The Seldom Scene — All This And Fun, Too

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine

December 1994, Volume 29, Number 6

The Seldom Scene got together with the avowed purpose of “playing for fun,” the band’s bio reads. “Yet, with this band’s tremendous aggregation of talent, it’s hardly surprising that what started as their ‘weekly card game’ soon became a sustaining career.” Twenty-three years later, the Seldom Scene is still playing for fun, though its members have become legendary figures in the bluegrass world. The name has lost some of its initial meaning, since the band has appeared on such national television programs as Entertainment Tonight, Nashville Now, and Nightline, has toured internationally and across North America, has recorded fifteen albums, and has received two Grammy Finalist Nominations and countless other awards. Yet through the years the band has remained consistently true to its original philosophy of never taking itself too seriously, and its members would be the first to say that this philosophy is the root of the Seldom Scene’s success and longevity.

The original members of the band had all previously been involved to some extent in the burgeoning D.C. bluegrass music scene of the 1960s. Mandolinist/ tenor singer John Duffey had been an original member of the groundbreaking Country Gentlemen in 1957, and was a driving force in the band until his departure in 1969. Tom Gray was also a member of the Country Gentlemen from 1960-1964 and had played bass with other bands in the area. Dobro player Mike Auldridge and banjoist Ben Eldridge had worked with Cliff Waldron and the New Shades Of Grass, and guitarist/lead singer John Starling, an Army doctor, had played music on the side for years. It seemed inevitable, then, that these five should meet.

Mike Auldridge describes how he first got to know the other band members: “I knew Tom Gray first, just from playing around with local bands around Washington. Then I was going to the University of Maryland I was an undergraduate student and Ben (Eldridge) was a graduate student there. So that’s where I met Ben; in college. I met (John) Starling through Ben, because he and Ben lived across the street from each other, and they had gone to college together at the University of Virginia. The first time I ever met John (Duffey) was at this swimming pool called Cramer’s Pool, way out in the sticks in Maryland. He was playing dobro out in the parking lot with a bunch of guys, and I thought he was a dobro player! I listened to him—I didn’t really get to talk much with him, (then). Whenever anybody would mention John Duffey, I thought, ‘Oh yeh, that’s that dobro player guy.’ (Later) I used to go see him a lot with the Country Gentlemen at the Shamrock in Georgetown. After he left the Country Gentlemen, (John) used to work in this little music store, Arlington Music. He had an instrument repair shop there. I talked to him once at Arlington Music about dobros and the Dopera Brothers. I was really green about it all, and he kind of filled me in.”

Duffey recalls, “I first met Ben when he was teaching banjo at a store where I had a repair shop, Arlington Music. John Starling had brought a guitar in to me, to have some work done on it. I think that was before he went to Vietnam. Then after he came back, a year or so later, I got a call from him. I had met Mike Auldridge previously, just kind of a passing meeting, so to speak. Of course, Tom Gray I’d known for a long time.”

Though the five then were acquainted, it was purely by chance that they came together at a party in the summer of 1971 and discovered that magic combination of talents that was to become the Seldom Scene. Actually the groundwork was put in place a few years earlier, Mike relates. “My brother Dave, and Ben and I and John Starling and Gary Henderson, who became a DJ in Washington and played bass, used to meet at Ben’s all the time—every Monday night I think it was—and play music, just for laughs. This was back when they were starting Bluegrass Unlimited magazine. There was a guy named Vince Sims and his wife, Dianne, and Gary Henderson was involved with them. Gary called me when I was going to the University of Maryland and he knew I was studying art. He asked me if I would design a logo for Bluegrass Unlimited magazine—or ‘newsletter’ it was then, just mimeographed sheets. I remember saying to him, ‘Is “bluegrass” one word or two?’ I had never heard it called ‘bluegrass music’— we always just called it ‘hillbilly music.’

