Jun 4, 2024
Brett
Cline is, as he puts it, from the "Deep South." But
he's such a California kid that by that he means Southern
California.
In Part 1, get to know Brett,
who for the past decade or so has run The Lost
Church performing arts theater. His life began in
Orange County, where his parents ended up after meeting at UCLA and
traveling around the world when his dad was a pilot in the
Navy.
Brett was heavily into the punk
rock scene in SoCal in the Eighties (think bands like Social
Distortion and Suicidal Tendencies, among others). But his love of
music started in fourth grade when he snuck into the bedroom of an
older neighbor kid and found the first record from Oingo Boingo, a
band that changed his life. They were his first brush with
alternative art, and soon became a defining point of his early
personality.
He dabbled in the four pillars
of life in SoCal: He skateboarded, surfed, listened to punk rock,
and ate at Taco Bell. Brett started playing drums in sixth grade
and his first band was called High Voltage. He would write lyrics
and draw album covers, while his friend Mark made beats on snare
drums only.
His mom was always a community
person. She is a christian, but not a book-burner, as he says. She
started a community organization centered around school issues:
Citizens Action to Save Education (CASE). She was later school
board president and continued to be involved in local politics
around school issues. When his Navy service ended, Brett's dad got
into the corporate world. He started several aviation companies.
Today, Brett sees aspects of both of his parents in the foundation
of The Lost Church.
As a kid, he often went with
his parents to community theaters. Brett's dad plays organ, his mom
plays piano, one of his two brothers played clarinet, and his
sister went to NYU and became an actor and singer.
In high school,
Brett started playing more music and always wanted to tour,
though that never really worked out. He started playing bass and
singing more. In 1989, he graduated high school and went to UC
Santa Barbara. His college band, St. Rusticus, had the local record
for getting shut down by cops the fastest. "Three songs in, and the
cops were there."
Going to UCSB introduced Brett
to Northern California, partly because the school paired kids from
SoCal with kids from NorCal in the dorms. He'd visited SF with his
family when he was a kid. It was different from
where he's from, but he didn't immediately like it. In
college, though, he took trips up here and fell in love. He'd come
up, do mushrooms and acid, and listen to older, more-mainstream
rock. He got heavily into the Grateful Dead, even touring with
them, as many fans do.
After college, the plan was to
move to SF with his friend Davey Lyle. (Lyle did many of the
paintings seen today all around The Lost Church). But in his senior
year, Brett got a D in art and learned that the
Spanish he took at junior college didn't transfer to the UC. And so
he dropped out, got a loan from his parents, bought a computer,
scanner, and Photoshop, and started making album covers for local
bands.
Then his dad got him an
internship in London with a graphic arts company and he took it. He
saw many shows there but came back after only nine months. And when
he came back, he moved immediately to San Francisco.
With no job and no prospects,
Brett moved in with his friend Davey, who'd already made the move
up. They lived in a warehouse in the Mission on 20th near Harrison,
then moved to Sixth and Market. It was December 1993.
Check back next week for Part 2
and the origin story of The Lost Church.
We recorded this podcast at
The Lost Church San Francisco in May 2024.