Kneebody

The band Kneebody has been around for almost 25 years. They started out as a quintet of fellow students, and even back then they tried their hand at combining the explosive energy of rock with the nuanced improvisation of jazz. They released several albums as Kneebody, received a Grammy nomination and toured extensively. At the end of the 10s, they took a longer break to shed their aesthetic skin and shrink down to a quartet. Keyboarder Adam Benjamin, trumpeter Shane Endsley, saxophonist Ben Wendel and Nate Wood, who plays bass and drums at the same time, have refined the mix of styles of the past. The crude Kneebody fusion of those years has made way for some sophisticated compositions which, despite all the complexity, still celebrate the groove and seem to be simply singable. Something else makes this four-piece so likeable: Kneebody sees itself as a collective, because only in the community can the music sound the way it does.