August 1996

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.

Gerald said it was a metaphor. Ray said it was probably both.

Gerald sings and, by his own description, handles the theology. Donna Pickett plays bass and sings, and lands the last note of every song a half beat after everyone else, a clean landing after the others have touched down; Gerald writes the endings to leave room for it. Ray Stubbs plays guitar in drop D with a tone like bread dough, low and kneaded and warm even at volume. Carol Ann Dupree plays drums. At the end of every show she stands up from the kit, takes the tape off her sticks, lays it on the snare and goes to get a donut.

They recorded their first album, The FRESH NOW Sign, in the basement of New Covenant Baptist Church over four weekends in February 1994. Pastor Whitley had given permission on condition that the band not damage the ceiling. Three tiles were damaged. The album was mastered in Greensboro by an engineer who had also mastered two regional death metal records, and who described Carol Ann's kick drum as appropriate for the subject matter.

The new one is Glazed and Forgiven, on Risen Dough Records. The songs are longer and the dynamics heavier. The title track holds Donna Pickett's first recorded scream and Carol Ann Dupree's most celebrated passage: thirty-two bars of double kick drum at 172 beats per minute. Our reviewer has a phrase for it, below, and we will let it stand.

At the end of every show Gerald Pickett steps down off the stage with the boxes and hands out donuts himself, one at a time, looking each person in the eye. The boxes come from the Patterson Avenue shop by way of Travis Muncie, who works the late shift there and brings them when it ends. At the band's first show, the story goes, a deacon with concerns about the theology came, stayed to the end and ate the donut. He has not raised the concerns again.

This is a secular publication. We note it for the record. We also stayed to the end in Greensboro, and accepted the donut, and it was, as the band would say, correct.