The Grand Old Room on the Pike Throws a Party This Weekend

COLLINGSWOOD — There are fancier rooms to hear music in. There are not many better ones, and there is not a single one I love more than the Scottish Rite Auditorium at 315 White Horse Pike, right here in the town I call home.

If you’ve driven the Pike you’ve seen it — that stately brick pile that looks like it should have a velvet rope and a doorman, parked on an ordinary stretch of Collingswood like a duchess who moved in next door and never left. Step inside and the thing just works on you: the ornate ceiling, the plush seats, the hush before the lights go down. This is a room that has hosted everything from Celtic Thunder to a “Rocky Horror” shadowcast, and it wears all of it well. It is proof of something I will argue with anyone about: you do not have to cross a bridge or pay a parking garage ransom to see a real show. The real show is already here, in a historic hall on the White Horse Pike.

This weekend on the Pike

And this weekend the old room is busy. Friday night, Oct. 16, it’s The Fab Four, the Beatles tribute that does the harmonies the way the harmonies were meant to be done. Then Saturday, Oct. 17, comes the one I keep circling on the calendar — The Rascals.

Let me tell you why that booking makes me grin. The Rascals are a Jersey band. Garfield, up north, 1965, back when they were billed as the Young Rascals: Felix Cavaliere, Eddie Brigati, Gene Cornish, Dino Danelli. These are the men who gave us “Good Lovin’” and “Groovin’,” songs so stitched into American summer that you know every word whether you meant to learn them or not. A Jersey band, born the year half our parents were in grade school, playing a grand old Jersey room on a Saturday night. If you can’t feel the rightness of that, I can’t help you.

The rest of the fall

The fall slate doesn’t stop there, either. Matteo Bocelli brings that famous last name to the auditorium on Nov. 29. Teen-idol-turned-balladeer Shaun Cassidy plays Dec. 4, and the velvet-voiced Will Downing closes out that first December weekend on Dec. 5. It’s a lineup with range — tribute acts and legends, crooners and soul — which is exactly what a community venue should be. Not one lane. A little of everything, for everybody who lives within a short drive.

I think about the people who keep a place like this running. The staff who unlock the doors on a Tuesday to let a sound tech in. The folks who book an act, sell the tickets, sweep the aisles, and do it again the next week so that the rest of us get to sit down in a beautiful room and forget our Monday for a couple of hours. Historic venues don’t survive on their own charm. They survive because somebody decides they’re worth the trouble. Collingswood decided a long time ago, and we are richer for it.

Historic venues don’t survive on their own charm.Jenna Joy

So here’s my pitch, and I’ll keep it short because you’ve got a decision to make about Saturday: go. Dress up a little if you want, or don’t. Get there early enough to look up at that ceiling. Let a Jersey band play Jersey songs in a Jersey room. Tickets and the full schedule are at scottishriteauditorium.com. I’ll be the one singing along to “Groovin’,” slightly off-key, entirely unbothered.

Based on reporting from Songkick, event listings, and the Scottish Rite Auditorium.