“Anyway, (several years later) Vince Sims had a party over at his house, that he invited John (Duffey) to, and that was probably the first time I ever really sat around and picked a little bit with him. It was fun, and he enjoyed it. Then a few weeks later Starling had a party. Ben was teaching music at that same music store where Duffey worked, so he mentioned that they were going to have a party at Starling’s, and Duffey came. That was probably the beginning of the Seldom Scene, because I think Tom Gray was at that party, so the original five guys were there. We did that once or twice at parties, through that summer, of 1971. We thought, ‘You know, this sounds pretty damn good. We ought to see if we can get a job in a club, getting paid for doing this.’ ”

The quintet decided they needed to have a name if they were going to be serious enough to get a regular club job. “The rumor was around that we were playing together,” Mike recalls, “and Charlie Waller (of the Country Gentlemen) had heard it and said, ‘I keep hearing this rumor that you guys have this band. What do you call yourselves, “The Seldom Seen?” ’ – because nobody had ever seen us play. When we started thinking about it, somebody said, ‘Well, why don’t we use The Seldom Seen, but just spell die “Seen” like “Scene” ’—I think that was actually Starling’s idea. And we said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’

“So we went to this place called the Rabbit’s Foot, down on Wisconsin Avenue, in Washington. That was in November of ’ 71. We started working there on a Monday night, I remember because they had Monday night football on at this club, and they had a television right on stage with us! The sound was off, but they had the television set sitting right beside us on stage. We thought, ‘This is really weird.’ And then there was another television set behind the bar, with the sound on. And a guy that wanted to hear us play—I’ll never forget this—he went over to the bartender and asked him, ‘Would you please turn the sound down, because I’m trying to hear the music?’ The bartender threw him out of the bar! So we quit. We said, ‘Wait a minute, if you’re going to throw out our customers, we quit!’ We were only there four or five times at the most. That night, when we left, a couple of us went by the Red Fox, up in Bethesda. That was kind of a ‘known’ bluegrass club at the time. At least once or twice a week they had a band in there. So we went out to talk to the owner and see if he would hire us on another night, which he did. So I think we started at the Red Fox in January of ’72.

“And the word got out that we were going to be playing there. Back at the Rabbit’s Foot there was hardly anybody there—ten, fifteen, twenty people. But the first night we played (at the Red Fox), enough interest had gathered—John Duffey had come out of retirement, Ben and I who had been working with Emerson-Waldron, were in this new band—so there was a little bit of interest around Washington. Right off the bat, when we started working at the Red Fox, it was crowded. And within two or three weeks, people were literally bringing their own chairs, because they were sitting in the aisles! That was really when we got serious [about the band].

“So,” Mike continues, “We knew, by the end of February, that we were onto something. John (Duffey) was real good friends with Dick Freeland, who owned Rebel Records then, because (John) had recorded with the Gentlemen on Rebel. So somehow it was decided we were going to go in and do a record. John Starling had known Paul Craft—he went to UVA with Ben and Starling—and he was kind of a budding songwriter. So Starling called him and got a few songs— ‘Raised By The Railroad Line’ and a couple of others. We had some pretty neat songs on that first album. It was different, a lot of it was original material, which we knew we would have to do right away. We thought, ‘We don’t want to be a “cover band.” If we’re going to do this, let’s do material that nobody’s ever heard.’ And it was a different sounding band. And one of the reasons that it was different was that we were using a dobro instead of a fiddle. Duffey never did like working with a fiddle, because he thought it competed with the vocals, and Duffey is a vocal freak. I mean, his whole thing is trios. But the dobro worked, because for one thing, I was playing dobro, and when I was singing I wouldn’t play dobro at the same time, so that got rid of any clashing there.

“We went in the studio in the winter of ’72, and we had an album out by late spring. I mean, in those days you could go in and do an album head-on. There was none of this ‘mixing’ stuff—you mixed it as you record edit—you put it in a cardboard sleeve, and it was out on the stands in about two or three weeks!

“So we met with success almost immediately. That summer, of’72, we started getting inquiries to play festivals. John (Duffey) had been around the business long enough to say, ‘I’m not going out for peanuts,’ so we just put the figure right up there with the big guys. And it worked. We were booking a few festivals that first summer. Just enough so that people thought, ‘Well, the Seldom Scene name means that we don’t get to see them very often.’ It kind of created this mystique the first year or two, and it was mainly because we wouldn’t go out cheap, and we weren’t hungry. [Playing music] was just something to do for fun. So it was a good time, right from the beginning, and it just kind of slowly took off.

