The Seldom Scene

Day jobs and Thursday nights

The Seldom Scene formed in Bethesda in 1971 with John Starling on lead vocals and guitar, Mike Auldridge on dobro, Ben Eldridge on banjo, Tom Gray on bass and John Duffey on mandolin. Gray and Duffey had played with the Country Gentlemen, whose Charlie Waller reportedly joked that they would be seldom seen. They kept day jobs: Duffey repaired instruments, Eldridge was a mathematician, Starling an ear, nose and throat physician, Auldridge a graphic artist and Gray a cartographer at National Geographic. Their first night, on November 1, 1971 at the Rabbit's Foot in Washington, was awful, Eldridge recalled. They rehearsed in Eldridge's basement and played Friday nights at the Red Fox Inn in Bethesda from January 1972, then settled at the Birchmere, which doubled their nightly pay from $400 to $800 and which they sold out on Thursdays for more than twenty years.

Their first albums were Act I (1972, Rebel), Act II and Act III (1973) and Old Train (1974). Live at the Cellar Door, recorded in December 1974 and released in 1975, is among the first live bluegrass albums; the Washington Post's Richard Harrington called it a landmark for the progressive bluegrass scene. Phil Rosenthal replaced Starling in 1977, and Lou Reid and T. Michael Coleman joined in 1986. Starling returned for Like We Used to Be (1994), then Dudley Connell, Ronnie Simpkins and Fred Travers joined in 1995 and 1996. John Duffey died in December 1996, and Eldridge retired in 2016 after 44 years.

Honors

Smithsonian Folkways released Long Time... Seldom Scene on April 22, 2014, their first for the label; it reached number three on Billboard's bluegrass albums chart and won album and song awards at the 14th Independent Music Awards. The five original members entered the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame as the Original Seldom Scene on October 2, 2014, with Auldridge inducted individually in 2019. A 40th-anniversary show at the Birchmere on November 26, 2011 reunited Auldridge, Gray and Starling. Starling died on May 2, 2019. Changes (Rounder, 2019) and Remains to Be Scene (Smithsonian Folkways, 2025) followed, and in 2024 Clay Hess replaced Connell, who left the band.