Jessica Parker

"Two nights ago in Manhattan, I was onstage thinking that there's something very cheap about this job," Rhett Miller says, via phone from the roof of a nightclub in Baltimore. Miller, singer-guitarist for the Old 97's and band-proclaimed "face man," is loading in for a show at the beginning of...

Let's face it -- the tuba isn't exactly a sexy instrument. When one thinks tuba, among the images generated are: polka, old men (detail: old men wearing black knee-high socks and bad plaid shorts) and flabby, elongated cheeks. Just how the New York-based trio Drums & Tuba produces such layered,...