The Welcome Wagon: Keepers of the Faith Thrive in the Hipster's Den

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Who are Vito and Monique Aiuto? Simple church folk suddenly clamoring for hipster cred? A Sufjan Stevens project masquerading under a new moniker? Are they simple-minded reactionaries? Or simply a Presbyterian minister and his wife, taking a break from tending their flock to play some heartfelt religious tunes?

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Manhattan might have St. Patrick’s, Trinity and St. John the Divine, yet it’s Brooklyn that’s called “the borough of churches.” Climbing up from the G Train at Greenpoint Avenue, you’d have to be blind to miss the block’s focal point—St. Anthony of Padua, a Roman Catholic church that visually anchors this largely Polish but rapidly changing neighborhood with its red brick, white limestone, gothic arches and 240-foot spire.

It’s fitting that I’m taking in this vista on my way to meet a pastor who’s recorded an album of religious songs. Surely this man, Vito Aiuto, must have some deep connection with this ecclesiastically distinguished corner of the world.

Well, yes and no. Aiuto has a way of defying expectations. Just from the name and the Brooklyn address, you’d expect to be greeted at the brownstone stoop with a characteristically Italian “Howyadoin?” Instead, after passing yet another church on the corner, I encounter the elongated vowels and perfect American manners of a Michigan man. And the über-Italian name? “Yeah, I get that a lot,” he notes, chuckling. “I have the name and dark hair and big nose, but besides that I’m actually more Irish.”

This musical pastor and his wife—living together as earnest believers in a city of hardened skeptics—steadfastly refuse to conform to expectations. The couple’s Asthmatic Kitty debut, conceived and recorded with the help of good friend Sufjan Stevens, is equally resistant to simple classification.

Walking up two flights of stairs to the Aiutos’ Greenpoint apartment (in a subdivided 19th-century brownstone a few blocks from the East River), I’m already discarding one of my theories. These married musicians—who record and perform as The Welcome Wagon—may be part of Brooklyn’s famed music scene, but they’re not trying to be the next buzz band. As Vito wryly notes, “I already have a job.” An interior room the size of a walk-in closet—crammed floor-to-ceiling with books on theology and literature—accentuates the point.

Monique introduces me to her son, 18-month-old Isaiah, who gleefully waves a toy car in my direction before scampering off. She has a job too. Being an urban mom is no picnic, daytime stroller outings to McCarren Park notwithstanding. The couple later confirms that live performances are a rare event, though they’re greatly enjoyed by the Aiutos’ friends and neighbors.

On to my next theory—this is a Sufjan Stevens project masquerading under another name. After all, Vito sang and played on two of Stevens’ annual Christmas EPs, and Stevens is credited as producer and arranger on Welcome to The Welcome Wagon, the couple’s debut.   

When I meet Stevens the next day, settling in for tea at a café down the block, he sets the record straight. Most of the sessions went down something like this: a meal, some friendly conversation, the clearing of dinner plates, and then the emergence of guitar, banjo, glockenspiel and microphones. “Back then I was into recording everything, so I’d always have microphones and I’d always have my eight-track with me,” he says. “I would keep every take, every performance, really almost every song I ever recorded.”

Naturally, given his role in drawing out Vito and Monique as musicians, in crafting arrangements and eventually producing their record, it’s impossible to discuss The Welcome Wagon without mentioning Stevens. “I think a lot of [the recording] was my intention more than theirs,” he says, chuckling. “I don’t think they’d make an album if it wasn’t for my urging and my involvement, monopolizing the whole thing. Obviously, I felt there was some value to the music and what it represents.”

Though the album is focused on Vito and Monique’s plain voices and earnest songs (and the songs are theirs; even the covers are their choices), it still bears the mark of the man responsible for Illinois and Seven Swans in its tasteful arrangements of brass ostinatos and countermelodies, choirs and signature banjo. “We had set up some guidelines,” Stevens says, “and one of them was that we didn’t want the arrangements to get out of hand. Unfortunately, they did.”