Church of the
Holy Donut

The FRESH NOW sign at the Sister Glaze on Patterson Avenue in Winston-Salem is a red neon sign that illuminates when fresh glazed donuts are available. It is a practical signaling device that has become, for a specific kind of person, something more. Gerald Pickett is that specific kind of person.

Gerald was thirty-one years old in the fall of 1993 and was already involved in church music in Winston-Salem, playing acoustic guitar and occasionally leading worship. He was not a person who required additional theological input. He had his framework. He had his faith. He had his guitar. And then the FRESH NOW sign was on, and he had a donut that was exactly right, and he understood something that he could not have understood without it.

The something was this: perfection is temporary and available. The glaze cools. The FRESH NOW sign goes off. You have to stop when the sign is on. This is, Gerald has said, a theological statement of some precision.

Church of the Holy Donut played churches, community centers, revival tents, and once a Sister Glaze parking lot in Winston-Salem between 1993 and 2001. Gerald wrote all the songs. Donna arranged them. Ray played drop-D guitar that sounded like bread dough — low, kneaded, warm even at volume. Carol Ann played drums the way she did everything else, which was the same way each time, exactly: returning to the one, again and again, sometimes with double-kick through a whole chorus, always at the exact tempo Gerald had requested at the top of rehearsal.

The songs were not jokes. This is the most important thing to understand about Church of the Holy Donut. The circle represents completeness. The hole represents absence and negative space. The glaze represents grace — applied at the right moment, at the right temperature, making everything correct. Gerald has explained this at length. He is consistent and internally coherent. He also explains it at a volume that makes the explanation difficult to refute in the room.

The music was loud. It had always been loud. This was a feature of the delivery, not a departure from it. Gerald has said that grace, when it arrives, is not quiet. The archive accepts this framing.

Church of the Holy Donut's debut album, "The FRESH NOW Sign," was recorded at higher volume than anyone involved had anticipated.

The album was cut in the basement of New Covenant Baptist Church over four weekends in February 1994. Pastor Vernon Whitley had given Gerald permission to use the basement on the condition that the band not damage the ceiling tiles.

Three ceiling tiles were damaged. Pastor Whitley did not revoke permission. He has said, in the years since, that the tiles were replaceable and the band was not. This is a quote he has declined to clarify.

The album was mastered at an engineer's home studio in Greensboro by a man named Marco who had also mastered two regional death metal records. Marco said he had not expected to enjoy the donut record but had. He said the frequency response of Carol Ann's kick drum was "appropriate for the subject matter." Gerald did not ask him to explain this.

Ray had purchased a used Marshall JCM 800 in November of 1993 from a man in Kernersville who was getting out of metal. The man had asked what Ray played. Ray said Christian hard rock. The man said that was a real thing now. Ray said it had always been a real thing but the Christian part was new for him. The man said he'd take the money.

The Marshall was too loud for the living room where the band rehearsed. Donna said it was too loud for the living room. Ray agreed. Ray played it at full volume anyway, because he had discovered that the correct volume for Gerald's lyrics about grace was considerably higher than he had originally thought.

Gerald has said grace, when it arrives, is not quiet. The archive accepts this framing.

In 1997, Church of the Holy Donut played a show in the parking lot of the Sister Glaze on Patterson Avenue — the original Sister Glaze location, where the donut was born in 1937. They had not received corporate permission. They arrived at seven AM on a Saturday in July with a full PA — Donna had borrowed it from the church — and a set of amplifiers that were appropriate for a venue of approximately four hundred people.

Jimmy the manager came out at seven-fifteen, surveyed the equipment, and asked if they were aware this was a parking lot. Gerald said they were. Jimmy said he'd be inside.

The band played at full volume. Seventy people were there by eight. By eight-thirty, a resident of the apartment complex next door had called the Winston-Salem Police Department to report a noise complaint. The responding officer, a man named Officer Bradley who had graduated from Reynolds High School with Ray in 1984, arrived at eight-forty-five. He listened to two songs from his cruiser. Then he got out, bought a dozen donuts, and stood in the parking lot for the remainder of the show. He has declined to comment on whether this constituted a formal response to the noise complaint.

The FRESH NOW sign came on at nine-fifty. Gerald stopped mid-song to note this. The audience, which had grown to approximately seventy people, went inside. The band went with them. They resumed after the donuts. Carol Ann has said the tempo of the second half of the set was slightly faster than the first. She has not apologized for this.

Gerald has described the 1997 Sister Glaze parking lot show as the most accurate sixty minutes of his life. The volume, he has said, was correct.

Church of the Holy Donut played their last show in 2001. Gerald was increasingly occupied with his actual pastoral work. Donna was similarly occupied. Ray had taken on more shifts at the bakery. Carol Ann had taken on more students.

Gerald announced the last show from the stage, which he had done at every show — he began each performance by saying "the FRESH NOW sign is on" and ended it by saying "the circle is complete." At the last show he said "the circle is complete" and then said it was also the last show. Nobody in the audience was surprised. The donuts, which Gerald had brought and distributed before the show as he always did, had been at the correct temperature.

The archive notes: the Sister Glaze on Patterson Avenue is still open.