The music at an Elby Brass show is delightfully loud. The horns wail, the drums are relentless, the crowd is singing along and even the band is shout-singing. But underneath the contained chaos is a feeling that is harder to name. Underneath the costumes and clever songs, there’s a feeling that it’s all intentional.
Seth Casana would say that’s the whole point.
Casana is the tuba player and bandleader behind Elby Brass, a horn-driven group that’s been a fixture of Fredericksburg stages for 17 years. He’s also a DJ, a promoter, and one of the people most responsible for shaping where and how live music happens in this city. But the thing that actually drives him isn’t logistics. It’s a conviction that’s gotten harder to hold onto in the age of streaming.
“We’ve lost intentionality in sequencing,” he says. “The storytelling is being told by a robot.”
Uniforms and a sousaphone
Elby Brass started the way most good things do — impulsively, with a small budget and no real plan.
Casana’s brother mentioned that his old high school was selling off marching band uniforms. That was enough.
“For a hundred dollars, I got 150 uniforms and the sousaphone. And on Monday I was like, guys — we’ve got to start this band.”
He hadn’t played tuba in years. Didn’t own one. But he rounded up friends Lars Holmstrom and Chris Park, and they leaned hard into the spectacle — full uniforms, marching drums, no amplification — and figured out the rest as he went. Not everyone could read sheet music. Not everyone was playing their main instrument. It didn’t matter. Audiences loved it.
The band roster has shifted over the years, due to marriages, the arrival of kids, divorces, moves and “the practical realities of life.”
The current band is Casana on sousaphone, Mike and Megan Huffman on trumpets, Stephen Patterson on Trumpet, Matt Gray on alto sax, Elaina Johnson on bari sax, Zach Santulli on trombone, Mark Willis on drums and Sabine Wills on vocals.
Seventeen years later the band is tighter, the arrangements more ambitious. But the core idea is the same: a live show should be a designed experience — not a setlist pulled from a hat
Casana thinks about performance the way a painter thinks about color.
“The flow between songs, how one affects the next — it’s like painting. You put two colors next to each other, and they change each other.”
He’ll tell you vinyl beats streaming. That CDs are due for a comeback. That listening to an album front to back, in order, is worth doing. These aren’t contrarian takes — they come from a genuine belief that sequence is meaning, and that meaning is being quietly stripped out of the way most people consume music now.
It shows up in what the band refuses to do, too. They could work the wedding circuit — easy money for a horn ensemble. They don’t.
“We don’t want to just perform a service. We want to play songs we actually want to play.”
Casana handles weddings separately, as a DJ. It keeps the bills paid and keeps the band free to play when and where they want.
Through his company Big Wig Productions, Casana has spent years asking one question about whatever space he walks into: How could I throw a party here?
That instinct has turned into a real career — booking shows, advising venues, connecting musicians with opportunities. Reclaim Arcade went from hosting no live music at all to being one of the better places in the city to catch a show. That didn’t happen by accident.
“You’ve got to make it a good experience,” he tells venues looking for music. Not just for the audience. For the musicians, too.
And the beat goes on
Seventeen years is a long run for any band, especially one with the rotating cast and logistical headaches that come with a large ensemble. Casana’s philosophy on sustainability is blunt: a gig should be fun, pay well, or both. If it’s neither, you’ll be miserable.
But what actually keeps him going is simpler than that. Parents come up to him after shows sometimes, telling him their kids have his songs on repeat.
“That’s the kind of thing that makes me go, alright — I’m going to keep doing it.”
Back at the show, the horns are going again. A man near the front is tapping the rhythm on his legs. Nobody here found this on a playlist. They’re in the room because someone told them to show up, or they came to play arcade games and got pulled in, or they’ve seen it before and knew what was coming.
That’s the argument. Not that algorithms are evil, but that a live show — sequenced with intention, designed to take you somewhere — offers something that can’t be delivered to your earbuds. You have to be there.
Elby Brass opens the Fredericksburg Area Museum’s Downtown Sounds summer concert series Friday, May 1 at 6:30 on Market Square.
