THE FREIGHT HOPPERS "Where'd You Come From, Where'd You Go" (1996)

Old time music played the way it should be - with passion and finesse but still nice and rough sounding. David Bass's fiddle is beyond impressive, but the band as a whole really cooks. They're so tight and rockin' that it's easy to forget that there's no drummer here. An antidote to an encroaching slickness in a lot of contemporary bluegrass. (Amazon)

The Freight Hoppers' Where'd You Come From, Where'd You Go, is exhilarating in its sense of too many things happening at once and yet managing to cohere. You wouldn't expect an all-acoustic, drummer-less band to produce rocking, high-energy music, but that's just what this quartet from the Smokey Mountains does. Two Appalachian natives (banjoist/singer Frank Lee and guitarist/singer Cary Fridley) coupled up with two outsiders (Cleveland fiddler David Bass and Danish bassist Hanne Jørgensen) to create a band that knocks the dust off the tradition and pushes it at a relentless pace. Most of the material comes from such old-time legends as Tommy Jarrell, Uncle Dave Macon, Fiddlin' John Carson, Clarence Ashley, the Coon Creek Girls, and Doc Watson, but the Freight Hoppers claim it as their own. --Geoffrey Himes The title of this foursome's fine debut for the Rounder label comes from a lyric of the disc's second song -- the old-timey warhorse "Cotton Eyed Joe." Nearly all of the songs here will be just as familiar to fans of traditional old-timey music and bluegrass, but that's OK. These relative youngsters pay homage to tradition by performing with a joy that all but leaps at the listener from the speakers. Their love for the music of Gid Tanner, Tommy Jarrell, and Uncle Dave Macon is apparent in every note the Freight Hoppers play. (Allmusic)

trax:
01 Sandy River 02 Cotton Eyed Joe 03 Mississippi Breakdown 04 Little Sadie 05 Texas Gals 06 Johnson Boys 07 Logan County Blues 08 Gray Cat on a Tennessee Farm 09 Four Cent Cotton 10 Cornbread, Molasses & Sassafras Tea 11 Dark Hollow Blues 12 Elzik's Farewell 13 Pretty Little Girl 14 How Many Biscuits Can You Eat This Morning? 15 Kentucky Whiskey 16 Bright Morning Stars
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