Album Review – Nathan Kalish’s “Continental Breakfast of Champions”
When you turn on country radio, you may get the sense that America’s small towns are like a Disneyland of delights. Everyone has brand new jacked up trucks, the beer is flowing and always cold, it’s perpetually summer, and hot girls in daisy dukes are willing to slide up next to you as you spend every day chilling out near a river or lake. Even hard work is edified almost as if it was a form of entertainment.
The reality of things in America’s rural areas is much more grave: bombed out communities and abandoned downtowns, multi-generational agrarian economies plunged into ruin by corporate farming, rampant unemployment, and the scourge of the prescription drug epidemic gutting families and destroying lives.
It’s the real, true-to-life version of forgotten America that songwriter Nathan Kalish and his country band The Lastcallers from Grand Rapids, Michigan sing about in their new album Continental Breakfast of Champions; not some fairy tale to help prop up a false sense of escapism for bored suburbanites.
If you’ve got a belly full of songs and a spirited message behind them, you don’t need much more to help spin the magic all great music must have. Johnny Cash only needed two behind him to start, and so did Elvis. Not to go as far as comparing him to these two titans of American music, but Nathan Kalish can also take a conservation of manpower and still make you feel what he has to say, aided by the sparsity of sound as opposed to being hindered by it.
It starts with Kalish’s songs that spring from a very palpable anger at what he sees as a hard-touring songwriter drawing well-worn lines across the map like an Etch-A-Sketch needle. Playing for the sunken faces, and listening to real life stories inspires Kalish to not just tell tales from the other side of the American experience, but to attempt to dispel the myth of exceptionalism and prosperity that ultimately only benefit the few. Instead of braying on and on about the beauty of materialism, Kalish preaches the virtue of poordom.
The message may veer towards an account of a modern-day dystopia, but the sound of Nathan Kalish and the Lastcallers is very much ensconced in the American heartland and the twang of country. The crux of the sound is driven by the Telecaster work of Michael Hopper II, who dials in the perfect tone, minds the melody and space, yet makes his presence richly known when his time comes. And without a drummer, upright bass player Eric Soules holds down the rhythm himself, while also lending necessary harmonies to the vocals.
Nathan Kalish has a number of projects, including a more roots rock band called the Wildfire, as well as solo material. But Continental Breakfast of Champions is a delightfully sparse, deftly written, and wickedly entertaining work of dissent, with an underlying message of hope in the spirit of man to overcome the travails imposed by forces stronger than themselves.
1 3/4 Guns Up (7.5/10)
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Continental Breakfast of Champions can be streamed on Spotify and most other services. To purchase physical CD’s, paypal $15 and your mailing address to nathankalish@gmail.com.
May 22, 2016 @ 12:00 pm
Very good songwriter and tight live band.
May 22, 2016 @ 4:12 pm
strange, can’t watch the video here or on youtube. watched another one, sounded excellent.
Yes, notwithstanding what the politicians say, there are many people going through hard times. glad he’s writing and singing about it.
May 22, 2016 @ 6:27 pm
Off subject but could you consider doing a hit piece on Clare Dunn Tuxedo? I’d like to hear what you think about it
May 23, 2016 @ 6:02 am
I have his\their “How Am I Supposed to Get Back Home?” release and thought it showed tons of promise so it’s great to read that it has been realized.
May 23, 2016 @ 6:08 am
Good grief, Trigger. This is like James Agee on estrogen. ‘Real’ rural America is as much like how you describe it as it is like how one of those ‘jacked up new trucks and daisy dukes’ idiots describes it. The rural America you describe exists, sure. But you have to look for it. Even in the places where you THINK that’s what’s going on you may be surprised. Things aren’t always how they’re portrayed on TV. For every beat trailer with a meth kitchen there are 100 with at least one dedicated parent or grandparent and a kid on the honor roll. Or somebody just going to work and slugging it out like everyone else. Some days they’re happy, some days they’re not. They’re not sunken eyed zombies catching the latest alt-country act at the (ironically hip) VFW. And I take ‘exeption’ to the statement that rural America isn’t exceptional. We drive across the country every other year to see the family and we always take the ‘blue’ roads, and rural America is generally inviting and friendly and full of optimism and faith wherever we go – just like the very rural and very Southern county where we live. Rural America has always had challenges. 200 years ago it was Indians and disease. Now it’s unemployment. The world will kick your ass. That’s the nature of the world.