“I was a commercial artist at The Washington Star at that time, and I worked another four years (there). So for the first four years at least, I didn’t care. I never asked how much we were getting paid, where (the show) was—all I had to do was go down and get in John [Duffey’s] car and we’d go. I just left it all up to him. And he did all the booking and it was really very easy. That’s all John was doing. He was doing instrument repair work a little bit on the side, but he started easing out of that in the next few years. The rest of us all worked (at day jobs).”

When the band started, John Starling was an Army surgeon, Mike Auldridge worked for the Star, Ben Eldridge was a mathematician, and Tom Gray was a cartographer for National Geographic. The fact that the members of the Seldom Scene had other full-time, white-collar professions was one of the things that set them apart from other bluegrass bands of the time. It made the band more accessible to urban audiences, who might have been hearing bluegrass for the first time, or who might have held the stereotypical view of bluegrass as a simple, unsophisticated music played by hill folk.

The original band remained intact for six years, becoming tremendously popular and more and more frequently seen. During this time they recorded six highly successful albums including  “Act I” (Rebel 1511, 1972), “Act II” (Rebel 1520, 1973), “Act III” (Rebel 1528,1973), “Old Train” (Rebel 1536, 1974), “Live At The Cellar Door” (Rebel 1547/8, 1975), and “The New Seldom Scene Album” (Rebel 1561, 1976).

In 1972, John Starling met a young unknown folk singer named Emmylou Harris, and they soon became fast friends. “(It was) pure happenstance,” he relates. “(A friend) calls me on the phone one night and says, ‘You’ve got to get down to the Childe Herald and see this girl play down there. You’ll really enjoy her.’ The Childe Herald was this club on Connecticut Avenue in D.C. So I go in there and watch her play, and I’m just blown away. Emmy was literally doing folk stuff. She didn’t do much country material at all. And this was before the Gram Parsons thing. She’d been in New York. She came back to the Washington area and was just playing in clubs. I went up and introduced myself and we became good buddies. She came over to the house and played some. Then she met Linda (Ronstadt) when she was touring with Gram Parsons. That’s how I met Linda. (Emmylou) brought Linda out to my house one night (when) Linda was playing a week at the Cellar Door. Linda and I just hit it off right away. She was enamored of the way that we liked to sit down and just pick in the living room, and weren’t too cool to do it. She said, ‘On the west coast, nobody does this.  On the west coast they’re too supercool to do that.’ So she liked that. She started coming to see the band play at the Red Fox.”

It was also purely coincidental, he explains, that Linda Ronstadt appeared on the Seldom Scene’s “Old Train” recording. “When we really got to know her, she was on a tour in the middle of the winter. The tour was winding down, it was March, and she got the flu, a fever of 103-104. She only had to do a show in Washington and a show in New York, and then she was through, so she cancelled the rest of the tour. So she stayed at my house for two weeks. Actually she would have stayed longer if Peter Asher hadn’t come and gotten her! She was too sick to do anything for a while, but then she started feeling better, her fever went down. And Lowell George was hanging out with her then, so he was staying there. I called Paul Craft and said, “There’s a room in the basement. Linda’s here for two weeks.’ So he came. And I called Ricky Skaggs, who was working as a lineman for Vepco. He came in. And it was like being in a commune for two and a half, three weeks. It just so happened, we (the Seldom Scene) were in the studio doing ‘Old Train’ and Mike’s second dobro album, ‘Blues & Bluegrass!’ So that’s why he’s got Lowell George (on it).”

The Seldom Scene was in the process of recording its first and only gospel album, “Baptizing” (Rebel 1573,1978), when John Starling left the band moved to Alabama to pursue his medical practice. Starling was replaced by singer/ songwriter Phil Rosenthal, whose songs the Scene had recorded several years earlier. Rosenthal helped them finish the “Baptizing” album, contributing three original songs, and remained with the band through the spring of 1986.

About the time that Rosenthal came into the band, the Seldom Scene began playing regularly at a new dub in the D.C. area, the Birchmere. For a while they alternated weekly between the Red Fox and the Birchmere, but soon the Birchmere became their permanent home base on Thursday nights. Though they have played there almost every Thursday for the last 17 years, the Scene continues to pack them in, and Birchmere audiences often include a celebrity or two, either from government or from the music business. Mike Auldridge notes that, “Over the years that was one of the things that was the big draw of the Seldom Scene, because you could never tell—you might go in there some Thursday night and Linda Ronstadt would drop in, or Jonathan Edwards. Always, every month or two, somebody that we knew in the business would be in town and they’d just get up and sing a few or play a few. It always was real exciting— for us, too.”

