Jeremy Stephens
How He Hears It
Photos By Amy Richmond
Multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Jeremy Stephens of the bluegrass group High Fidelity is a devoted student of traditional bluegrass and country music. While he enjoys digging through the golden nuggets of music history, Stephens puts his own stamp of uniqueness to his music on his second solo effort, How I Hear It.
“Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always had a love for old music and old things. Though I’ve never sought to live a lifestyle just like another time, I have surrounded myself with things that I like from the past and learned a lot about the past first-hand from special people in my life that lived it. I’ve learned things from today’s amazing performers, but most of my life I’ve tried to immerse myself in older music because that’s what resonates with me the most. My hope is that I’ve created an authentic reference point in my mind and that when I’m being creative in my music, that authenticity comes through.”
Stephens’ Early Time Frame
Stephens began his informal studies into traditional music history in Southside Virginia on the outskirts of the textile town of Danville. Raised by a school teacher mom, who liked whatever was playing on the radio, and a realtor dad who savored rock music from groups like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, Stephens’ infusion into bluegrass came thanks to his babysitter Carolyn Dodd and her husband C.C. Unable to sleep at nap time, Stephens ended up getting to hear the first sounds of the music that would become a major part of his life.
“While the other kids were still napping, C.C. would come get me and take me down to his pack barn where he kept all his stuff he collected, and he’d put records on the turntable. He played old 78s, country LPs, and he listened to the local radio station, which played kind of like Top 40 country … in the late 80s. That’s where I first heard all that music.”
Every weekend young Jeremy would tune into the local radio station’s show, “The Saturday Night Hall of Fame.” “That is where I got my biggest exposure to all grades of bluegrass, old time, and country music. I loved all of it. I used to record it on a cassette every Saturday night. That had profound influence on me.”
Additionally, Joan Davis, a school bus driver at his elementary school, gave him a homemade cassette for Christmas that featured the banjo playing of both Raymond Fairchild and Troy Brammer, which became highly influential in Stephens’ pursuing the banjo. “I always loved music, and I always wanted to play music,” Stephens remembers.
At age 10, his fiddle teacher Leigh Latchum put together a “boy band” from her students that eventually became Shallow Creek, which Stephens played with from 1994 until 2010 when he moved to Nashville, TN. In their latter years, the band loosely based their shows off Reno and Smiley and the Tennessee Cut-Ups. During that same time, Stephens played dates with Kody Norris & the Watauga Mountain Boys, The New North Carolina Ramblers, Cecil Hall’s [co-writer of Stephens’ current single, “Could I Knock On Your Door”) Dominion Bluegrass Boys, and The Lilly Brothers & the Lilly Mountaineers. “That was a thrill for me because I loved those guys,” Stephens says of The Lilly Brothers. “It was amazingly special to be around them and talk to them.”
In February 2009, Stephens met Nashville-based fiddler/vocalist Corrina Rose Logston at the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America (SPBGMA) convention where the two became quick friends. “We kept in touch by phone after that, and I soon started traveling to Nashville to see Corrina, who was going to school at Belmont University at the time. We began dating, and I realized if we wanted to keep moving forward, I was going to have to move from Virginia, so I had starting exploring ways that I could afford to do that.”
Stephens was at the 2010 IBMA convention when he experienced what he calls “divine providence” after seeing banjoist Brennen Ernst jamming with a blonde Gibson archtop guitar. “That guitar looked like Howard Gordon’s guitar, the guy who played with the Chuck Wagon Gang for years and years. I thought, ‘What if I could just get a job with the Chuck Wagon Gang?’ The next morning my phone rang, and it was Dave Emery with the Chuck Wagon Gang. He said, ‘We need somebody to fill in on tenor for Stan Hill.’ It was unbelievable! That was the Lord’s doings right there!”
That job was the meal ticket that allowed Stephens to move to the Country Music Capital. “I always loved the original Chuck Wagon Gang, particularly their recordings from 1936-1953 when they had acoustic guitar. I was very familiar with their music when I started working for them, and I hoped to bring some of the older stylings back to them.”
