Athens, Georgia, the town that birthed R.E.M. and the B-52’s, is also home for Dan Nettles and his Kenosha Kid band, a bird of different breed. Like the ambiguous figure of the same name in Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity Rainbow novel, Kenosha Kid is real hard to pin down, and that’s a big part of its appeal. They’ve been likened to Bill Frisell, the Blue Cranes and Todd Sickafoose, acts that are instrumental and improvisational like jazz but color their sound with decidedly non-jazz textures like indie rock, folk and Americana.
Kenosha Kid is poised to self-release their newest album Inside Voices on March 3rd, 2015, a wonderful collection of songs likely to appeal to anyone whose a fan of those aforementioned names, but in the meantime, the video premiere above introduces a track that should give you a pretty good idea of the record’s delights.
“Mushmouth” has a rollicking rock beat but the horn section consisting of Jacob Wick (trumpet), Peter Van Huffel (alto sax) and Greg Sinibaldi (tenor and baritone saxes) puts a healthy dose of swing into what’s probably the hardest rocking track on the disc. Tying this all together is the tough Robby Handley/Marlon Patton bass/drums rhythm section, which generates rhythm patterns that closely sync up to the horn charts.
The video itself, produced locally by Third Phase, has its own idiosyncratic charms, a montage of random images that somehow correlates with the rhythm of the music. Well, seemingly random images until you realize there’s an awful lot of Willie Nelson and Jesus iconography, and it slowly becomes apparent that these collection of photos, paintings, signage and other assorted knick-knacks are all in the same room.
Disparate pieces coming together to create a unique, integrated work of art…portrayed by both sound and images.
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