Shelby Means
Bio
Bassist, vocalist, and songwriter Shelby Means has done a bit of everything across her lifelong career in roots music. She grew up playing bluegrass with her family, moved to Nashville after college, and has made a life and a living off her singular, self-possessed approach to the upright bass – and its bass guitar cousins, of course.
Means has traveled the world with many acts, most notably in recent years with Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway and previously with groundbreaking and generation-defining string band Della Mae, with whom she visited nearly 30 countries as a musical diplomat. She got bit by the Music City songwriting bug along the way, penning lyrics and dipping her toes in many genres, from alt-country and rock & roll to indie and Americana. With Della Mae, she was nominated for a GRAMMY and with Golden Highway she finally did take home her own golden gramophone.
Perhaps the only achievement yet to be notched over her decades as a bassist, band member, artist, and side musician has been a solo project released under her own name. On May 30, 2025, Shelby Means will release her debut, self-titled LP – and then, she really will have done everything.
Born in Kentucky and raised in Wyoming, Means has called several vibrant music cities her home since striding out of Laramie as a professional bassist in her young adulthood. Boston, Nashville, and now Charleston, South Carolina have all been places incubating the songs, communities, and sounds that would become the eponymous Shelby Means.
The album is a 13-track collection of bluegrass bangers, heartful lyrics, hilarious romps, and endless virtuosity that draws on the particular set of skills and fluencies Means has developed over her accomplished career. Anchored by her bright, confident, and decidedly country voice and backed by a roster of true legends and allstars, somehow the music is extraordinary and superlative while at the same time it sounds like an informal jam session.
“I always knew I wanted my first solo album to be bluegrass,” Means explains, describing how she and producer Maya de Vitry approached executing this intricate balance of precision and pickin’ party. “I never left bluegrass,” she continues, “but I certainly have explored other styles – like with Sally & George – but I kept dreaming of my time in Nashville and how I used to love to host jam sessions and invite my friends and neighbors.”
At this point, after decades performing and recording, it should surprise no one that Means’ roster of friends and neighbors includes many supremely talented and similarly community-minded musicians and artists. With Della Mae, Golden Highway, Sally & George, and her countless other projects and gigs, Means has ended up meeting and establishing connections and relationships with just about everyone in bluegrass music.
Bryan Sutton (who plays guitar on the album) produced an album for Della Mae; producer de Vitry happened to produce Means’ husband Joel Timmons’ album (he’s also in de Vitry’s band); Jerry Douglas produced for Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway on both Crooked Tree and City of Gold; Means’ brother, Jacob, plays mandolin on a couple selections; Golden Highway’s Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Kyle Tuttle, and Molly Tuttle herself each make appearances; there’s also Sam Grisman, Ronnie McCoury, Billy Strings, Michael Cleveland, Tim O’Brien, and more. Plus, stalwart friends from her Nashville years – when she’d play pickup gigs around town constantly when not touring and would close down the 5 Spot’s weekly old-time jam – are all over the self-titled debut, folks like Rachel Baiman, Kelsey Waldon, Billy Contreras (another 5 Spot veteran) – and of course her bandmates and collaborators, many of whom she first met in Music City.
“I didn’t feel like I had to stick with one band for the whole thing,” Means says. “I wanted it to feel like my favorite chili pickin’ parties, jams where I would make a pot of chili, invite friends over, and play music for hours.”
The album was tracked in March 2024 at the Parlor Studio on Music Row, and its credits may read like a short list of ringers, of first calls tapped by many folks making records on the row, but its music never sounds like they were itching to clock out and head home. Means and de Vitry did feel like they were shooting for the stars calling heroes like Sam Bush and Ron Block, and even having worked with both Douglas and Sutton in the past didn’t quite ease Means’ nervousness at tapping such heavy-hitters. Still, admiration and intimidation were cast aside, and the pickers – who, while heroes, by now are truly members of Means’ community – responded with grounded and stellar performances, tailor made for the dynamic range of this material and the wide variety of song styles.
“They were all so kind and listened with such big ears to the songs that I wrote, which is maybe the most vulnerable part, playing the demo tapes,” Means shares, describing the studio working environment. “Sometimes they would have questions, they were so sweet and so open. They really listened to what I wanted, which was awesome, because we felt comfortable with each other. They wanted to be creative as well and they didn't just play what I said they should play. They found their own parts, which was really cool.”
The songs – two covers and 11 originals and co-writes – are each their own journey, their own individual arcs, but they join together seamlessly with Means as their nexus point and the jam circle intention as their foundation. “Streets of Boulder” is a burning, radio-ready – and already charting – lead track that’s also a family reunion, with her brother Jacob on mandolin and her Golden Highway compatriots surrounding her. “Suitcase Blues” is a deftly self-referential paean to life on the road with Michael Cleveland’s wailing fiddle and Billy Strings on harmonies that reminds of loping ‘90s Alison Krauss cuts.
The zany and charming “Elephant at the Zoo” and “Wild Tiger Style” both jump out at you, and not just for Billy Contreras’ mind-numbingly acrobatic fiddling. “5 String Wake Up Call,” “Farm Girl,” “Up On the Mountain,” and “High Plains Wyoming” are each, in their own ways, tributes to family, home, and the communities that run throughout these songs. The project’s two covers are winking and disarming bookends, George Jones’ “The Old, Old House” and Lady Gaga’s “Million Reasons,” both of which orbit around Means’ vocals, full of emotion and power – and strikingly precise.
If this really were a jam, a hangout around a pot of chili, it would have to be one of legend. One on par with John Hartford or Earl Scruggs’ mythical picking parties. You can hear the fun, the following inspiration, the listening to one another, the finding a spark of joy or excitement or emotion and purposefully following its light. Means and her cohort made a pristine bluegrass album that’s not sterile or canned, a jam session that never grew muddy or murky or tired.
That’s because the fingerprints of Means’ many influences, of the intricate, detailed histories infused into this debut album, are constantly present. Each choice, each moment, each musician is deliberate, but they’re also free, uninhibited. It’s music made with confidence and pride, but togetherness and ease, too.
It’s a record that certainly doesn’t sound like a debut, or a first effort – because it isn’t quite. Shelby Means has already been doing exactly this her entire life: surrounding herself with good people who make great music.
“Bass, I really feel like it’s a community instrument,” she concludes. “The instrument calls for a strong community.” She laughs: “It’s just no fun to play the bass by yourself!”
