Where'd You Came From Where'd You Go
The Freight Hoppers' second album,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