The Seldom Scene was one of the first bands to sign with Sugar Hill Records during its debut year, an association which continues today, more than 15 years later. During Rosenthal’s tenure the Scene recorded four albums for Sugar Hill: “Act IV” (SH-3709, 1979), “After Midnight” (SH-3721, 1981), “At The Scene” (SH-3736, 1983), and “Blue Ridge” (SH-3747,1985) with Jonathan Edwards. They were also featured on Sugar Hill’s “Bluegrass: The World’s Greatest Show” (SH-2201, 1982), a double-length live recording which also includes the Country Gentlemen and the New South (J.D. Crowe, Ricky Skaggs, Tony Rice, Jerry Douglas, and Todd Phillips).

In 1986 Rosenthal was replaced by Lou Reid, a veteran of Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver and the Ricky Skaggs Band. A year later Tom Gray left the band, to be replaced by North Carolinian T. Michael Coleman, who had worked for 15 years with Doc Watson. While Reid brought a sharper bluegrass edge to the band through his sky-high vocal range and hard-driving guitar rhythm, Coleman’s rock and jazz-influenced electric bass playing smoothed out the sound and opened up new instrumental possibilities. Reid remained in the band through 1991, and can be heard on four recordings: “15th Anniversary Celeb ration” (SH-2202, 1988), “A Change Of Scenery” (SH-3763, 1989), “Scenic Roots” (SH-3785,1990), and “Scene 20 – 20th Anniversary Celebration” (SH- 2501/2, 1992). Coleman made his recording debut with the band on the “Change Of Scenery” release.

Though John Starling had been pursuing other musical endeavors while in Alabama (including two solo recordings for Sugar Hill), he had never lost touch with the Seldom Scene and his ties to the D.C. area. In 1986 he moved back to Virginia and opened a medical practice in Fredericksburg. When the Seldom Scene conceived the idea of celebrating its 15^th Anniversary that November with a huge concert/party/recording at the Kennedy Center, it was Starling who took on the monumental challenge of organizing and directing the show. It was an unforgettable evening, which was documented on what may be the Scene’s most significant recording to date. The incredible list of guest participants included Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Ricky Skaggs, Sharon White, Jonathan Edwards, Charlie Waller, Tony Rice, Paul Craft, Alan O’Bryant, Stuart Duncan and more. White House Press Secretary James Brady, a long-time fan, served as honorary host and the band received a letter of congratulations from President Reagan.

Following the release of that recording, Starling began to make occasional guest “Reunion” appearances with the band at concerts and festivals. In the fall of 1991 he was on hand to participate in the Scene’s 20th Anniversary celebration/recording at the Birchmere, along with former members Phil Rosenthal and Tom Gray.

Soon after the “Scene 20” recording was made, Lou Reid informed the band that he was leaving. While they were auditioning lead singers to take his place, it seemed natural to ask Starling to fill in temporarily until they found a permanent replacement. Starling agreed, and enjoyed it so much that he stayed for two years.

He recalls, “Originally I was (just) going to fill in for a while (at the beginning of 1992), and then John (Duffey) calls me up and starts reading me the itinerary through June! I looked at it and started working around my schedule, and all of a sudden realized, well, you know, in a stretch I could do this through June or July. And so I told John that and John calls up Mike and says, ‘Starling’s back!’ So I had such a great time playing the shows, we just said, ‘Well, we got through one summer, let’s go in the studio and do a record and see if we can’t get through another year.’ ”

Unfortunately, by the time the new recording, “Like We Used To Be” (SH- 3822,1994), was released, the pressures of other responsibilities had taken their toll and Starling had decided he could not continue in the band. “It (was) lots of fun,” he attests. “At my age, being able to come back and play music on stage, that’s a kick in the butt, man! The stodgy, old doctor, you know…I don’t have enough time to have that much fun. Medicine is a jealous mistress. There are just little subtle pressures. There are a lot of things I need to do in order to keep myself up to snuff in the medical end. Not to mention the personal end—I’ve got a 14-year-old son that I’m not going to have too much influence on for too many more years. I need to be around for that. Trying to do two things at once, eventually something sort of gives. I’m in private practice with another physician who’s been very understanding about this. When I first got to Fredericksburg I couldn’t have done it, because there were only two of us there and I was on call every other week. Then two more people came, so it was every fourth week. So that made it possible to go out and play three out of four weeks. But I felt like when I was in town all I was doing was going to the emergency room. When I wasn’t in town I was out having a great time, but I need to enjoy being in town and not having anything to do!”

