Ralph Stanley and The Seldom Scene Join Forces for musical Evening

Media Contact:

Kristen Gleason
Director of Marketing
The Paramount Theater
215 East Main Street
Charlottesville, VA 22902
434.979.1922 ext. 103
kristen@theparamount.net

For Immediate Release

February 13, 2008

Long-revered by enthusiasts of folk, bluegrass, and country music, Ralph Stanley has lately commanded the kind of honors due a music original -- three 2002 Grammys (for Best Country Male Vocalist Performance, Best Bluegrass Album, and Album of the Year), the Living Legend award from the Library of Congress, and the first Traditional American Music award from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as being the first artist inducted into the historic Grand Ole Opry in the new millennium.

Stanley still lives near the spot where he was born, a mountainous, tucked-away corner close to the Virginia-Tennessee border that is his secluded retreat from the rigors of the road and the 150 to 200 shows he continues to do each year.

Long-regarded as one of the most progressive bluegrass bands and one of the finest acts in the whole genre, The Seldom Scene is definitely back on the scene with their 2007 Grammy-nominated release Scenechronized.  With familiar warm harmonies and sparkling instrumental work that are as strong as ever, the signature sounds, adventurous instincts, and high musical standards of this group have remained constant over their 37-year career.

In a thrilling concert combining these acclaimed mountain music and bluegrass artists, Ralph Stanley and The Seldom Scene will appear at The Paramount Theater on Thursday, February 28 at 8 pm.

This performance is sponsored by Richard & Leslie Gilliam. Special Media Sponsor is Big Country 105.3 -- Today’s New Country and Yesterday’s Favorites.

Ralph Stanley's voice is not of this century -- nor of the last one, for that matter. Its stark emotional urgency is rooted in a darker time, when pain was the common coin of life and the world offered sinful humanity no hope of refuge. Preserved in the cultural amber of remote Appalachia, this terse, forlorn sound is the heartbeat of Stanley’s music.

Born February 25, 1927 in Stratton, Virginia, Stanley and his older brother Carter formed the seminal bluegrass ensemble the Stanley Brothers, which made a series of watershed recordings for Columbia Records from 1949 to 1952.

Now nearly 81 years old, Stanley has been performing professionally since he and Carter formed that first group in their native southwestern Virginia in 1946. Between that date and 1966 (when Carter died), their groups the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys became the most celebrated bluegrass ensembles in the world, ultimately rivaling in popularity such titans as Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, Jim & Jesse, and the Osborne Brothers.

After Carter's death, Ralph shifted the band's musical emphasis from bluegrass to an older, sadder, less-adorned mountain style. As a bandleader, he nourished such young and promising talents as Ricky Skaggs, Keith Whitley, Larry Sparks, and Charlie Sizemore, all of whom eventually graduated to distinguished solo careers.

Featured in the soundtrack to the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? with the Appalachian dirge "O Death" (a project which won Stanley two of this three 2002 Grammys), Stanley was chosen to be the closing act for the 2002 “Down From The Mountain” tour, a sold-out series of concerts inspired by the success of the movie and its music. Stanley’s releases since then have included the self-titled Ralph Stanley (2002), Great High Mountain (2004), and Shine On (2005).

T Bone Burnett, the executive producer of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, calls Stanley " ... one of the two or three most important figures in country music today ... he's a punk singer or a rock & roll singer or a country singer ... he's a mountain singer is what he really is. He's way closer to Elvis Presley than the notion of 'Dueling Banjos."

"Ralph has been keeping this flame for fifty five years, an heroic task, and he has done so with humility and a deep love that has only gotten deeper over time. This is an extraordinary thing ... he goes backward to go forward."

Since its inception in 1971, The Seldom Scene has thrived on playing bluegrass a little differently than everyone else. If other bands used a fiddler, The Seldom Scene used a Dobro; if others relied on old standards, The Seldom Scene played rock classics like J.J. Cale's "After Midnight." Through skilled musicianship and an urban approach to bluegrass, the group has become one of the most influential -- if not the most influential -- bluegrass band of the last 30 years.

"If someone had come up to me in 1971 and told me I'd still be doing this in 2008, I'd have told them they're nuts!" says banjo player Ben Eldridge, the band’s leader and founding member. It was at regular Monday picking sessions back in 1971 in Eldridge’s basement that the band -- including John Duffey, John Starling (who met Eldridge at the University of Virginia), Mike Auldridge, and Tom Gray -- came together.

Their name played off the fact that the members planned to keep their day jobs and not tour. Ironically, the band quickly became the darlings of the Washington D.C. bluegrass scene and was seen quite often, playing every Thursday night for years at the Birchmere.

The quintet released five records in its first three years, recordings on which they pushed the boundaries of bluegrass -- catching some flack along the way, but changing the face of the music forever. Unafraid to mix Dylan tunes with traditional banjo breakdowns, Grateful Dead jams with Haggard classics, old-time gospel with anarchic drinking songs, the Scene tackled everything that caught their fancies, giving permission to a new generation of musicians to crash through whatever boundaries might confront them.

Now the band is comprised of Eldridge, guitarist/singer Dudley Connell, mandolinist/singer Lou Reid, dobroist/singer Fred Travers, and bassist/singer Ronnie Simpkins. This quintet is the longest-lasting version of the band, together since the death of founding member, legendary mandolinist, and larger-than-life character John Duffey.

Their most recent release, the 2008 Grammy-nominated Scenechronized, is, in its way, a tribute to the Scene's past as much as it is a statement about the present. It features songs by previous Scene contributors such as Paul Craft, and the tribute "Sad Old Train" (in reference to the group’s beloved "Old Train"), as well as journeys outside the usual bluegrass lines -- Bob Dylan, John Fogerty, and Duane Allman songs, as well as a more traditional Stanley Brothers tune.

"It would have been easy to hang it up after Duffey died," admits Eldridge. "But we had a meeting about a month after he passed, and we decided that we'd been enjoying playing together too much to let it just fade away. And these songs, the body of work that the Scene had created over the years, it would have been a shame to never play those songs again."

Seats are still available for the February 28 concert featuring Ralph Stanley and The Seldom Scene. Tickets are $31.50, $34.50, $37.50, and $42.50. Half-price student rush tickets and group discounts are also available.

Tickets are available online or through The Paramount’s Box Office at 434.979.1333.

To learn more about Ralph Stanley and The Seldom Scene, please visit www.drralphstanley.com and www.seldomscene.com.