BRUNSWICK — The Rev. Sylvia Stocker smiled, gazing through the recording studio window. Her foot tapped gently to the music as she listened to a song about the day her church burned down.
Singing his song called “When the UU Burned Down” on the other side of the glass was parishioner and songwriter Jud Caswell. He played a guitar made from a pew that escaped the flames.
The instrument was crafted by another church member, Carter Ruff of Bath. Stocker and her husband, Steve Wellcome, bought the guitar at a fundraising auction benefiting the church.
“It’s an amazing feeling, “ said Stocker, pastor at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Brunswick. “It’s an amazing thing to have it transformed into this beautiful thing, out of something that was dripping and soggy and smoky.”
Caswell didn’t waste any time writing the song after the building went up in flames in the summer of 2011.
“I wrote the song that day,” he said, sitting at the controls of his home recording studio Tuesday. “For a long time I really didn’t trust the song because I wrote it so fast, and I wrote it while I was still so close to it.
It wasn’t until later that summer that he found the nerve to sing it in public.
“We were about to have a homecoming potluck for our congregation,” said Stocker. “And Jud said, ‘I have this song I wrote. I’m just not sure.’ He brought his guitar into my office at work and sat down and sang this song to me. At the end, I was wiping my eyes.”
Caswell did, in fact, play it at the potluck and more than once at services since then. It’s also been featured on the church website with a slideshow of pictures depicting the aftermath of the fire.
Now that the song has been recorded again, on a guitar made from part of the church, Caswell plans to include it on his next album of original songs.
He thinks the guitar ranks among the church’s most precious items.
“It’s a pretty amazing memento. It’s a real treasure,” he said, holding the guitar. “There was a pipe organ [too] that hadn’t been used in years, and that was not saved. I guess this is going to be our replacement pipe organ. …It seems we’ve replaced one of the treasures that was lost.”
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- Jud Caswell records a song in his home studio in Brunswick on Tuesday. The song is about the Unitarian Universalist Church of Brunswick that burned down in 2011. He plays a guitar made from a salvaged pew and crafted by another parishioner, Carter Ruff.
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- A guitar made from a pew that survived the 2011 fire at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Brunswick stands in Jud Caswell’s home recording studio in Brunswick on Tuesday. Caswell used the guitar to record a song he wrote about the fire.
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- From left, Steve Wellcome, his wife, the Rev. Sylvia Stocker, Carter Ruff and daughter Zoe listen through the studio window as Jud Caswell records a song he wrote about their church burning down in 2011. Caswell is playing a guitar built by Ruff from a pew salvaged from the Unitarian Universalist Church in Brunswick. Stocker and Wellcome bought the guitar at auction.
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