“Like We Used To Be,” which was released in January of 1994, is, as its title suggests, reminiscent of the original Seldom Scene sound. “It’s very smooth,” Mike maintains. “It’s very much a Seldom Scene album, of the Starling era—that sound, but with a ’90s feel to it. It’s kind of like the formula Seldom Scene album—we don’t mean it to be a formula, but it works. It’s just like what we did on ‘Old Train’ or one of those albums, back when Starling was with us, except it sounds so much better because of CDs and recording techniques.”

Michael Coleman agrees. “It’s a great album. It’s really Seldom Scene. Our record company (president), Barry Poss, says it sounds like an old Seldom Scene album, which I’m extremely pleased at, because I don’t think you can do much better than their old albums. It’s eclectic. There are the Duffey and Starling influences, with some smattering of Auldridge, Coleman and Eldridge in there. Tire bluegrass things are pretty straightforward, and then you have the ballads by Starling, who loves ballads. There’s even one bluegrass song, I think it’s ‘Philadelphia Lawyer,’ where I sort of do a little bass tribute to Tom (Gray). Tom had a habit of, when there’s a banjo solo, to walk the bass, so I did the same thing.”

Ben Eldridge adds, “I think my personal favorite on the whole thing is that Tim O’Brien tune, ‘Like I Used To Do.’ John Starling, he just sings the living dickens out of it. There’s some interesting stuff on there. There’s a real pretty Claire Lynch tune (‘Some Morning Soon’). I play more guitar on this album than I have on any of the others, and it was fun. There’s a song called ‘Grandpa Get Your Guitar,’ on which I play banjo that sounds like me—it’s actually a bluegrassy sound. We took the old Stanley Brothers song, ‘She’s More To Be Pitied,’ which I think was like a three-quarter time song, and we did it in four- four time. John (Duffey) sang it, and that one turned out pretty good. I like that.”

An additional treat for longtime fans is the new Duffey/Coleman song, “I’ve Come To Take You Home,” which continues the story told in the classic, “Bringing Mary Home.” The latter was one of the most popular songs that Duffey recorded with the Country Gentlemen, and he still performs it occasionally (the most recent recording appears on “ Bluegrass—The World’s Greatest Show”). Duffey describes how the idea for “I’ve Come To Take You Home” was conceived: “We were riding down to Burlington, N.C., one time. We were talking about songs to record, and I think it was T. Michael Coleman that said, ‘Why don’t you write a sequel to “Mary”?’ A few lines started to pop into my head and he was driving and I wrote. (Later) every now and then I’d come out of the shower and think of a line and write it down. I had two verses and two half-or quarter-verses, I had a tune figured out, but when it got to the point to where we were going to record, I couldn’t finish it. The ideas just would not come. So I said, T. here, you take this and see if you can finish it.’ He picked right up on the idea and even changed a line or two here and there to suit the progression better, and so fine, we’re cowriters on it. We have played it a few times (on stage), and I think we’ve discovered that to those who are not familiar with ‘Mary,’ it’s just a nice song. To those that are familiar with ‘Mary,’ think, ‘Oh, wow!’ ”

Luckily, when Starling decided to leave at the end of 1993, the band had a ready made replacement available in Moondi Klein. Mike Auldridge and T. Michael Coleman had met Moondi (then a member of D.C. bluegrass band Rock Creek) through Jimmy Gaudreau (of the Tony Rice Unit) in the fall of 1992. Jimmy had suggested they all get together for a weekly jam session, to have fun playing some music that was different from what they all played in other bands. The story of this foursome’s evolution into a band is remarkably similar to the Seldom Scene’s. They soon began playing in clubs, first around Washington and later further afield. From the audience response they soon realized that the band had a special sound. They chose a name, Chesapeake, and began negotiating with Sugar Hill to make a recording.

