| Breakfast With Amy is one of the most unusual bands to come out of the Christian music scene. Their sound has been described as Dadaism set to music, heavily influenced by Echo & the Bunneymen and the Violent Femmes. Concerts and videos (“Me” & “Ralph’s Garage”) produced by the band also easily fall into the category of Dada art. They are probably also one of the few bands in existence that have had their albums become easily available to the public in the reverse order from which they were recorded.
The band came together due to random chance. Chris Colbert was in another band that had a concert scheduled in March of 1987. Koval and Pellegrin were in different bands at the time. Colbert’s band broke up with no notice, but he wanted to fill the concert commitment. So he asked his wife at the time (Caryn) and his friends (Koval, Pelleggrin, and Wohler) to play with him by making up songs on the spot. This led to Breakfast With Amy forming and recording their first demo.
Concerts were often unpredictable and improvised on the spot. Slide and movie projectors would play while stagehands would wander around performing improv tasks. Koval would often make up lyrics while other members staged fights that ended up break instruments. Go-go dancers would be on the stage. None of this was planned – movies were picked at random, and slides would be thrown in a bag and mixed up by Nathan Pellegrin (stagehand and also singer for Fluffy).
Colbert and Pellegrin also played in another band called Fluffy while BWA was active. Colbert went on to found Duraluxe after Breakfast with Amy broke up as well as becoming an in-demand audio engineer. Koval surfaces every now and then as an accomplished and respected guitar player. |
Hey Whomever’s Reading, I really want to see some kind of reissue program on this band, perpetrators of one of THE most crazed concerts I’ve ever attended, Christianny or otherwise. Said reissue program (even if it’s a best-of disc, which rightfully should be two-to-three CDs’ long), should include a properly legal release of their concert documentary. Maybe a general market indie label such as Arena Rock, already responsible for upping Larry Norman’s and Da/Daniel Amos’s profiles among hipsters who would’ve done well to’ve already known about them, could get behind such a project. In this day
I would totally agree – but I would love to also get unreleased tracks from Tuck in Your Love Gift and Green J*llo With Oatmeal.
Breakfast with Amy will always be the greatest Christian Alternative rock band ever. I’m 21 years old and every time I introduce youth group kids to this stuff it completely blows them away! My hope is to start a Christian Alternative rock band soon that melds Breakfast with Amy and PIXIES together… and become popular enough to point to Amy as a heavy influence. Maybe then kids will buy their CDs and discover the Calvary Chapel/Blonde Vinyl scene of the early 90’s.
Agree with the above… but you mus’nt forget to reissue the funderwear.
Breakfast with Amy is the best. I loved these guys so much I mailed out various snacks and sundries to them. A few weeks later I got a cool thank you along with some live bootleg cassettes courtesy of Mr. Rhumba.
I read about the funderwear… spent 3-4 years of my young life searching Ebay and never found the shirts/underwear/pink stickers or anything! I eventually just made my own Breakfast with Amy shirt (gray shirt with pink circle logo). People always ask me “who?” and I always respond with “the greatest alternative Christian band ever!”
Perhaps the mockudrama Sound of One Hand Snacking will come out on DVD. I’ll ask the surviving band members if they care. Likely not.
I love Jamie Lee Rake BTW.
I wonder if Koval is still rockin’ with the band SiteSeers?
All I can find on the SiteSeers is this video. Would love to see the mockudrama released! I am also holding out hope that there is a warehouse somewhere with boxes full of Green J*llo With Oatmeal 7″ just waiting to be discovered. They had a cover already – so it has to be possible? Right?
Site Seers has a MySpace page – looks like they haven’t logged in since January of 08. It would be great if they released (or re-released) ANY Breakfast w/Amy material. Based on the number of responses I’ve seen here they seem to be among the most well loved early christian alt-rock bands.
Great band they were. I’ve run into the members from time to time, always a funny experience. Had the t-shirt but my uncle put it in the dryer without washing it and baked Georgia clay right into it for ever. Has anyone else read the Wikipedia article for the Smashing Pumpkins’ guitarist Jeff Schroeder that says he took guitar lessons from Dave Koval?
Keep holdin’ that comment, guys…
Hey Horse on a Jug – I am not Facebook 😉 – just one guy doing a site in my spare time. Takes a while to get free time to moderate stuff.
This video is the song “Icky” by Breakfast with Amy. This is interesting: according to the video’s statistics, it’s been most viewed by the 13-17 year old age group.
Sheesh, Don’t give up the ghost gleeful commentators! Hope to inspire love gifts and good works by the modest moderators to keep up the good works. Love the latest editions on YouTube.