Album
Musicians
- Tim O'Brien — Lead Vocals, Mandolin
- Nick Forster — Guitar
- Stuart Duncan — Fiddle
- Jerry Douglas — Dobro
- Mark Schatz — Bass
“Like I Used to Do” was written by Pat Alger and Tim O’Brien, and O’Brien released it first, on his 1991 Sugar Hill album Odd Man In. Alger — the Nashville writer behind hits for Kathy Mattea and Garth Brooks — cut it himself two years later.
The version in this catalog came in January 1994, when the Seldom Scene recorded it for Like We Used to Be, the Sugar Hill album that brought John Starling back to the microphone alongside John Duffey, Mike Auldridge, and Ben Eldridge. Their reading is a waltz in G, Starling’s lead wrapped in the Scene’s trademark chorus stack.
The song has traveled well beyond bluegrass since — the Irish singer Seán Keane and the English balladeer Charlie Landsborough both recorded it in the late 1990s, a measure of how comfortably its plainspoken regret sits outside the genre.
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