially in the indie music scene where the money is not exactly there.   The concert would be one way to find out.

It was just The Welcome Wagon, Vito and Monique Aiuto and friends.  The church planting couple surrounded by guitars, background singers, a saxophonist, a keyboard, a guitar, an acoustic double-bass, and an upright piano.  Vito had a guitar.  Monique had a glockenspiel.  There was no banjo.  Sufjan was not there.  I had bought tickets to The Welcome Wagon after all.  Without Sufjan there this would confirm or reject any of the naysayers or cynics who thought The Welcome Wagon was a well conceived cover up act for Sufjan’s creativity.

The show started like any rock show in an intimate art gallery would, I suppose.  Everyone bought a Brooklyn lager, talked quietly to their friends, then when the band was introduced everyone plopped down on the floor and sat down.  Cameras clicked.  Vito said hi.  Monique said hi.  Then the show began.

The band sounded just like the album, Welcome to the Welcome Wagon.  Which is absolutely spectacular.  It confirmed unanimously one thing: they were legit.  And they put on a show that was lighthearted, goofy, friendly, intimate, and accessible. 

And really, what could get fans at a setting such as this, with everyone sitting on a tile floor surrounded by expensive works of art (some by Makoto Fujimura, the renound Japanese-American abstract artist) than giving away free stuff.  Like sausage and cake.  Seriously.  The band wanted to carry on the tradition of bringing the best of their community to others as a sign of "welcome."  So they brought local Polish sausage and poppy-seed cake.  The trio from the Netherlands sitting in front of us that came to the show had the sausage bestowed upon them, and another person received the cake.

I had listened to the album three or four times before seeing the show, and I think it is a testimony to how good the show was that I have listened to the album every single working day since then (that’s nine days straight!).  I can’t get enough of it after seeing them live.  Their music was infectious in a get up and rejoice kind of way.

I think they played every song on the album accept for the covers, but in different order.  Vito talked a bit about how they had sung the song "He Never Said a Mumblin’ Word" for their Good Friday service.  That’s the best thing about this couple: they are church planters!  And musicians.  And they give out sausage and cake.

We were politely asked to all stand up and stomp our feet and clap our hands to the song "But For You Who Fear My Name" and the reverbirations from the clapping and stomping off the narrow walls of the gallery blurred the line between audience and band and it became a celebration, a kind of communal moment for those there.  It was a peculiar situation, to be at a concert where after a song everyone kind of giggled and smiled at each other, then sat back down, but that’s what happened. 

My personal favorite, both at the show and on the album, is the song "Sold! To the Nice Rich Man."  The trumpets on the album were replaced by the saxophonist, and the texture of the song became more jazzy and melodic live, especially without a drummer backing them with a marching beat like on the album track.  It was different than the album, but similar enough, and that’s what you expect from a band, real musicians, not some front for a clandestine creative genius, as much as the naysayers might want that to be the case.  So say "welcome" to The Welcome Wagon, because they’ll be here to stay.

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More information:

Stereogum interviews Vito about music and church.  All church planters should read this, as it gets at the heart of being missional.

Asthmatic Kitty’s artist page has awesome lead sheets with chords if you want to play The Welcome Wagon songs at church.