After Hill returned to the group, Stephens was kept on to play guitar and eventually asked to replace guitarist/bass singer, Dave Emery. “It was a stretch for me,” Stephens said. “If you’ve heard the old Chuck Wagon Gang records, you’ll notice that their bass singers aren’t like J.D. Sumner and people like that that sang the really low stuff. If you can safely hit an E, like the low string on an acoustic guitar, you’re probably going to be okay with the Chuck Wagon Gang. I could hit that note most days,” he adds, laughing.
High Fidelity Forms
During the time he was performing with the Chuck Wagon Gang, Stephens and some of his friends started their band, High Fidelity. The group’s primary banjo player, Kurt Stephenson, whom Stephens met at the Smithville Fiddlers Jamboree in 1999, was at SPBGMA the year Jeremy met Corrina. In 2014, the three were all planning to attend the convention for the whole weekend. “Kurt said, ‘Why don’t we put together something for the SPBGMA band contest and do the ‘50s type of stuff and see if we can be competitive with it?’ Our goal was to play that style as authentically as possible and be competitive against all the other groups that were doing a more progressive type of bluegrass. We also really worked hard to have our harmonies as tight as we could.”
Also joining the band were upright bassist Vickie Vaughn—who has worked with Patty Loveless—and multi-instrumentalist, Daniel Amick, one of the IBMA’s 2019 Instrumentalist of the Year Momentum Award winners. High Fidelity received its first achievement with a first place win in the International Band Championship at the 40th Annual SPBGMA Awards in February of 2014. Five years later, they were nominated for the IBMA New Artist of the Year. “We just have to give the Lord the credit because when we look back on it, this is the combination of people that it was supposed to be. Because of the members we have, we’ve been able to do the touring the way that we do.”
High Fidelity has an unusual business model with the five members splitting tour time. Either Kurt, who has a regular 9 to 5 job as a radiation therapist, or Daniel, a self-employed entrepreneur, go out on the road. “When Daniel goes, he plays guitar, and I play banjo,” Stephens explained. “When Kurt goes, he plays the banjo, and I play the guitar. It’s very rare to see all five of us together on stage. Aside from the fact that it’s hard for us all to get together for five-piece shows, we’ve found that we often prefer working in the four-piece configuration. We value being able to get really close on stage in order to hear each other acoustically, and that is a bit harder to do with five people.”
Jeremy, who brought emcee experience into the equation, and Corrina, who has a double major in music business/artist production, are the co-band managers. “High Fidelity is a five-way partnership with myself and Corrina doing the booking and management. For us, the most important thing is transparency and honesty all the time. Sometimes everybody’s like, ‘We don’t have to know every detail!’” he says, laughing.
Jeremy says balancing the couple’s personal and professional time isn’t a problem. “It’s all kind of the same for us really. The music is what brought us together, and we have very similar ideals about how we lead our lives and how to run a business. We get along very well, and I’m very blessed to have the business together like this. We not only do High Fidelity, but we work together as a duo as ‘The Stephens Brothers.’ The only time we put it completely aside is when we turn off our phones and go on vacation, and that doesn’t happen very often.”
On a Second Solo Mission
The two formed a union in the studio for Stephens’s new solo album with his wife co-producing. He knew it was essential to have her oversee the project where he showcased a variety of his musical skills. “Most people know me as a banjo player or guitar player,” says Stephens. “I’ve always loved playing different instruments. I had to fight the desire to put pump organ, autoharp, piano, or other crazy stuff on a bunch of the record. I had Corrina produce this record because I knew if I did it completely myself, I would start doing weird stuff. People would think, ‘What is this?’ She dialed me back in a little bit, and I’m really pleased with how it all turned out.”
Stephens also ventured into playing the mandolin in the studio, something he has done very little of on stage in recent years. “In the last fews years, when I’m at home, that’s what I’m playing. I’ve always loved Jesse McReynolds’ mandolin playing but never could quite decode it.”