It was about this time that Starling announced his intention to leave the Seldom Scene. Moondi had actually tried out for the lead singer’s job when Lou Reid left, Mike explains, “but then Starling decided to come back, so that seemed to be the obvious thing to do. Starling was with us for two years. When he decided to leave, actually is was Duffey who said, ‘Why don’t we give Moondi a try again.’ In the mean time we had started Chesapeake. Jimmy and I and Michael and Moondi got together and did this thing on the side. So John Duffey became more aware of Moondi as this was going along. We had made some tapes and the guys in the Seldom Scene would hear them, and Duffey and Starling and Ben would say, ‘God, that guy’s a great singer.’ So when Starling decided to leave, Duffey just felt like, this is the natural guy to take the place. So that’s how that all happened. And the neat thing is, it really has opened up a whole new thing for the Seldom Scene just because of Moondi’s energy. And the fact that he and I and Michael work together in this other band, it just immediately worked, rhythmically and everything. So it’s been really good.”

For Moondi the Seldom Scene job is like a dream come true. “(It’s) a bluegrass pinnacle achievement!” he exclaims. “I love it. It’s too fun! I listened to them all the time. I had most of their albums. (I loved) ‘Wait A Minute,’ anything that contained those long, sweet harmonies at the end of songs. The trios, wow! I learned some harmony from them. The interesting thing is that, when trying to sing with the Seldom Scene records, you might sing a part, but it might not actually be the part, because they tend to switch harmonies a lot. It wasn’t until I sang on stage with them that I realized that Mike Auldridge would sing a baritone part and then all of a sudden he’d jump up to the lead part. I sort of stumbled around my first time. You have to sing it with them to understand why it sounds the way it does, because they blend it so well. That’s one thing I was really, really attracted to. I was also very fond of Ben Eldridge’s playing and Mike Auldridge’s singing in particular and his dobro playing of course. The songs—The Old Crossroads,’ ‘Old Train,’ ‘Sunshine,’ ‘After Midnight,’ ‘Lay Down Sally,’ ‘Muddy Water.’ The ‘Blue Ridge’ album is just about my favorite record for the singing, because I have always been a Jonathan Edwards fan. I am always trying to sound like him, so that’s a big one.”

A New York native, Moondi’s early musical exposure was primarily to classical and rock. His father was a concert pianist, so Moondi grew up with the sounds of Beethoven and Brahms wafting through the house. When he was seven, he and his older brother auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus. They were accepted and became touring soloists with the Met by the time they were 12 and 13 years old.

As a teenager Moondi listened to the rock bands of the day, including Kiss, Kansas, Little Feat, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. He first discovered bluegrass when his father took him and his brother to the Carter Family Fold in Hiltons, Va., when Moondi was 15 years old. After the trip to Virginia he learned to play banjo, then several years later switched to guitar. Moondi majored in voice at the College of Wooster in Ohio, and also played in a local bluegrass band there. In 1984 he moved to Washington, D.C., and helped form Rock Creek, with whom he played for about eight years.

Moondi is probably the most versatile singer the Seldom Scene has ever had. While John Starling’s voice leaned toward country, Phil Rosenthal’s was more folk-flavored, and Lou Reid’s had a pronounced bluegrass edge, Moondi’s seems to carry elements of all of these, along with occasional hints or rock, pop, jazz, and classical. In addition, Moondi’s great vocal range provides new possibilities for arranging the Seldom Scene’s trademark trio harmonies.

The trios, Mike Auldridge points out, are the centerpiece of the Seldom Scene sound. “The thing that made the Seldom Scene unique and famous, (different) from other bluegrass bands, was the trio sound,” he states. “And that blend is still there.” Duffey agrees, “Most of the trios have always pretty much sounded the same. Two of the three voices that have already been there are still there, and that probably is why—now the lead may sound different, but the trio has been pretty dose to being the same, all along.”

Other Seldom Scene trademarks which have endured through time are their eclectic choice of material, their emphasis on connecting with and entertaining the audience, and their general philosophy of spontaneity and having fun. From the beginning the band has defied boundaries, looking for good material, no matter what the source. They have taken songs from rock, folk, blues, country, jazz, and pop, as well as from traditional bluegrass, and made them all into “Seldom Scene songs.” Some of their most enduring “hits” have come from such unlikely sources as the Grateful Dead (“Rider”), Eric Clapton (“Lay Down Sally”), John Prine (“Paradise”), and Dean Martin (“Small Exception Of Me”).

