Revival time!
FREIGHT HOPPERS BACK TO BREATHE NEW LIFE INTO OLD-TIME MUSIC
By Shay Quillen
Mercury News
Article Launched: 01/31/2008 01:36:18 AM PST
At the close of the 20th century, the Freight Hoppers blew the dust
off Appalachian old-time music with a youthful spark and a hell-for-
leather abandon that won over bluegrassers, punk rockers and retirees
alike.
But while followers such as Old Crow Medicine Show and Uncle Earl
picked up the band's torch and ran with it, Freight Hoppers fiddler
David Bass faced a heart transplant and an arduous recuperation.
Now a healthy Bass, 41, is re-teaming with banjo player and singer
Frank Lee to get the Freight Hoppers back on track. The new lineup,
with Thomas Bailey on guitar and Isaac Deal on bass, makes its West
Coast debut next week with three shows as part of the San Francisco
Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival.
"I was at a place with my life that I needed to try to do this," Bass
says from his home in Durham, N.C., "in just a commercial sense and a
fun sense, and a really-let's-play-some-good-music sense."
Lee, 49, speaking from his home in Bryson City, N.C., concurs. "I feel
like I do my best stuff when I'm playing with him, and he makes me
feel like he does his best stuff when he's playing with me."
Just as im****tant, the Freight Hoppers name means something special to
those who have experienced the band's exhilarating take on '20s and
'30s string-band music.
"They weren't freezing it in place," says Jeff Kazor of the Crooked
Jades, who will open for the Hoppers Feb. 8 at the Freight and Salvage
in Berkeley. "They were taking it further. That's
what made them such a great band, and that's why so many young people
gravitated to them."
Kazor remembers seeing the band perform at the Freight before a crowd
dancing wildly to the band's driving rhythms.
"It's totally infectious," he says. "You can't help but just get up
and start dancing to it."
Unlike many old-time musicians, the Freight Hoppers never merely
preached to the converted. Bass developed his ear-catching style
playing for tips on the streets of New Orleans and New York.
At a Brooklyn subway stop, Bass often found himself performing for
Latino laborers who knew nothing of his musical tradition.
"They didn't tip dollars, man; they tipped quarters, but there was a
lot of them, and they were into the beat, and they were into music,"
he says. "My lifestyle was seeing somebody, looking into their eyes,
and playing this music and getting them hooked on what I was doing
with it."
Bass combined his thrilling fiddling with bursts of frenzied step
dancing. No one watching would guess that he had a congenital heart
defect that severely reduced his aerobic capacity.
"I wouldn't really show anybody what I couldn't do by overdoing it to
the point where it was like, 'Oh my God, the kid's turning blue,' " he
says.
Bass met Lee, a Georgia banjo ace who had traded the virtuosity of
bluegrass for the raw power of old-time music. With Lee's
encouragement, Bass relocated to Bryson City, where a tourist railroad
provided a steady musical gig and a constant stream of new listeners.
A young schoolteacher named Cary Fridley joined on guitar and vocals
and, with a series of bassists, the Freight Hoppers released two
albums and toured hard from coast to coast for five years.
Fridley left the band in 1999, and the next year Bass opted out as he
awaited the birth of his first child. But he soon found his heart
being taxed by a simple walk across the room. He had been through
multiple open-heart surgeries, but this time the prognosis was even
worse.
"The doctor turned around with the answer I was most afraid of," he
says. " 'The heart muscle is completely worn out. You're not going
anywhere with that thing.' "
A six-month wait in the hospital followed, and his health continued to
deteriorate. But Bass never stopped playing his fiddle, even when he
was too sick to sit up.
"I felt like if I couldn't play and I didn't have that, I couldn't
deal with things," he says. "That totally relaxed me."
Once he got his new heart, Bass gradually got back into playing at
parties and festivals, then formed the Forge Mountain Diggers with
Bailey. Meanwhile, Lee was playing in Bryson City with Deal, a Freight
Hoppers fan who had moved to town to get closer to the music.
When Lee and Bass decided last year to reunite, the new lineup quickly
came together. Kazor inquired about getting the Diggers to perform at
the festival and was delighted to be offered the Hoppers instead.
Though the male-female vocal blend with Fridley in the band is gone,
Bass says the musical approach remains the same.
"We're trying to get the feeling and the spirit without really
battering ourselves over the particular details," Bass says.
It all comes down to a simple question, he says: "Are you out there
really raising hell and having fun with the music, or are you trying
to get a master's degree in musicology?"
For those who know the Freight Hoppers' music, the answer is clear.
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