“A year before my second album “The Wedding Singer and The Undertaker” came out, my band and I got together to record demos for a funding application. The application was successful, and in October of 2007, we recorded 12 songs that became that album.

I then forgot about the demos.

In 2021, in pandemic-inspired de-cluttering, I found a box of CDRs. Most of them were live recordings, some back ups from photoshoots, and one that simply said “Blue Wave.” I didn’t have any recollection of what it would be, and it wasn’t until I hit play that the memories returned — and my heart fluttered!

I love the production on WSUT. We had a grant. Aaron Joyce scored horn and string sections. It was glorious.

But one song in particular, “A Grief As This,” lost a bit of its tenderness in that production. I wrote that song two months after my first son died — this demo was recorded just eight months after he died — and the song is meant to be raw. By the time the horn section swelled on the album version, some of that rawness may have been lost.

There is a tenderness in each of these recordings found in the songs’ newness, and in my voice, in me in the early months of grief. There is a wondering and reaching.

I’m so glad I unearthed them at the bottom of a storage bin. I’m so glad to remember. I’m so glad to share them.”

— Christa Couture, May 2021