Anyone who saw or has heard about the early Country Gentlemen during John Duffey’s tenure knows that the high energy, spontaneity, and wit of their stage shows was one of the things that set them apart from other bluegrass bands of the day. They not only performed great music, they entertained the audience. That philosophy of entertainment as an indispensable part of the show is probably Duffey’s most important contribution to the Seldom Scene as well.

“I always felt,” Duffey explains, “that one of the drawbacks to this music was that everybody got on stage and looked like they died last week. I believe it’s more entertaining to people to look at a group that looks like they’re having a good time, too. To be entertaining, talk to them, tell them a joke or two now and then, and don’t stand up there stiff faced, as if you’re almost ignoring them— you want them to be part of it. That’s always been my idea. It’s called ‘show business.’ Some people have a tendency to play for other musicians, and I say that’s the stupidest thing you can do. In the first place, they’re not going to buy the record. The people that are going to buy the records are the people who are out there and are your audience. Those are the people you want to try and entertain or show them a good time.”

Mike Auldridge marvels at John’s ability to engage audiences and appreciates how important that skill is. “There is a lot of interplay between the audience (and the band). If the audience is with you, you just soar. I’ve always been amazed at Duffey’s ‘trouper syndrome.’ He can go into an audience that’s filled with people that don’t even like what you’re doing, and he can win them. Man, he won’t give up. He’s really good at that, and he always does win them over. And there comes a time when you feel that happen, the audience actually turns, and then you fly. If I haven’t won them by the fourth song, I start rationalizing that it’s their fault, whereas Duffey fights and fights and fights. John realizes that you have to entertain them, that’s his thing, he’s an entertainer—he’s the first to admit that— before being a singer or a mandolin player. His whole thing is to entertain people.

“I’m kind of a bashful personality. If the people don’t like me right away, I kind of tend to shrink back a little bit, and I don’t know how to win people. If I were a soloist, I would have gotten out of music years ago. I’m a perfectionist-type person. In this band it works fine—I don’t have to be an entertainer. I can stand over there and be the perfectionist, and Duffey can stand over there and be the goof, and get ten times the applause I’ll ever get, on a break that he just throws out there and throws up his hands, and everybody goes, ‘Yeah!’ Whereas, I might do something that I think as I’m doing it. That’s the most perfect I’ve ever done that, and I’ve practiced it for eight years in my basement, and they didn’t even smile!’ I’m not complaining, that’s just the way it is. Any applause I ever get is because all John has to do is look over at me and raise his eyebrows and the audience says, ‘Alright, it must be good!’ ”

Mike is quick to point out, however, that even more rewarding than applause are those moments when the music evokes an emotional response from the audience. He recalls as an example, “We were playing for this private party; it was some friends of Ben’s in Richmond, Va. They thought the Seldom Scene was great, and they were just crazy about this song, ‘Heaven.’ We were in a guy’s big basement, and I don’t think we ever had a sound system. The people were sitting very close to us, and when we sang that trio on ‘Heaven,’ this girl started crying! I mean I could hardly sing, it just brought tears to my eyes. The hair stood up on die back of my neck. I thought, ‘God, we’re really touching these people!’ They were just wide-eyed. At that party, it might have been the first time I ever realized that we were ‘doing something.’ That was the first time I ever thought, ‘This band is something special.’ It wasn’t the awareness of the band so much as it was of what you can do to people with music. And that’s really why you play. To be able to touch people like that is just a thrill.

