Washington, DC · bluegrass

The Seldom Scene

1 upcoming festival

Washington DC's progressive bluegrass institution since 1971, pulling folk-rock and pop songs into high-lonesome harmony from a long Birchmere residency.

The Seldom Scene formed in 1971 in Bethesda, Maryland, around mandolinist and tenor singer John Duffey, previously of the Country Gentlemen, alongside banjo player Ben Eldridge, Dobro player Mike Auldridge, guitarist John Starling and bassist Tom Gray. The name came from the arrangement: the members held day jobs, Duffey repairing instruments, Eldridge working as a mathematician, Starling as a physician, Auldridge as a graphic artist and Gray as a cartographer, and played only a night or two a week.

They rehearsed in Eldridge's basement before finding a regular home at the Red Fox Inn in Bethesda, playing there on Friday nights from 1972 until 1977, then moving to a long residency at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia. Their debut album, Act I, appeared in 1972, followed within a year by Act II and Act III.

Duffey's high, forceful tenor sat at the centre of the harmony stack, and the group's taste in material ran well past bluegrass standards, taking in songs from country, folk and rock writers. Starling left in 1977, replaced by singer-songwriter Phil Rosenthal, and the band's sixth album, Baptizing, split lead vocals between the two.

Personnel kept shifting over the years, with Lou Reid and T. Michael Coleman joining in 1986, Starling briefly returning in the early 1990s, and Moondi Klein taking over lead vocals before he, Coleman and Auldridge left together in the mid-1990s to form another band.

Duffey died in 1996, and the band carried on with singers Dudley Connell and Lou Reid, Fred Travers on Dobro and Ronnie Simpkins on bass. Their 2007 album Scenechronized earned a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album, and the original lineup was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2014.

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