Stephens first became acquainted with the bluegrass Hall of Famer while McReynolds was recording his album Play the Bull Mountain Moonshiners Way. Corrina fulfilled her life-long dream of playing fiddle for McReynolds and soon Stephens became his main banjo player on tour and at the Grand Ole Opry. “Being around Jesse, getting to watch him play, and particularly seeing the way his hands move as he plays have been monumental in my being able to figure out some of his style, though I’m really just scratching the surface on the cap of his well of creativity. Anytime I’ve asked Jesse how he played something I couldn’t figure out on my own, he has been more than willing to show me exactly what he did. It’s been an amazing blessing in mine and Corrina’s life to be able to have this relationship with one of our biggest heroes in music.”
Stephens plays mandolin on six of his album cuts including “Could I Knock On Your Door,” “Lady Hamilton,” “Virginia Waltz,” and “The Old Spinning Wheel.” Although Stephens has recorded with a variety of bands through the years, his latest release is only his second solo effort. His debut project, Scarlet Banjo, came out on Rebel Records when he was 17 years old. “When I hear that record now, I sort of cringe at some of the stuff I let by. At that time, I thought you go in there, and you just play. I’ve always been a proponent for recording live as much as possible. When you listen to that first album, it definitely has the live feel. A little bit too much sometimes for me,” Stephens says, chuckling. “I didn’t really know what I was doing back then.”
Fast forward twenty years and Stephens entered the studio a recording veteran with a deeper understanding of what he desired. “I wanted to really feature the things that I’m doing right now that I’m really into. I’m very particular about banjo tone on recordings, so I focused really hard on getting that right for me. This record, How I Hear It, is this whole conglomerate of all these influences that I’ve had. I chose the musicians that played with me based on their connection and understanding of the music that I’ve always loved.”
One example is his pet song on the album, a cover of Don Reno’s “Since Wedding Bells Have Rung” from the 1966 album, A Song For Everyone. “I got to do a lot on that song that really made some dreams come true for me. I’ve known Ronnie Reno since the late ‘90s when I was a teenager seeing the Reno Brothers play. I got Ronnie to sing the lead. He’s singing tenor to his dad on the original 1966 cut. I asked him to bring his mandolin that his dad bought for him back then, and he played it on this cut as well.”
Stephens sang Don Reno’s part and used the same banjo and guitar that Reno used in that golden days’ session. “It was a real highpoint for me being able to do that song that way. That’s kind of my little baby of the record.”
Another tune, “You’ll Be Lonesome Too,” the first song that Grandpa Jones and Merle Travis recorded together, features Jeremy and Corrina’s duet the most. “I told Corina when we were working on the album, ‘I want to do a song that features the Stephens Brothers.’ She suggested ‘You’ll Be Lonesome Too’ and thought it would be a good one for me to feature the tenor guitar on. The way we did this song goes back to my childhood to a cassette that I had of Grandpa Jones. I used to listen to it all the time. On this recording Grandpa was bantering back and forth with Alton and Rabon Delmore, and Rabon plays a tenor guitar solo that is really fantastic. The song’s called ‘Take It On Out The Door.’ Our version of ‘You’ll Be Lonesome Too’ is kind of how I would imagine it to sound if Grandpa, Merle, Alton, and Rabon got together and did it. I played some of those same licks that Rabon played on ‘Take It On Out the Door’ that are stuck in my mind from when I was 5 years old listening to that cassette.”
Jeremy Stephens plans to continue pay homage to the traditional music of country, old-time, and bluegrass music. However, his new album isn’t a repeat of history. It’s a picture of where Stephens is currently in his musical journey, and with his band High Fidelity, he’s hoping for a long road ahead. “We’re grateful for every chance we have to be out in front of people, to play music for people that are wanting to hear it and enjoy it. As much as we can do that, we’re going to do it. We’ll wait and see what the Lord has in store for us, and we’ll follow His lead with it. We’re thankful for where we are now.”
