Named after an ambiguous figure in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, Kenosha Kid was formed by creative jazz guitarist, composer, and bandleader Dan Nettles in his hometown of Athens, Georgia in 2004. The Berklee College of Music-educated Nettles started up the project after attending the Banff International Workshop in Jazz & Creative Music in the Canadian Rockies, where workshop director Dave Douglas -- the award-winning trumpeter, composer, bandleader, and educator -- encouraged the guitarist to take a non-idiomatic approach to jazz, working with like-minded collaborators in Athens and helping to build a more far-reaching jazz scene in the Southern hotbed of alternative and indie rock.

Drawing from a rotating group of musicians not hidebound by jazz tradition, Nettles began Kenosha Kid as a vehicle for performing his silent film scores. The ensemble's first album, Projector, arrived in 2005; a recording of music composed to accompany silent films by Charlie Chaplin and Ladislaw Starewicz, the album featured a sextet with Nettles on guitar joined by bassist Carl Lindberg, drummer Jeff Reilly, trombonist Dave Nelson, mandolinist Rob McMaken, and accordionist Rich Iannucci. A second silent film soundtrack, Steamboat Bill Jr., followed in 2008 as a CD/DVD set featuring the Buster Keaton silent film of the same name with music composed by Nettles for octet and tentet. This time, Nettles, Reilly, Nelson, Iannucci (on organ in addition to accordion), and McMaken were joined by three musicians the guitarist met at Banff -- Mexico City trumpeter Jacob Wick, Berlin alto saxophonist Peter Van Huffel, and Seattle tenor and baritone saxophonist Greg Sinibaldi -- as well as bassists Aryeh Kobinsky (acoustic) and Neal Fountain (electric).

Kenosha Kid's third studio album, 2009's Fahrenheit, released digitally and in limited-edition vinyl, consisted of Nettles compositions commissioned for a Brunswick, Georgia stage production of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and performed by a sextet of Nettles, Kobinsky, Reilly, Wick, Sinibaldi, and baritone/steel guitarist Neal Fountain. Next, Kenosha Kid returned to the studio -- amidst concurrent live performances documented as part of an avalanche of digital releases available on Nettles' website -- to record Inside Voices, which arrived in early 2015. The ensemble lineup on this fourth studio album featured a core trio of Nettles on guitar and loops, bassist Robby Handley, and drummer Marlon Patton along with Wick, Van Huffel, and Sinibaldi, three returning collaborators whom Nettles warmly nicknamed "the Horns from Hell." Outside Choices, a companion album to Inside Voices, was released on September 1, 2017. ~ Dave Lynch, Rovi