1. Last Train From Poor Valley
2. My Grandfather's Clock
3. Sweet Baby James
4. House of the Rising Sun > Walk Don’t Run
5. Fox on the Run
6. Raised by the Railroad Line
7. Hello Mary Lou
8. Hit Parade of Love
9. Are You Lost in Sin?
10. It’s All Over Now Baby Blue
11. Keep Me From Blowing Away
12. City Of New Orleans
13. Muleskinner Blues
14. Dueling Banjos
15. What Am I Doing Hanging Around
The following conversation occurred after The Seldom Scene had finished their evening concert at the Red Fox restaurant in Bethesda, Maryland. It’s their story—it’s told the way they want to tell it in the hope that the reader may gain a valuable insight into what makes for a successful and viable group. I began the conversation with a view toward developing a story on their non-musical professions, since each of them are employed full-time in other careers.
John Starling: (Lead singer and guitar) When you talk about this “second career” thing, I’d like to play that down—to this degree. We are in to music full-time, psychologically. We don’t want anybody to think we’re not trying. We’re trying to do the best we can and we want to try to compete on an equal footing with everybody else. The one thing about us is that we don’t play as much as other bands and the advantage that might have is that when we do play, we’re a little fresher maybe.
Ben Eldridge: (Banjo) It’s more fun.
John Starling: But that’s something we don’t plan. For instance, if you have fifty songs and you do them five times a week-on the fifth time it becomes a drag.
John Duffey: (Mandolin, tenor and lead singer) Even the third time!
Pat: It would appear that monotony or boredom would set in, however well you performed.
Tom Gray: (Bass-occasionally lead singer but mainly bass on quartets) That’s true. I know ten years ago when I played with the Country Gentlemen, we had gotten to a point where I was getting tired of playing as many shows as we did—and in those days we weren’t as busy as they are now. I think that if you don’t have to play—if you don’t have to always go out and do your best show to a different crowd every night, I think you will enjoy it more because you feel like you’re creating something. Like with us, I think we’re in a perfect situation to develop ourselves musically because we only play one night a week at the Red Fox. The crowd knows that and they appreciate us for what we do there.
Ben Eldridge: It kind of takes the pressure off, really. I think that is one of the neat things about the group.
John Starling: Although I think it’s interesting that we do something else, I would rather be accepted on the basis of our music. I’d rather be judged on what we do rather than on what we don’t do.
Mike Auldridge: (Dobro and baritone singer) Yes, it’s kind of embarrassing when people say, “You guys are really good—it’s hard to believe that this is just your hobby!” The thing is that we probably work as hard at it as any full-time band.
Pat Mahoney: John, what got you into the music instrument repair area? Did something of yours break and you figured you would repair it?
John Duffey: That’s a good question, I really don’t know. One time, years ago, the post office had their annual auction of lost-in-the-mail, unclaimed items which were undeliverable, etc. I bought a box of stuff (which was about three feet tall) of broken instruments. That’s how I got my first mandolin. There was a Kalamazoo in there, and it had only one crack in it. I took those things home and I decided I would try to put them together like my father used to do. In high school there was like fifteen guitar players and one bass player, which made a rather rotten band, not much variation. The bass player’s parents had this mandolin which I borrowed.
Pat Mahoney: What instrument did you start with? Did you start playing mandolin before you played guitar?
John Duffey: No, I was one of the fifteen guitar players!
Pat Mahoney: Did anyone not start with a guitar?
John Duffey: Actually, I started with a banjo.
Tom Gray: I started with an accordian.
Ben Eldridge: I started with a Gene Autry “Melody Ranch” guitar from Sears & Roebuck. There was a fellow across the street from me named Nicky Valdrigi. He was about two and a half years older than me. He was kind of my idol, and I used to follow him around in my neighborhood. He taught me how to play baseball, etc. He played the accordian. That’s what I wanted to play because Nicky played the accordion. My folks just couldn’t afford the $120 for an accordian. They could afford about a tenth of that and I wound up with a $12 Gene Autry guitar but I always liked country music, so everything worked out O.K.
Pat Mahoney: When you mentioned a banjo John, did you mean a tenor or a 5-string?
John Duffey: 5-string, but I just couldn’t seem to get anything out of it.
Mike Auldridge: I’m really lucky because I’m doing exactly what I’ve always wanted to do. I have always been interested in art, and I’m an artist for the newspaper, (Star-News in Washington, DC) and music. The only other interests I have is antique cars. I’m an old car enthusiast. I like old cars but right now I don’t have a garage to house them in. I’m planning to get something soon. I’m like John (Starling) in giving up golf. I haven’t painted anything recently. Of course working in art all day, I really don’t feel like coming home and painting. That’s like if I were playing music all day; I don’t think I would come home and pick.
Ben Eldridge: Mike did the cover for our second album.
Mike Auldridge: Yes, the cover for ACT II was a thing I did in school, a lithograph print.
John Starling: Ebo Walker picked it out!
Mike Auldridge: He did. I gave it to John Starling and he hung it in his house. Ebo Walker saw it and said, “Hey man, that would make a neat album cover.” I grew up with the big band sound. My older brother was a nut on Benny Goodman, etc. The first person I remember being interested in musically was Gene Krupa. You were talking a while ago about the first instrument you started playing—the first instrument I started with was a guitar, but the first instrument I bought was a banjo. I didn’t know the difference (about banjos)—so I went to a pawn shop and bought a four string banjo trying to figure out how to play bluegrass on it! The first instrument I really played was a guitar.
Pat Mahoney: What brought you to the Dobro?
Mike Auldridge: I guess the thing that really caught me was-like, my uncle used to play Dobro and I used to hear him a little bit here and there.
