ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, September 13, 1996 TAG: 9609130199
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
The Freight Hoppers bill themselves as an "old time string band with overdrive." They certainly never seem to stop playing.
On the 4th of July, for example, the North Carolina-based group played six shows at four different locations around the Great Smoky Mountains.
"It was chocked-full of music," says Cary Fridley, a 26-year-old Covington native who sings and plays guitar for the band.
When they came to the Maury River Fiddlers Convention in Buena Vista back in June, they jammed out near a parking lot in-between their times on stage. After sweeping several honors at the festival, they went back to their campsite and played until nearly dawn.
"You end up staying up all night and not eating or sleeping because you don't want to put your music down," Fridley says. "This past weekend we had the weekend off, so we went to Chapel Hill and played on the street."
The non-stop pace has paid off. The Freight Hoppers have become one of the rarest of bands - one that can make a full-time living playing old-time mountain music.
This spring they appeared on Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion" on National Public Radio. Last month they won the best traditional band award at the prestigious Appalachian Stringband Convention at Clifftop, W.Va.
And now, as they return to Buena Vista this weekend for the Rockbridge Mountain Music and Dance Convention, they're preparing for their second album release - this time on Rounder Records, a respected independent label.
"We just push really hard to make money playing this music," Fridley says.
"We always knew we had a good band. There aren't enough musicians who are able to make a living doing music. I wish this could happen to more old-time performers. There are a lot of them out there that are as good as we are."
Old-time music, which is sometimes called hillbilly music, differs in a number of ways from bluegrass, a newer and more lucrative form of music.
In bluegrass, members of the band take turns on "lead licks," or solos in which they each get a chance to play the melody while others play backup. In old time music, everyone continues playing without such solos.
Bluegrass banjo players also use a three-finger picking style, while old-time plays use a "claw hammer" downward strumming method.
The Freight Hoppers formed in 1993 with a nucleus of fiddler David Bass, bass fiddle player Hanne Lee, a native of Denmark, and Lee's husband Frank, a banjo player and singer who has been performing and recording bluegrass and old-time music for two decades.
Fridley, a 1988 graduate of Alleghany High School, joined the band in the summer of 1995.
She took a somewhat circuitous route: She started playing piano and flute when she was in elementary school and, as a teen-ager, she picked up a plastic banjo that was stuck away in her father's closet. She studied flute at University of Richmond, but after a year of graduate school, Fridley decided she liked people too much - and loved playing music live too dearly - to spend six hours a day cooped up in a practice room.
She spent a year teaching school outside Winston-Salem, N.C., then jumped at the chance when the Freight Hoppers asked her to join them.
The band has a regular seasonal gig at the depot of the scenic Great Smoky Mountains Railway in Bryson City, N.C. But they also have toured throughout the Appalachian region, playing square dances, contra dances, weddings and public-radio shows.
They played this year at The Virginia Opry in Clifton Forge's historic Stonewall Theater and the Pioneer Days Celebration in Fridley's hometown of Covington.
They won the best-band award at the Maury River Fiddlers Convention in 1995 and came back this June as the host band.
Their upcoming album will be called "Where'd you come from, where'd you go?" Getting released on Rounder Records, which boasts such traditional music stars as Allison Krause and Tony Rice, is a sign of success.
But beyond being able to make a living, band members say they see their role as helping to preserve an important form of music that dates back to at least the 19th century.
The band draws its songs from 78 rpm recordings from the 1920s, field recordings by folklorists and pieces that have simply been passed from generation to generation.
One song on the new album is "Four Cent Cotton" by a popular 1920s band from Georgia, the Gid Tanner and the Skillettlickers. Perhaps their biggest influence is the legendary Carter Family, which made its home just outside Bristol.
"We're all traditionalists and we all feel strongly about preserving the culture," Fridley says. "We've all got some kind of connection. There's something about the songs and the tunes that have to do with the mountains and the way of life. It's where I grew up. And it's where I feel at home."
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: The Freight Hoppers will be playing Saturday at theby CNBRockbridge County Mountain Music & Dance Convention in Buena Vista.
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