In 1957, Charlie Waller, Bill Emerson, and John Duffy formed the Country Gentlemen. And, for nearly 10 years they rode a folk revival wave, breaking all of the traditional rules, and setting the bar for every progressive bluegrass band that followed. In that late 1960s, that original line-up disbanded, however Charlie Waller continued the Country Gentlemen, now a tradition carried on by his son, Randy.
John Duffy, mandolinist, settled into a life of instrument repair in Arlington, VA, content to pick a little here and there on the weekends. He eventually found himself in a weekly jam session with new buddies, Mike Auldridge, a graphic artist with the Washington Star; Tom Gray, who worked for National Geographic; John Starling, a physician and ear, nose and throat specialist, and Ben Eldridge, a mathematician and computer expert. Like many guys who have their weekly card game, these guys had their weekly jam session; one that turned into a weekly Thursday night sell-out gig at the tiny Red Fox Inn in Bethesda, Maryland. And for the next 24 years John Duffy and the varied line-up of the Seldom Scene wooed and won audiences locally as well as nationally, becoming one of the country’s premier progressive bluegrass groups.
In 1995 Dudley Connell was quite content in his job with the National Council for the Traditional Arts as an archrival specialist. You see, Dudley had walked away from the road professionally in the late 80’s after a 10 year stint with the Johnson Mountain Boys. Two of his band’s 10 albums had received Grammy nominations. That was quite a career in itself.
The Seldom Scene was, of course, a Washington D.C. based band, along with the JMB, so Connell was no stranger to John Duffy. But a blurb in a 1995 issue of Bluegrass Unlimited magazine took him aback. The Seldom Scene was hanging it up. How could that be?
"It almost felt like a death in the family for me," Dudley recalled. "You know, they were a Washington institution, and have been sense their inception." So Dudley called John Duffy to offer his sentiments. "I said, ‘I’m so sorry to hear that you guys are hanging it up after all these years.’ And he said humorously, ‘we haven’t really absolutely decided we’re going to quit, we’re just looking for a lead singer, guitar player, bass player, bass singer, dobro player, etc.’ He was kind of making a joke about it you know. And I don’t know why I said it, but I said, ‘hey John, what do you think about you and I getting together and singing sometime?’ There was complete silence in the other end of the line, and I thought, uh oh, I’ve stepped over a line here. Then he said, "Well, do you know any of our material?" and I said ‘not really, I’ve heard you on the radio, but I’ve never studied your stuff.’ He gave me a list of half –a-dozen songs to learn and we made a date to get together."
The New Scene
That was spring of 1995, and because of conflicting schedules, the guys weren’t able to get together until September. "I actually wasn’t looking for a job when I called," Dudley said, "but by the time September rolled around I wanted that job so bad. It had gone from sort of a casual interest to, wow, this could be a great gig. I have a full time job. The band doesn’t tour much. And when they do go out the money is good. And as I studied the music I began to think, you know I could really get behind that. I really started enjoying the idea."
"So I went over to John’s house, along with Ronnie Simpkins who had joined by now as bass player, and Fred Travers who had joined as the dobro player. We met with Ben and John and started playing some stuff. It just felt great right out of the shoot. John was a really easy guy to sing with because his pitch was always just so true." Their first show was New Year’s Eve at the Birchmere in 1995. Remaining founders, John Duffy, and Ben Eldridge (banjo) publicly welcomed Dudley Connell (guitar and vocals), Travers and Simpkins into the band. "It just went great," Dudley remembered.
Decision Time
Sadly, in December of 1996 John Duffy died due to a sudden heart attack. Just like that, a legend was gone, and once more, a legendary band considered hanging it up. "We did end up having about a year with John until he passed away. But in that year, it was probably the highlight of my music career. The thing with the JMB is that we were all basically kids when we started playing. With John, it was the first time I had ever worked with a real veteran of this music business. He was just a real bluegrass hero. He was one of the most innovative players, in my opinion, to ever play, besides Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs. That time was like magic for me."