Among the highlights of the Seldom Scene’s career, Mike cites their 15th and 20th anniversary concerts and the opportunity to play at the White House. “Playing for the President was great,” he asserts. “We played for (Jimmy) Carter. He got up on the stage with us and stood right there, and he talked to die audience, and it was like he was in the band. It was great. Jimmy Carter was a real personable, nice guy. He really liked the music. As a matter of fact, he invited the Seldom Scene to dinner at the White House. This was after we had played a couple of times there, and then he just invited us to be guests when Doc Watson and Bill Monroe were playing. I remember Doc Watson was up there playing and these people were kind of chitchating, and Carter got up on stage and he said, ‘I want you all to understand that this man up here is a national treasure, he’s not just entertainment. And I want you to stop talking and listen to him.’ I thought, ‘All right! This is the President of the United States digging Doc Watson!’ The 15th and 20th anniversaries were each special in different ways, Mike maintains. “The 15th was scary, but the 20th was fun because it was like a party. Starling basically put the 15th together himself. That was an amazing record, to me. I can remember standing on stage while we were recording that, and actually being scared. I don’t know if it’s so much scared as being nervous because you know you’re creating kind of an historical event. We’ve got all these people that we’ve known all through the years who’ve become extremely famous people. I (first) met Ricky (Skaggs) when he was 14 years old, standing around in the fields down there at Reidsville, [N.C.], with no shirt on—he was just a little kid with a fiddle. Linda (Ronstadt) we met before she became a huge star, and Emmylou (Harris), or course, she used to kind of play in between our sets at the Red Fox. And Jonathan Edwards—all those people have become tremendously big people in music. So while we were doing that show, I remember being real nervous about it, because I knew what was happening. That night was really a special night.

“The 10th was special in a different way, in that it was the guys in the band getting together for an organized picking session, basically. We had talked about which songs we should record, and everybody listened to them at home on the old records. We got together that afternoon and played for maybe two hours, running down a few things, and I think the performance that night (at the Birchmere) was better than the original recordings. There’s a big difference, doing it live and knowing it real well— we’ve played these songs hundreds of times with each lead singer—so you just kind of kick into automatic pilot, and it’s better than when you recorded it (in the studio). Plus, you have this adrenaline that’s flowing because of the audience. So I thought both of those albums were really good albums—two of the best albums that the band’s ever made. The 20th was in a way a little more special, because it was just the guys who’ve been in the band.”

As they near their 25th anniversary, what goals does the Seldom Scene have in mind for the future? “To continue to be hungry,” says T. Michael Coleman. “To strive to keep creating and be a pathfinder, he continues. The band, when they started, recorded music that was gentle, and they didn’t force anything down your throat, and that way they made it very personable to an urban audience. So I would like to be able to somehow (continue to) take bluegrass and interpret it in a different way.”

Mike Auldridge counters, “I’ve learned that it would be silly to set a goal. The whole thing about this band is it’s not goal-oriented. The whole thing is just to relax and have fun and to see where it goes.

“It’s all been great,” he reflects. “It’s been fun. It had to have been or I couldn’t have stood it for 23 years. I ran remember years ago when we were first getting going and Duffey told me that he had been with the Country Gentlemen for 13 years. At that time the Seldom Scene had been together about four or five years, and I was starting to think about moving on, to tell you the truth! And I thought, ‘Man, how can anybody play with one band for 13 years!’ And now it’s been 23 years. The chemistry has to be right, and evidently it was. One of the smart things that the Seldom Scene did was we didn’t get real close. We didn’t ever buy a bus and ride around completely in each other’s company for years on end. But we saw each other just enough so that we respected each other and it was fun. So that’s one of the reasons the Seldom Scene has lasted, and it’s one of the reasons I still think it’s fun.

“Looking back over the 23 years of the Seldom Scene so far, it’s been 98% fun. There’s not too many jobs in the world that you can say that about. And I realize that there’s really only a handful of people in this kind of music, in the world, who can actually make their living doing this. And some of them might not even be having fun, because in most bands it’s a bossman situation. That’s been definitely one of the highlights of the Seldom Scene, is the fact that it’s always been an equal deal. John Duffey never thought he was any more important than me or Tom or anybody. Whereas in reality, I guess if John Duffey ever quit, that would have been the end of the Seldom Scene. He definitely has worked the hardest. He did all the booking for years, he would get the record (deals), and he would sit out there and sell the records with his wife. He did everything. I hate to admit it, but for the most part all I had to do was stand over there and play the dobro and smile!

“It’s like the. best job! I lucked into the perfect job for me. I couldn’t have found this job if I had spent years looking for it. It really makes my daughter crazy because as she got older and started thinking about a career, she started realizing that I fell into this. ‘Do you know how lucky you are?’ she tells me every day. I’ve always known—I never needed anybody to remind me. I played the right instrument, which hardly anybody played back when we started. I fell in with the right guys. I just happened to live in a town that supported bluegrass music. I was just the right guy at the right place with the right instrument and met die right guys—and there it was! All I have to do is get out of bed in the morning every once in a while. I’m a happy guy. There’s few people who can say that after 20 years in a job!”