Track Premiere: I Ain’t Gonna Work Tomorrow from High Fidelity

We written many times about Nashville’s High Fidelity, and their mission to bring back the sound of bluegrass music from the ’50s and ’60s. It’s a project of Jeremy and Corrina Stephens, husband and wife as well as musical partners, who have assembled a strong band to travel back with them in time, musically speaking.

These are young artists, not even born when the music they champion was in its hey day, yet they reproduce it with a passion, and an attention to detail that goes all the way down to their appearance on stage. Jeremy plays guitar and sings, with Corrina on fiddle and vocals. They are assisted by Kurt Stephenson on banjo, Vickie Vaughn on bass, and Daniel Amick on mandolin.

Their latest album, Hills and Home, releases next month on Rebel Records, and we are delighted to today premiere a track, the old time favorite, I Ain’t Gonna Work Tomorrow. Jeremy tells us that they created their arrangement by mashing up two classic recordings of the song.

I Ain’t Gonna Work Tomorrow is a song that most bluegrass folks are familiar with. Corrina and I always loved the Louvin Brothers’ version of it, particularly how they arranged the chords and vocal harmonies with unisons and octaves, which is virtually unheard in bluegrass today. They also rewrote the lyrics, making it into a murder ballad. I knew the words mostly from the original Carter Family, so we took the Louvins’ arrangement and the Carter Family’s words and put our own touch on it with the pickin’. We hope everyone will enjoy hearing it as much as we enjoy performing it.”

Hills and Home is set for an August 3 release on Rebel, with pre-orders available on iTunes and other digital resellers. The title track is offered to radio programmers at AirPlay Direct.

If you’ve climbed aboard the Truegrass Train, High Fidelity is a band you need to hear. Find out more online.

Share this:

About the Author

John Lawless

John had served as primary author and editor for The Bluegrass Blog from its launch in 2006 until being folded into Bluegrass Today in September of 2011. He continues in that capacity here, managing a strong team of columnists and correspondents.