Tumbling PebbleTUMBLINGPEBBLE

Fifteen minutes before Church of the Holy Donut plays, Pastor Vernon Whitley walks the room. He checks that the folding chairs are in rows. He confirms that the exit signs are lit. Then he takes a seat on the aisle. By then Deacon Lloyd Branch, who arrives half an hour ahead, has turned on the board, checked every channel, run a test tone and set the levels, and he does not touch them again for the rest of the night. At the Piedmont Youth Rally in Greensboro this spring the arrangement was the same, except that there were more chairs.

The band began in the fall of 1993 at the Sister Glaze on Patterson Avenue, in Winston-Salem, the first shop of the chain, where the red FRESH NOW sign in the window comes on when the glazed donuts are hot. Gerald Pickett, who was thirty-one, pulled in because the sign was on. Ray Stubbs, who works at the shop and has smelled like a bakery since 1987, sat down beside him and explained the conditions. Gerald said it was a metaphor. Ray said it was probably both. Gerald wrote the first verse of a song on a napkin that night. The napkin is framed above the door of his church office.