By 1993, Jones had recorded two critically acclaimed albums for MCA but was still having a great deal of difficulty getting played on the radio, which was focused on younger, emerging stars.

The new album, which employed two producers, Buddy Cannon and Norro Wilson, was an attempt by MCA to broaden the singer's appeal, with biographer Bob Allen observing in his book George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend, "In 1993, the label released Hi-Tech Redneck, a new and oddly uneven Jones LP that tried to cast him in a slightly different and more lighthearted perspective, in hopes of breaking the radio deadlock."

"A Thousand Times a Day" was later recorded by Patty Loveless on her 1996 album The Trouble with the Truth, from which it was released as the second single, becoming a Top 20 hit for her that year.

Jimmy Guterman of New Country magazine rated the album 4 out of 5 stars, saying that "Jones expertly walks through a series of boasts, gags... fables, and depictions of emotional devastation that suggest what Hank Williams might have sounded like had he lived to record using the Nashville sound."

Guterman also praised the duet with Sammy Kershaw on "Never Bit a Bullet Like This" as a "riot", and noted the album's cover of "Hello Darlin'" that it "succeeds both as a tribute to Twitty's style and to Jones' ability to wrench new ideas out of a song country fans have heard hundreds of times.