Pat Mahoney: Did he play professionally?
Mike Auldridge: Yes, he played with Jimmy Rodgers. He wrote “Treasures Untold” and “Dear Old Sunny South by the Sea”. Doc Watson put it on one of his albums. My uncle was the first person I ever saw who played Dobro. He played an old-timey style. I heard Buck Graves when he was with Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper. That’s when I got interested.
Pat Mahoney: What part of the country are each of you from?
John Duffey: Born in Washington, DC.
Ben Eldridge: Richmond, Virginia.
Tom Gray: I was born in Chicago, but I was reared here in the Washington area.
John Starling: Lexington, Virginia.
Mike Auldridge: Washington, DC.
Pat Mahoney: There’s a certain style you have as a group. How important is it?
Ben Eldridge: I think it’s an accident.
Mike Auldridge: Yes, I think it’s a function of the guys who are in the band. I think a lot of what we have that the early Country Gentlemen had is because of John Duffey. Part of our sound is John Starling’s influence with the selection of the material.
John Duffey: Background taste has a lot to do with Mike personally. I say this because I listened to Dick Cerri play one of the “side by sides” on radio the other day. He played “Heaven”—which Flatt and Scruggs did. Then he played our recording of it. We were listening to the background; both records have Dobro on them. On Flatt and Scruggs’ version (and with no offense to anybody) it had a lot of “hot” licks, that’s the easiest way I can think to describe it—in a song that really doesn’t call for “hot” licks. And in Mike’s background, you know, there was the right thing at the right time.
Mike Auldridge: My head’s gonna swell because Eddie Adcock said something to me one time that made a lot of sense. He said, “The next best thing to having taste is not being too good!” You know? It’s better to have a guy that plays what he knows well, and at the right time. He might not know a lot of variations, etc.
Pat Mahoney: Not to interrupt the train of thought, but did you or have you listened a lot to Pete Kirby’s Dobro?
Mike Auldridge: No, I’ve paid more attention to Buck Graves.
John Starling: I object to the idea I’ve just been sitting here thinking about it—I object that I’m the one responsible for the material. Because that’s just not true. It might seem that way in a lot of ways because I’m the one who has to learn the words to a lot of things. For example, on the last album, Ben said,“Go learn ‘Muddy Waters’.” Tom was the one that got us into doing “Paradise.”
Ben Eldridge: I don’t want to lay claim to the Redskin song!
John Duffey: I’ll lay claim into irritating you into doing that.
Mike Auldridge: The reason I said that a while ago, was because of the five of us, you (John Starling) are more influenced by the other kinds of music. My musical tastes are really narrow, compared to yours. I would never have found say “Rider” because I never have listened that much to rock music.
John Starling: To keep from getting paranoid, you know. I’m not a super picker, all these other guys are. I feel like in order to contribute my part (and I enjoy it too) I enjoy going out and trying to find material. I don’t always find it. Like right now I’m at a big zero.
Ben Eldridge: But you are at a very enthusiastic stage right now, you know, when you come home from work you start thinking about music, playing records, etc. I may just be speaking for myself, but I don’t do that much anymore.
John Duffey: He (John Starling) does what I used to do fifteen years ago because nobody else did it. I enjoy having somebody else do it.
Ben Eldridge: That’s why you have influence in picking material because you listen and spend a lot more time with music.
Mike Auldridge: I think it’s a combination of John Starling’s attitude toward contemporary material and John Duffey and Tom Gray’s attitude toward the older, traditional material. It’s kind of a mixture Ben and I are along for the ride as far as material goes.
John Starling: I’d like to experiment with different rhythms with Tom Gray if I could get the lick right on the guitar. There shouldn’t be any type of material that we would be afraid to try. Basically that’s what keeps a band growing, you know. People sometimes say “Hey man, this is a great song. It just fits you all perfectly.” Well I may not be too interested in hearing it if it “fits us perfectly”.
Pat Mahoney: Why not?
John Starling: Well I would rather hear a good song and decide for myself if we can do it. If you’ve been together for three years, you tend to know the kind of song you can do well and the kind of song you won’t do well.
Ben Eldridge: John Starling and I see each other a lot and we listen to the same kind of songs, etc. Maybe we will hear something that we both like but I don’t think any of us listen to a song with the idea of,“How can we adapt the song to fit us, but rather—is it a good song? That’s the way I felt about “Muddy Waters”—I heard the song and I thought, “Wow, that’s a nifty tune.” The same way with “(Raised by the) Railroad Line”.
John Duffey: Or wouldn’t it be fun to do.
Pat Mahoney: Alright then, what we are saying is that there’s a universality in music, isn’t there? Or is there?
Mike Auldridge: On our Dobro album we are getting ready to cut, I’m hoping to do “Killing Me Softly” which is the last thing you would think of putting on a bluegrass album.
Tom Gray: It’s good overall music done with bluegrass instruments which is what our style is all about.
John Starling: A guy wrote a review in the Washington Post and he said it better. It’s what we’re into really. He said we are using bluegrass more as a method, rather than a fixed tradition—which in the long run, is what all bluegrass bands do except (Bill)Monroe and (Ralph)Stanley, as far as I’m concerned. It’s just a matter of degree.
Ben Eldridge to John Starling: I don’t agree with you. There aren’t that many bluegrass bands that do that.
John Starling: The Dillards do, the New Grass Revival.
Ben Eldridge: Yes, you can name a half a dozen bands, but a half a dozen out of a hundred.
Mike Auldridge: That’s right, most are traditional bluegrass bands.
From: https://bluegrassunlimited.com/article/the-seldom-scene-as-heard/