Dudley figured the magical ride was over. The legend was gone, how could they possibly continue? Who would want the band without John? "I really thought that was it," Dudley said. "What a tragedy. And we were really just getting it going as a band. Things were working. After John died, we got together at Ronnie’s house to try to figure out what we were going to do with these contracts we were sitting on. And Ben was really the one who said maybe we ought to just test the waters and see if we could carry on without him. So we called our agency, and they went to the promoters who were holding the contracts, and said do you still want the band without John? Only two promoters canceled their contracts. So we decided to go on and see if we could make it work."
They needed a mandolin player though. "The first replacement was Dan Comiskey who was with Alison Krauss, but we knew that was only a temporary thing. We used Mark Newton on a couple shows, and we used Don Rigsby on quite a few shows. Ben had talked to Lou Reed, who had played with the group once before, in the 80’s. He played a set with us on a show in North Carolina, and that worked. He knew the material, and it just clicked. That was July of ’96, and there hasn’t been a personal change since then. Actually our current line-up is the longest running configuration of the band since its inception."
What Makes It Work
So Dudley and the guys, with the exception of Ben, are the next generation of the Scene. I asked him what it was like filling legendary shoes. "Well it has been 12 years, and most of the time its fine. Even though we’re the new guys, we’ve been around a while. Although we’ve started to develop our own material, we still do songs like, "Wait A Minute," "Old Train," and "Muddy Waters," and all of those old tunes that people want to hear. But people are starting to ask for the stuff that we’ve recorded with this band too. So the legacy kind of continues in that way, and that’s a good thing. But we’ve never tried to copy the guys from the past because you can’t really do that and pull it off. It’s a real balancing act for a band that’s been around for 30 plus years; trying to play the music that people want to hear, that they come to hear, but also to introduce new stuff. That’s the tricky part."
"We get a lot of people that have followed the band since its inception and know all of the material, but we also have the newer fans that has just heard of the band, and never heard the older songs. More and more these days, we get audiences that never got to see John Duffy. I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand, it’s good that the band is still able to sell CDs and shows, and stand on its own, but on the other side too, it’s sad, and shows that people do forget about the old. It’s just the way things go. But we like to remind folks that there were others that came before us. I can’t stress enough the importance of John Duffy to bluegrass music. He was larger than life. And he had this sort of urban wit, and he was able to sell a song like "The Fields Have Turned Brown," to an urban audience. That really helped the music a lot. He took it out of the country and brought it into the city."
What Makes ‘Em Different?
Dudley believes one of the things that is still nice about being in Seldom Scene is the whole approach to how they play music. "We really don’t have to go out and perform. We like it, and we do it because we like it, but our livelihood doesn’t depend on it. Everybody has full time jobs. In a way, this is still just a hobby for us. So it takes a lot of pressure off. And the band has maintained that spirit. It’s really still like the weekly card game where your friends get together and play music for the fun of it. It’s a real joy. For me, being in the Washington area, it’s the best gig out there. I’ve played with other groups additionally along the way, and I still play a little bit with Hazel Dickens, but I kept running into scheduling conflicts, so I’ve really backed off that. The Scene is really the priority for me now."
And why wouldn’t it be? Dudley says, "It’s sort of a free-willing, rollicking party on stage with the audience. You just never know what’s going to happen, and that keeps you on your toes. And it keeps the music really interesting too. The audience is always different, and they’re yelling for requests. It really is like a party. We do everything from Eric Clapton to Carter Stanley and everything in between; Steve Earl, Bob Dylan, and John Prine even. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about working in this band is that there are not a lot of restrictions as far as material. Everybody listens to everything, and everybody comes with their own ideas."
SCENEchronized
And finally after four years the Scene has a new CD, SCENEchronized. And it’s good. But why did it take so long? "Can I be honest? Lazy," Dudley laughs. "Really, as I mentioned earlier, we all have full time jobs, and families, and it is just like a hobby in many respects. So it’s kind of hard to find the time to go into the studio and cut a new record. When we go to play, we’re 100% behind what we’re doing. But when we go back to our other lives, everything gets re-prioritized. That’s basically what happened. But I don’t think it will be that long until the next one though."
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