I’m by no means an authority on the musicology of religious music, or any music for that matter. But I won’t wait around for an honorary degree from Union Theological Seminary to delve into a flighty dissection of the Welcome Wagon’s debut collection of cover songs and hymns, which, on closer inspection, begins to unravel an inspiring excursion through the landscape of the sacred and profane. I should know; I produced the album. And like many overly anxious producers, I’ve lately felt the motivation to impart my own brand of “rumors and ruminations” on some of the material I helped facilitate on this transcendental record. This sidebar post is meant as my own opinionated primer—a navigational brochure, per se—on the songs that appear on this new collection of “church music.” Happy journeys, godly listeners of the world!

Track 4: HE NEVER SAID A MUMBLIN’ WORD
words: traditional
music: Vito Aiuto
Welcome Wagon version: He Never Said a Mumblin\’ Word

If “Rich Man” is a song of protest, the traditional spiritual “He Never Said a Mumblin’ Word” is an exercise in silence, entrenched in one of the more sobering theological precepts: the death of God. It is no coincidence that it accompanies one of the darkest moments on the album. Adopting the somber call-and-response motif of a classic Negro spiritual, this trudging, lumbering funereal song explicates the story of the crucifixion with the leanest of exposition, meditating on Christ’s speechless defeat in the wake of an impending judgment. Diverse interpretations of this spiritual exist in anyone’s music library, ranging from the operatic to the romantic, often with acute variations on the lyrics. My favorite version comes from a soulful (and gorgeously sluggish) 1940s recording by the Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet:

I’m by no means an authority on the musicology of religious music, or any music for that matter. But I won’t wait around for an honorary degree from Union Theological Seminary to delve into a flighty dissection of the Welcome Wagon’s debut collection of cover songs and hymns, which, on closer inspection, begins to unravel an inspiring excursion through the landscape of the sacred and profane. I should know; I produced the album. And like many overly anxious producers, I’ve lately felt the motivation to impart my own brand of “rumors and ruminations” on some of the material I helped facilitate on this transcendental record. This sidebar post is meant as my own opinionated primer—a navigational brochure, per se—on the songs that appear on this new collection of “church music.” Happy journeys, godly listeners of the world!

Track 3: UNLESS THE LORD A HOUSE SHALL BUILD
words: The Psalter of the United Presbyterian Church of North America, 1887
music: Vito Aiuto
Welcome Wagon version: “Unless the Lord a House Shall Build”
Psalter version: “Unless the Lord a House Shall Build”

“Unless the Lord a House Shall Build,” taken from psalm 127—and tugged free of all the square protestant humdrum of the classic hymn—is a sobering appraisal of the vanity and futility of human work (i.e. the ordinary tasks of life), reinstating the curse of mankind  (to toil and labor), and the curse of civilization (the epic feats of war). At least, I think that’s what it’s about. We added a deadpan, thuggish backbeat on this translation, juxtaposing scampering scales on the piano and guitar to augment the symbiotic relationship between blessing and curse. Textually, this is best symbolized in the psalmist’s likening of offspring (the blessings of children) to the number of arrows in a warrior’s hands (munitions of war!). Children as progeny-protectors of a divine heritage! What other cursed blessings are numbered here? The fatigue of labor induces a just reward in the nightly advent of sleep, for one. The psalmist’s realist preoccupation with an agrarian society of war-torn savages is pacified only by the fatigue in which a society of work arouses in the breast of the laborers.

Original sheet music is found here.

Danielson, from Sounds Familyre

I’m by no means an authority on the musicology of religious music, or any music for that matter. But I won’t wait around for an honorary degree from Union Theological Seminary to delve into a flighty dissection of the Welcome Wagon’s debut collection of cover songs and hymns, which, on closer inspection, begins to unravel an inspiring excursion through the landscape of the sacred and profane. I should know; I produced the album. And like many overly anxious producers, I’ve lately felt the motivation to impart my own brand of “rumors and ruminations” on some of the material I helped facilitate on this transcendental record. This sidebar post is meant as my own opinionated primer—a navigational brochure, per se—on the songs that appear on this new collection of “church music.” Happy journeys, godly listeners of the world!

Track 2: SOLD! TO THE NICE RICH MAN!
words and music by Daniel Smith, arr. By Vito Aiuto
Welcome Wagon version: “Sold! To the Nice Rich Man!” Welcome Wagon Version
Danielson version: “Sold! To the Nice Rich Man!” Danielson Version

War and revenge are no less likely in the album’s first showpiece, in which the Welcome Wagon indulge in their fondness for the avant family rock of Danielson, covering the classic “Sold! To the Nice Rich Man.” Originally conceived as a stomping protest song in 6/8, outfitted with Bother Daniel’s belligerent strums of the acoustic guitar, the song waltzes into an alliterative wordplay equating our “wandering, wondering, and wonderful” world as something picked up at auction by a lucrative God, who outbids the devil. What odd theological ornaments decorate this musical tree: axes and guns aimed at the Heart of Darkness, thunderclaps and waterfalls instigating the divine purchase. The Welcome Wagon evades the tree-stomping theatrics of Danielson, forgoing the waltzing punches of passion for a groovy, bluesy party vibe decorated with snappy brass jabs and soulful monosyllables from the choir, anointed with a B.B. King blues guitar jam. What’s lost in this 4/4 translation, perhaps, is a bit of the dark suspension of the Danielson original, with its epic-apocalyptic posture, ala Bob Dylan, circa 1964. But maybe that’s something only Danielson could heartfully conjure in 6/8.

Photographed by elosoenpersona

I’m by no means an authority on the musicology of religious music, or any music for that matter. But I won’t wait around for an honorary degree from Union Theological Seminary to delve into a flighty dissection of the Welcome Wagon’s debut collection of cover songs and hymns, which, on closer inspection, begins to unravel an inspiring excursion through the landscape of the sacred and profane. I should know; I produced the album. And like many overly anxious producers, I’ve lately felt the motivation to impart my own brand of “rumors and ruminations” on some of the material I helped facilitate on this transcendental record. This sidebar post is meant as my own opinionated primer—a navigational brochure, per se—on the songs that appear on this new collection of “church music.” Happy journeys, godly listeners of the world!

Track 1: UP ON A MOUNTAIN
words and music by Vito Aiuto

“Up on a Mountain”

First things first: this is not complicated music. But church music—the kind that invites public participation—shouldn’t be. The opening track —one of the few “originals” on the album—appears as a Christian primer best suited for Vacation Bible School. “Up On A Mountain” works as a prelude in which cascading melodies and naturalist theology simulate the salvation of the soul and the soothing of human loneliness, all evoked in the metaphor of “heights.” Monique Aiuto takes the mic for a disarming study of the Christian paradigm of God made-manifest, a mystic divination of the wilderness, God as “native,” preternaturally holed up in the hollows of a remote mountainside, who descends, at last, to a society of thankless infidels. The classic mountaineering chronicle of the “up/down” is a familiar Jewish principle. Moses, having the beheld the divine glory, descends from the mountain with the Ten Commandments and a glowing countenance only to find the Israelites stampeding with idols. Then, there is Mt. Sinai, Golgotha, and, in the New Testament, the Sermon on the Mount, the holiest of homilies. The “mountain” of this song is less substantial in size, but no less vast in meaning: the mount of Olives, which happens to be the unfortunate setting where Jesus was abandoned by his closest allies, the 12 disciples. Monique’s un-ambitious Sunday school recital here best suits the magnitude of the situation, as if she were instructing, in rueful, plaintive melodies, the theology of death to unsuspecting toddlers.