In 1999, after several years of working in corporate America, and traveling around the world, Marty Wells, a fourth generation Texas musician, decided it was time to get back to his cultural roots.
He founded a Texas cookoff team (Planet Texas) and struck up a musical friendship with David Fahl, a co-worker at a Houston energy trading company. This friendship ultimately led to the country band "Kenefick". (Kenefick is named after the very small East Texas town of the same name in Liberty County that Marty's family resides in. Marty's late father, Martin Wells Sr., is a former Mayor of Kenefick.
Marty and David got together one night to play guitar, and enjoyed the experience enough to work on a few tunes and start playing a few open mic nights around Houston. After a few weeks, Quintin Watts joined up. Quintin is also originally from Liberty County. He didn't play an instrument, but had an awesome voice, and was an excellent showman. Marty and Quintin had cut their teeth together entertaining folks at BBQ and Chili Cookoffs for their cookoff team, "Planet Texas". Their showmanship skills won many awards for Planet Texas, including the CASI Terlingua International Chili Championship. So it was a natural fit for Quintin to join up with Marty. At first, they tried to work Quintin in to playing bass, but he ended up playing drums. This all happened within a matter of weeks. Although Quintin was pretty much limited to playing with one arm, he was able to maintain enough of a tempo that the band survived for a month or so. Soon after, Glenn Byrd was invited to join the band as a lead guitar player. Next was a permanent bass player. Several were auditioned. The best one, Steve Shirk, played with the band for a while, but couldn't really live with the inexperienced, "one armed" drummer. Ultimately, Kenefick settled on a "real" drummer in Keith Quinones. That was it! Steve was happy because we had a real drummer. David and Glenn were complimenting each other on lead acoustic and lead electric. Marty was playing some strong acoustic rhythm guitar. Quintin was free to move around and focus on showmanship, and Marty and Quintin were creating some fine vocal combinations. The band started hosting Joe Parson's River Oaks Redneck Jam at Blancos every few weeks, and worked out from there to other venues around Houston.