This record sound interesting and I’m glad you turned me on to it. But your review is ridiculous man. You make a living writing an internet blog. And I have time to write a long comment. Both of those actions are about as practically useful as farting in a bathtub and that free time / wasted time is a testament to the exceptional place we live. A place that was built with the idea that people would be free to create the kind of life they want to live. There were people who chose to respond to adversity 200 years ago by giving up and living in the gutter. And there are people who make that choice today. Some of them live in rural America. But don’t define rural America by the people who make the crap choices. The same way you don’t define it by the kid of the guy who owns the Ford dealership who drives a jacked up F250 and ‘rolls coal’. Define it instead by the ability to make the choice. That’s exceptionally American, rural or otherwise.
May 23, 2016 @ 8:48 am
Hey Craig,
I appreciate your perspective and your willingness to share it. The main clarification I would offer is that I was in no way attempting to impugn the people or the communities of rural America whatsoever, and that’s not how it should be taken. I am just describing what Nathan Kalish is singing about to let folks know what they can expect from this album. I also try to give it some context by contrasting it with the way small towns are depicted in mainstream country. Where does the reality of things sit? It probably depends on what specific community you’re talking about, and of course there are still great people, and great communities outside of America’s major cities. But think about where Nathan Kalish is from, Michigan. Have you read the news about Flint lately? Read about the political fights happening in the rust belt due to rampant unemployment, the drying up of the coal industry in Kentucky? There is some serious hurt going on out there, and that is what Kalish has chosen to sing about. That doesn’t means there isn’t an alternative perspective, but if you turn on the radio, the rosy, Disneyland version is the ONLY version you’ll hear about. And specifically, that “exceptionalism” comment was meant to point out that despite all of America’s prosperity, places like Flint and Kentucky are being left behind. That’s not those people’s fault, part of it is because they’ve been forgotten, and it falls to artists to sing about their lives.
As far as the usefulness of my blog, I’m afraid when it comes to reviews like this, you’re probably right. The biggest criticism against Saving Country Music is that I never feature small-time artists like this. Truth is, I feature them all the time, but so few people read these posts (while bad-mouthing my efforts, because I don’t post stories like this), I question the usefulness myself. It did stimulate this conversation though, so perhaps it’s good for something.
May 23, 2016 @ 3:31 pm
Thanks for the clarification Trigger. I owe you one as well. I read this blog precisely because of reviews of bands like this, so man don’t take my comment about usefulness the wrong way. I wrote ‘practically useless’, meaning that blogging about music, and reading blogs about music, has no practical value, as opposed to say, curing cancer, building a house, or growing food. A category that about a million other jobs would fall into as well. To illustrate that as bad as some bits of the US may be, we’re not exactly all out hunting for dinner and shelter. But obviously the illustration didn’t work, because you took it to mean that I thought your blog is useless, which since I spend an amount of time reading it every day, is not true.
I’m all for truth in music, and I don’t mind sad at all. I have a Mark Kozelek playlist, and it actually gets played. It just seems to me that we live in a time that romanticizes and at the same time hyper dramatizes ‘real life’ and the result is as Disney as country radio. And it seemed like that’s what you were doing in the review. That was my only point in writing that War and Peace comment.
So more small bands, it’s all good and I’ll keep my comments brief and happy lol.
May 23, 2016 @ 4:42 pm
Hey Craig,
I like comments, I like long comments, and I like people to challenge my philosophies and assertions because it keeps me on my toes. Now that Nathan himself has chimed in, I think we’ve all learned something from different perspective, and that’s the reason I write these articles and emphasize the comments so much.
May 23, 2016 @ 6:54 am
Wow Craig.
May 23, 2016 @ 7:35 am
After 15 yrs in the Big City, I’m back in rural small town America. The reality is much closer to Triggers comments than Craig’s. 40 yrs ago these little coal towns were so clean you could eat off the sidewalks. Now the streets are paved with dogshit and needles. You can find a pill on the sidewalk the way you used to find a penny. Every day there’s ten names in the paper for traffic stop drug busts, and ten more for domestic violence. All young, all lost, and the county jails are full to capacity. Half my friends are raising grandkids cuz mommy’s in jail. Everybody’s on food stamps. The change from 1985 to 2015 is shocking. There’s jobs driving truck, or warehouses, or light manufacturing, but my foreman buddies tell me more than half the qualified can’t pass the piss test. In rural / small town Appalachia it’s pretty fucked up these days.
