Jackpot

Before forming Jackpot, Rusty Miller had earned recognition chiefly for his slithering guitar lines on Cake’s hit single “Never There.” In the late ’90s the quartet—guitarist/vocalist Miller, bassist Sheldon Cooney, drummer Mike Curry, and keyboardist Lee Bob Watson—launched the band as an alternative country-rock outfit. Their 1999 debut Boneville left them dissatisfied, prompting the group to label the recording a “really crappy four-track thing.” Weightless, issued the following year, aligned far more closely with their intentions, and by the time Shiny Things appeared in 2002 the musicians had found their footing in a slightly experimental take on that original approach. Miller and Jackpot resurfaced two years afterward with the quartet’s fourth full-length, F+.