Freight Hoppers
Bands / Ensembles
The Freight Hoppers were an old-time string band from Bryson City, North Carolina, formed in 1993 when banjo player Frank Lee and fiddler David Bass began playing for tourists at a Great Smoky Mountains Railroad depot. Lee was an Atlanta native, and Bass, from Cleveland, Ohio, had been busking in New York and New Orleans. Guitarist and singer Cary Fridley, a Kentuckian teaching at a school in Mocksville, North Carolina, met Lee at a party at Peggy Seeger's house and gave up teaching to join. Bassists included Hanne Jorgensen, Jim O'Keefe and Greg Howell. The band played a fast, fiddle-driven style modeled on 1920s and 1930s string bands such as Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers. They appeared on A Prairie Home Companion after winning the show's contest for towns under 2,000 people, and released two albums on Rounder Records. Fridley left in 1999 for a solo career, Bass stepped back after the birth of his first child and then a medical condition, and the band stopped performing. Bass and Lee later revived it.