Listen to Side A:    • The Welcome Wagon - Esther reads Phil...  

00:47 Esther reads from the Proverbs
11:48 Esther reads from Psalms 23
17:11 Esther reads from Ruth

As an art student at The Cooper Union in New York, Monique Auito, of The Welcome Wagon, passed the lonely hours in her studio listening to the calming crackle of cassette tapes her grandmother, Esther, had sent on which she’d recorded herself reading the bible. As a young mother, Monique had flown home from her grandmother’s funeral with a treasure trove of old magazine clippings, wrapping paper scraps, and invitations sent more than half a century before. Now, with her grandmother’s cassettes playing in the background, Monique began using pieces from this collection to create large-scale collages, beautiful, evocative, and almost haunting in their pastiche of the past. “Using the music as a starting point, I wove together any objects on hand that fit with the chords, the vision, the melody, the spirit of the songs,” says Monique, whose paintings provide the artwork for The Welcome Wagon's new album. Her grandmother, Esther, gave the album its name.

In this recording, Esther reads from Proverbs, briefly falls asleep, inserts her name into Psalms 23, reads Ruth, and explains her relationship with the name Ruth.