An Indie Musician Recorded Newfoundland’s Aging Church Organs Before They Disappear

Michael Cloud Duguay is not a parishioner, not an organist, and not from Newfoundland. Yet his new album Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go exists entirely because of, and for, the island’s aging church organs. Recorded on seven instruments across the province, the project began as an experiment with Jake Nicoll’s solar-powered mobile studio, the Scamper—a 1970s RV built for site-specific, immersive recording. Duguay, a longtime indie rock musician, had never played organ before.

The premise was simple: travel to remote communities, find churches that would open their doors, and compose for the instruments exactly as they sounded. “I would often get a response like, ‘Well, our organ is in really bad shape and there’s no way we can get it tuned,’” Duguay says. “And I’d have to be like, ‘No, no, no, that’s why we’re coming to do it! Please don’t tune your organ before we get there!’”

The record captures more than music. Creaking pews, wind through rafters, and interviews with congregation members are woven into the tracks, turning Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go into a kind of audio ethnography. Many of the churches Duguay researched for the project, drawn from a 2012 book on the province’s pipe organs, had already closed by the time he arrived. The mission shifted, he explains, “from playing new compositions for organs in Newfoundland, to playing them on the remaining organs of Newfoundland.”