The Welcome Wagon is a married couple, the Reverend Thomas Vito Aiuto and his wife Monique, who execute a genre of gospel music that is refreshingly plain. Their hymns are modest and melodic takes on a vast history of sacred song traditions, delivered with the simple desire to know their Maker—and to know each other—more intimately.
Vito was born in Tecumseh, Michigan, and attended Western Michigan University where he developed a love for writing poetry. His first book of poems, Self-Portrait as Jerry Quarry, was published by New Issues Press in 2002. A self-described agnostic, Vito experienced a spiritual conversion at the age of 20 and soon after enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary to study theology and prepare for ordained ministry.
Raised on a farm, by a gentleman farmer father and choir teacher mother, in the same small town as Vito, Monique moved to New York City after high school to study art, first at the Cooper Union (BFA), then Columbia University (MFA). Since then she has worked as a pre-school teacher, craftmaker for Martha Stewart, and as a mother. She also serves as the Welcome Wagon’s resident visual artist.
Sisyphus is a collaboration between Serengeti, Son Lux, and Sufjan Stevens (formally s/s/s), whose newest project under this moniker is a self-titled album partly inspired by the art of Jim Hodges, and commissioned by the Walker Art Center and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music series in Minneapolis/Saint Paul.
Lowell Brams has been recording electronic and experimental music since 1986. He was born and grew up in West Alexandria and Dayton Ohio, graduating from Grand Valley State University in Michigan. Brams worked in retail and whole-sale bookselling until he co-founded Asthmatic Kitty Records with Stevens in 1998. In 1997 he made his debut in the Holland, Michigan band Con Los Dudes.
John Ringhofer, the man behind Half-handed Cloud, is as joyful and frugal as his music. An economical thinker, Ringhofer prefers the subway over a taxicab, is a recycler of plastic, a compulsive note-taker, and a habitual optimist. Half-handed Cloud started as a home-recording project in Chattanooga, TN in 1999. Ringhofer was later based in the California Bay area for over a decade (where he worked as a part-time custodian) before moving with his young family to Helsinki, Finland in 2015 for his wife’s linguistics research. Half-handed Cloud is able to ensconce complicated theological concepts into catchy and sublime playground songs that refuse to condescend to its subject or its listener.
Born Raymond Byron Magic Raposa on January 22, 1981, Raposa released six studio albums under his Castanets moniker. All of his LPs were issued by Asthmatic Kitty—the label founded in 1999 by Sufjan Stevens and his stepfather Lowell Brams. Raposa’s debut Castanets LP, 2004’s Cathedral, introduced his spare but intimate song craft; it also achieved critical acclaim within the independent music sphere.
Castanets released five additional full-lengths over the next decade. Raposa’s sophomore album, First Light’s Freeze, arrived in 2005, followed by 2007’s In the Vines. He created his 2008 LP City of Refuge during a three-week period of solitude, recording in a Nevada motel. In 2009, he issued Texas Rose, the Thaw, and the Beasts. In 2011, he worked with Sufjan Stevens to score Kaleo La Belle’s documentary Beyond This Place. His final solo entry as Castanets, Decimation Blues, came out in 2014. In early 2022, Raposa released Bond Wire Cur under the name Raymond Byron.
Denison Witmer is an American singer-songwriter who has been crafting introspective folk music for over two decades.
Born and raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he began his journey in recorded music at the age of 19 with his first album, My Luck, My Love – recorded originally as a high school English project and released on 250 cassettes. His official debut album, Safe Away, followed in 1998, setting the foundation for a prolific career. Over the years, Witmer has released a series of acclaimed albums, including Of Joy and Sorrow (2001), Philadelphia Songs (2002), and Are You a Dreamer? (2005), with the latter, produced by Don Peris and featuring Sufjan Stevens, earning critical praise from outlets such as Pitchfork and Entertainment Weekly.
Witmer’s discography continued to expand with Carry the Weight in 2008, followed by his first release on Sufjan Stevens’ Asthmatic Kitty Records, The Ones Who Wait (2012). His subsequent albums, the self-titled Denison Witmer (2013) and American Foursquare (2020), also released on Asthmatic Kitty, continued to showcase his evolving artistry.
Sufjan Stevens is a singer, songwriter and composer currently living in New York. His preoccupation with epic concepts has motivated two state records (Michigan and Illinois), a collection of sacred and biblical songs (Seven Swans), an electronic album for the animals of the Chinese zodiac (Enjoy Your Rabbit), a full length partly inspired by the outsider artist Royal Robertson (The Age of Adz), a masterwork memorializing and investigating his relationship with his late mother (Carrie & Lowell), and two Christmas box sets (Songs for Christmas, vol. 1-5 and Silver & Gold, vol. 6-10).
BAM has commissioned two works from Stevens, a programmatic tone poem for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (The BQE) and an instrumental accompaniment to slow-motion rodeo footage (Round-Up), and he has collaborated extensively with the New York City Ballet choreographer Justin Peck (Year of the Rabbit, Everywhere We Go, Countenance of Kings, Principia, The Decalogue and Reflections). Stevens’ Planetarium, a collaborative album with Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner and James McAlister imbued with themes of the cosmos, was released in 2017 to widespread critical praise. Stevens also contributed three much-lauded songs to Luca Guadagnino’s critically acclaimed film Call Me By Your Name, including the Oscar and Grammy nominated song, “Mystery of Love.”
Angelo De Augustine is an artist and songwriter living in Thousand Oaks, California—a suburb north of Los Angeles, where he grew up. He has released three albums including his self-released debut, Spirals of Silence (2014), and two for Asthmatic Kitty Records, Swim Inside The Moon (2017) and Tomb (2019). These records, each released to increasing global notoriety, showcased De Augustine’s preternatural talent for songwriting.
While Swim Inside The Moon was produced at home and recorded in his bathtub, De Augustine’s acclaimed third full length album Tomb marked a significant shift with production by Thomas Bartlett (a.k.a. Doveman) at New York City’s Reservoir Studios. In 2021, De Augustine collaborated with labelmate Sufjan Stevens to record the critically acclaimed A Beginner’s Mind, an album of 14 songs (loosely) based on (mostly) popular films.
