Pastiche: A Visit to the Church of the Friendly Ghost

Editor’s note: Pastiche is a bi-weekly column exploring the diversity within the Austin music community. The views expressed in Pastiche are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook or beliefs of anyone else in the IST network.

Undoubtedly, the oddness of The Church of the Friendly Ghost is what caught my attention first. You’ve got that amazing name, for one thing, and it’s hard to beat seeing a show in a converted tiny chapel out on the southeast side. Over the years, the Church put on a multitude of fantastic performances, but what made the events so special was undoubtedly the community, a term that feels “It Takes a Village” trite but which nonetheless was a big part of what made the Church shows so unique. Many shows were potlucks, all were B.Y.O.B., and the atmosphere was much warmer and inviting than any club, at least. And the music – where else could a person see an acoustic evening featuring Carolyn Berk of Lovers and the super-solitary Josh Pearson of Lift to Experience one night, and then witness a local group of jazz musicians running through John Zorn’s game-piece Cobra on another?

But tensions began to mount, especially with regard to the neighborhood’s gradually dissipating tolerance for the wacky congregation and their constant stream of visitors. With their permit finally revoked, Aaron Mace, now the main man behind the Church, moved his performances to the Salvage Vanguard, where at least once a week they dabble in concerts that highlight everything from free jazz to soft acoustic folk. While the move has been a successful one, Mace has big plans for the future (including a collaboration with Refraction Arts), and talked with us about his quest to establish the Church as the epicenter for the musically adventurous in Austin.

Aaron Mace

Could you give me a synopsis on how the Church of the Friendly Ghost first got started?

I guess it all started in October of 2003. A friend and I had been in Europe, and we had just gotten back and were looking for a new place to live. We got with a couple of other friends of ours, and two of them stumbled upon this church at 3rd and Pedernales. We get this call, “Hey, there’s this church for rent. It’s big and…it’s a church!” We called the landlord, James, and he met us on the front porch. We told him that we’d like to move in and maybe use the space to have some shows. Theater, music – we felt it afforded something like that. And he agreed, so we moved in.

I had heard that the congregations using the place before were kind of creepy evangelical-types. Is that true?

Yeah, the kind of congregations you were getting in there were shady, fly-by-night operations. He had people who didn’t pay rent for months at a time. James said, “Yeah, this will be much better.” And I don’t know if it was that much better for James, poor James, because those were a pretty crazy two years. I wonder if he has any hard feelings now. I hope not. I know that a couple of things went sideways, and I wish things could have gone better. Overall I think it was positive. I hope. After a couple of really out of control parties in the spring of ’05 the neighbors were really sick of us. Really really sick of us. Nothing bad ever happened like property damage or anything like that. It was just the nosiness, and we were annoying. I think there were people in the neighborhood who were upset that there were a bunch of kids partying in a church that was there for years.

We had a certificate of occupancy, but it was completely shady – it was issued for an actual church congregation.
It turns out the city is picky about that.

Maybe they thought it was a little sacrilegious?

Just not respectful. And I have to agree with them on that, we really weren’t. People in the neighborhood didn’t get what we were trying to do – they saw the annoying bits, and that was all. When drunken kids are peeing in your bushes in broad daylight during SXSW you don’t really want to go see what kind of good things you have to offer. The neighbors for the most part really hated us, and for good reason. Finally the city came around and said, “Hey, we need to see your amplified sound permit! We need to see your certificate of occupancy!” We didn’t really have anything legitimate. We had a certificate of occupancy, but it was completely shady – it was issued for an actual church congregation. It turns out the city is picky about that. So they said, “Yeah, this is revoked, you’ll have to apply for a new one.” James actually tried to help us get one, but it became clear that it was going to be nearly impossible because what we needed was a zoning variance, and with the way the neighbors were feeling about us, that wasn’t going to happen. Finally, James and his partner just said, “Look, we’re going to sell this place. And you can buy it if you want.” I probably could have managed to buy it at the time, and I’m really glad I didn’t. It was better for me, better for the neighborhood, better for everyone now that I didn’t.

Do you know what the place is now?

Oh yeah, it’s wonderful. This woman and her sister bought the place, fixed it up really nice, and they have tango lessons and yoga classes. They tore down the really ugly out-building that I actually lived in, and it’s much more appropriate to the neighborhood.

What’s an example of one of the craziest, or just out of control shows you had at the old space?

One time I walked into this noise show and it was a bunch of kids into painful, caustic noise engineered to piss you off, maybe. I’m not sure what the artistic merit was there. I like that stuff, don’t get me wrong, but it was just one of those where no one showed up except the kids that were playing. Anyway, I walk in, it’s maybe 1:30, and somebody is making feedback noise on stage, someone is bouncing a basketball in the middle of the chapel, and one guy is screaming at the top of his lungs with his pants down, squeezing his penis as hard as he possibly could. If you’ve been to a lot of noise shows in Texas over the past eight years, you’ve probably run into this guy. And he is crazy. He was foaming at the mouth, and spouting something about Satan, and squeezing his dick for all he was worth. I just thought, “Oh no, what have I let happen in here tonight, how am I going to get this guy to stop…squeezing his penis?”

Image of Alex Coke from Flickr

And we were not prepared for the SXSW shows in 2005. No one thought to get porta-potties, I don’t know why. So stupid. We had some big parties lined up with Arthur magazine, Chunklet, Moshi Moshi. I got prepared to what extend I knew how. When 800 people showed up and guzzled 14 kegs of beer and we only had two toilets, it was just a pee-fest. They just peed all over the neighborhood. In the bushes, in everyone’s yards, and the neighbors were out with video cameras. I knew some trouble would come from that.

On a more positive note, what have you put on that you’ve really enjoyed?

There’s so much…but The Incredible String Band was wonderful. I just couldn’t believe it and I’ll definitely always remember it.

Could you tell us about how you got set up with The Salvage Vanguard Theater?

When Salvage Vanguard got there own space together – they had been a company for, I think, twelve years – and they asked me if the Church of the Friendly Ghost would like to program out of that location. It was exactly what I was hoping for. It’s so much better suited to the project than the old church was. I do miss the old place; I always loved the John Coltrane idea of music being played in an exalted space. Performances in a chapel are my favorite.

I think the creative scene in Austin needs a stronger sense of community than it has,
I think the job of the Church is to be the hub of that community.

What kind of philosophy guides the Church, and what sort of plans do you have for the future?

Great innovation happens through competition. I think that in New York in the late '50s and early '60s so much really interesting music was happening because of the very stiff competition, there were a lot of artists and only a few places to play. To get people to come see music you really had to think further into the future and be more creative and really build on what you did before. I think it was competition that really did that. I don’t know this for sure, but I bet Eiffel won some sort of competition to get that gig to build his tower.

I think the creative scene in Austin needs a stronger sense of community than it has, and I think the job of the Church is to be the hub of that community. One of the great things that happened at the old space was that on any performance night, no matter what it was, your friends would be there and you know that something neat would be going on. We’re trying to reestablish that. I want the rest of the world to know that all of this intensely interesting stuff is going on in Texas.

Church of the Friendly Ghost: [website] [myspace]