May 23, 2016 @ 9:36 am
I’m going to skip the political commentary on rural America, and simply say this is a solid album from start to finish.
Nice feature.
They have gained a new fan.
May 23, 2016 @ 9:55 am
Going to have to pick this one up. From the samples here it seems they strike a nice balance between serious and playful… I’m really starting to miss a little levity in my music.
May 23, 2016 @ 3:32 pm
Trigger, thanks for listening to our songs you are gifted with words. Not alot of folks listen or care about words anymore you definitely found the the key themes of this album and it’s true Im making commentary on the decline of American culture. To craig, it’s not specifically music about rural routes and small towns. I’m more interested in the general pulse of the whole place, the cities, the towns and the decline of culture from sea to sea. It’s got to do with economic problems but that is also like someone above said part of what has made america great in the past, a place where work was rewarded. I’m more concerned with the dumbing down and the pursuit of numbness. Rural or metro, southern or northern, eastcoast or Westcoast it’s more a commentary on corporate (evil) verses independence (good) . If you take anything from the songs or the message it should be if an idiot like me can drive around the country in a minivan making songs and a living full time, then maybe you can quit your job at Walmart and start the painting business you always wanted. That is the kind of thing they are trying to fool us with. The coal mines aren’t coming back no matter who gets elected. The manufacturing jobs are always going to get shipped overseas by selfish folks at the top who can make a few more pennies a part. It’s fucked and we are more concerned with keeping up with the Kardashians or glorifying entertainers who have never even written a song, then we talk about what great role models they are for our children. Eitherway I liked reading the comments and I hope you all enjoy the album. Blow up you tv! Move out to the country or the city.eat alot of peaches.
May 23, 2016 @ 5:12 pm
when a comment that includes this….
“Rural America has always had challenges. 200 years ago it was Indians and disease.”
gets a respectful response, I lose interest.
May 23, 2016 @ 7:37 pm
Great, so now Nathan Kalish and I have to pay for the fact that a commenter buried something in a comment that in hindsight is probably a pretty shortsighted assertion.
What does anyone feel about his music?
May 25, 2016 @ 10:15 am
sorry about that.
I thought the review was outstanding, as are most of your reviews.
Maybe i’m too sensitive for internet forums, but I can’t tolerate racists.
May 25, 2016 @ 10:55 am
sorry for the slam.
My tolerance for racists is located somewhere between minimal, and non existent.
Review was very interesting. As usual.
May 26, 2016 @ 5:00 am
Yes, Mark, you outed me. I mean, for years I have waited every football season to watch the Cowboys whup up on the Redskins and now I know why. I am a hater of Native Americans. Wait, say what? Deion played for the Seminoles? NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Meanwhile, back to the music. This is a great record. I’ve been listeing to it all week. Favorite tunes: Never go Back, Like Angels, Overdosin’ on the USA, Richmans Tool then Die. I listen to a lot of Haggard and if you like Haggard then you’ll like this. Which is a high compliment.
May 23, 2016 @ 5:42 pm
Nathan Kalish is a real music artist.
May 23, 2016 @ 7:03 pm
Congratulations Nathan and Eric on all your hard work, all the sacrifices you’ve made to do what you love to do, and damn good at it too XOXOX
May 23, 2016 @ 9:53 pm
To Nathan Kalish, who wrote the songs, and Trigger who wrote about the songs – job well done. You got a dialogue about important issues started and moving. Not everyone is going to agree, and misinterpreted or misguided comments will surface. But awareness is raised. Thank you for that. Besides the hunt for good music, it’s one of the main reasons I read the articles and comments.
May 24, 2016 @ 9:21 am
I wanted to leave a word of encouragement for this review and for the site in general. Great job Trigger, and thanks for bringing this effort by Nathan Kalish to my attention. That’s why I come here, that’s why this site is such great resource for so many of us.