Jake Speed and the Freddies is a band native to the Cincinnati area. Their songs blend traditional ragtime tunes with lyrics that mention their hometown and the surrounding Cincinnati area. Two members, Jake Riordan, also known by his nickname “Jake Speed,” and Christopher “Fox” Gibson, teach at WHHS.
“When the band first started, we were called the Freddies and we played a lot of music about trains,” Riordan said. “Making the harmonica sound like a train whistle, talking about leaving town on a train [things like that].”
The band has won various awards, including the 2002 Cincinnati Entertainment Award (CEA), and are five-time winners of the CEA for Best Folk Musicians from 2001-2004 and again in 2008.
Gibson, the fiddler for Jake Speed and the Freddies, started playing instruments before high school and took a special interest in Celtic music.
“We were a big Celtic family,” Gibson said. “My brother was an Irish dancer and I was a fiddle player, so we would play together.”
Gibson wanted to stray away from teaching music since his parents were music teachers. While he did end up teaching music like his parents, he does differ in what instruments he plays—he plays string instruments compared to his parents, who play band instruments.
“There are very few [string people],” Gibson said. “I graduated, didn’t have a plan, was moving back home and a school district called me to come interview cold. I only found out later that they had asked around at universities trying to find people and that’s how they found me. Teaching just ended up being something that I couldn’t not do.”
Riordan is the leader of the band. He started playing music in a punk rock band in his garage and was eventually out “hoboing” with his acoustic guitar on the streets in the summer of 1999.
Some influences for Jake Speed and the Freddies’ style include Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Hank Williams and Mississippi John Hurt. The band includes multiple instruments such as the guitar, mandolin, fiddle, tenor guitar and upright bass with hints of harmonica, kazoo and washboard.
“I tried to be a rock guitarist like most people try to,” Gibson said. “It just never worked. There wasn’t any good reason why, but it just didn’t work. So, I took a break from performing for a while, and tried to focus more on playing …classical things.”
Later in 2000, Riordan teamed up with a friend and a fellow folk musician to create the Corn Cob Trio. Over the next few months, they would rename themselves the Freddies, which was an acronym for the “Flashing Rear End Device” on the back of a train.
Other players would join as the Freddies played on, one coming from a cafe where they played, another was a neighbor to Riordan and another he met after playing as an opening act for Hoodoo Caminos.
“When people hear the Freddies, they usually think that we have a lot of members in the band who are named Freddy,” Riordan said. “It became an inside joke.”
The new members of the group would make up the band we know today. Within a year, they wrote numerous original songs and would win their first Cincinnati Entertainment Award as Best Folk Band. Later in 2002 they would release “Queen City Rag,” which would earn them a nomination for Album of the Year and win Best Folk Band for the second year in a row. Speed also took home the award for Best Songwriter and Artist of the Year.
“In 2012, I challenged myself to write one song every week for a year,” Riordan said.“I would comb through the news and what was happening [to get inspiration], write a song on Monday and record it on Tuesday.”
This would give the Freddies a push to play all over Cincinnati in places like Arnold’s Bar & Grill, The Southgate House, Leo’s Coffeehouse, and The Rabbit Hash General Store. Since 2012, the band has released more albums and members of the band have become fathers. In 2015, a vacancy emerged when a member chose to leave. This paved the path for Gibson to find his way into the band.
“The first concert I was so nervous, I can’t even describe,” Gibson said. “I realized in the time between saying yes and the gig who they were, so I got really nervous having had no rehearsals. They had sent me a Dropbox folder with the music that we were going to play so I could hear it to get an idea of what I [should] sound like. I had to create new versions of everything I was playing.”