Shelby Means was a quiet and shy bookworm growing up in Laramie, Wyoming, but on Saturday she returned to her home state, this time as anything but a wallflower.
Means has recently dominated the bluegrass scene across the country. She attended the bluegrass festival AmericanaFest last week and the International Bluegrass Music Association Conference and Festival this week.
However, this does not preclude the star from returning to her hometown to headline the Snow Train Festival, a new music event in Laramie.
“I really love Laramie and enjoy returning to the area,” Means told Cowboy State Daily. “This is a great opportunity for me to just stay in touch with my hometown.”
The Gryphon Theatre, where she performed on Saturday night, is one of her favorite places in Laramie. She was especially pleased because she was able to bring together a fantastic band for the performance.
“Wes Corbett plays banjo in Sam Bush’s band for his main gig and he’s a great banjo player,” she told me. “And my friend Bonnie Sims, who plays in Big Richard, a band based in Colorado (played) mandolin with me.”
Means found it challenging to form a band. Usually, she’s the one getting calls inviting her to join a band and tour with them. Being the one to make the calls and put everything together is a new trick, but it feels great.
“It’s also just so cool what John (Gardzelewski) is doing with Snow Train,” Means told me. “There are so many great bands, and it’s showcasing a lot of different venues in Laramie.”
Grassroots Celebration Of Wyoming Talent
Jon Gardzelewski put the Snow Train Festival together to highlight eight years’ worth of participants in Wyoming’s Singer-Songwriter Competition and Festival. Two hundred musicians performed 90 acts at 11 venues in Laramie during the two-day event.
“The competition draws out way more talent than anyone could imagine is here in Wyoming,” claimed Gardzelewski. “Kids from ranches that rarely play out, retired crooners who sing to their spouses, yodelers, punks, harpists — you name it — and they’re all really good.”
Meanwhile, the Laramie music scene is thriving, with regular performances at venues such as the Buckhorn, the Cowboy Saloon and Dance Hall, The Great Untamed, the Ruffed Up Duck Saloon, and Black Tooth Brewing Company.
“If people get comfortable coming out more often for live music, then the venues can have more shows paying artists better, which in turn attracts more artists to Laramie, which in turn attracts more tourists and the kind of new residents I’d like to see moving in,” according to him.
“Awhile back we had conversations like this with Shawn Hess, Will Flagg, Angel Adamas, John Poland — all in Laramie — about getting tourism on board to help us promote what’s happening here with music and songwriting as a real hidden strength of Laramie culture,” according to Gardzelewski.
Gardzelewski then challenged colleagues in Lander, Cheyenne, Laramie, and Sheridan to hold urban music festivals in their respective cities.
“I just beat the others to it,” Gardzelewski explained. “And once we announced a call for artists, the interest, the help, and the support we saw in this town and across the state was amazing.”
For this inaugural festival, Gardzelewski contacted all of the “Laramigos” who have been doing particularly well in the music industry.
“Alysia Craft who is playing in LEASHY, Ray Carlisle from Teenage Bottlerocket, and Shelby of course,” he informed me. “I didn’t know her personally, but I knew her father through UW and the local bluegrass scene. We’d always wanted a big-name headliner to draw attention to our festival, so she was an obvious choice.”
After listening to Means’ record, which was not yet available when he asked, he was blown away by what he heard and felt he couldn’t have chosen a better headliner for this grassroots Wyoming music festival.
“Just recognizing how relevant and real her songwriting and music is, we are just thrilled,” he told me. “It’s the perfect fit for us and what we’re trying to accomplish, as it’s both Wyoming-centric and adds to the festival’s ‘Oh Wow’ factor.
“We want to make Wyoming a state where people start thinking of our music.”
Triumphant Homecoming For A Wyoming Original
Means returns to Laramie fresh off playing twice at the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado with Molly Tuttle and the Golden Highway Band, not to mention getting written up by Rolling Stone magazine as the “surprise set” of Colorado’s Rockygrass Festival weekend in July.
Means released a solo album in May of this year, inspired by the song “Next Rodeo” she wrote with Molly Tuttle for the Grammy-winning bluegrass album “City of Gold.”
“I was sitting in the room with Molly, and we were just coming up with a couple of ideas for like two different songs,” Means told me. “And we came up with a cool melody that we really liked.”
The song evolved into a rodeo love song at the suggestion of a friend whose name also happened to be Melody. It then went through the typical Nashville write and rewrite process, in which multiple songwriters collaborate to refine a song’s lyrics and theme.
Many other voices contributed to the project, but Means’ Wyoming roots and experiences remain evident in the song.
“The Grammy-winning record with Molly really encouraged me in a way to get into the studio and make a record of my own,” Means told me. “That was something I hadn’t done yet, but I was inspired by the work we’d been doing with Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway, and I’d been able to save up some money.”
As a result, Means was able to release her album completely independently, though she did assemble a professional team to produce it, including Nashville-based singer-songwriter Maya De Vitry.
“She inspired me to just handle the brunt of the expenses on my own, so that I could own the full product,” Means recalled. “And it was just such a cool experience to be fully in the driver’s seat.”
Wyoming Spirit In Each Song
It didn’t take long for songs on Means’ new album to start climbing the bluegrass charts. “Streets of Boulder,” almost immediately hit No. 1 on Bluegrass Today’s Weekly Airplay Chart and stayed there for most of the summer, Means said.
She wrote the song as a freshman in college, shortly after breaking up with her summer boyfriend.
It’s full of angsty, young-adult questions about love and what it’s all about, which many people never figure out, even as adults.
“Who am I to leave you all alone? Who are you to watch me walk away?” Means sings in the chorus. “How are we to know it won’t work out this time, Who are we to know what love is all about?”
Means’ new album is full of Wyoming experiences, with songs inspired by her childhood on a ranch 40 miles north of Laramie, where her parents still live.
Like “Farm Girl,” which tells the story of a pickle-canning, boll weevil-hating, wrangler-wearing cowgirl who is hot and sweaty. The playful chorus simply invites you to sing along, and the song has risen to the top ten of Grassicana’s most played songs this week. It also ranked in the top 30 on Bluegrass Today’s Weekly Airplay Chart during the same time period.
Means’ husband, Joel Timmons, wrote the original version of the song, but what drew her to it was the opportunity to list all of the various aspects of farm girls that she grew up with in Wyoming.
No Place Like Home
Means plans to tour her album next year as much as possible, but is already working on the next, writing down her ideas, and thinking her next set of songs.
“I’ll actually have to save up some money before I can go back to the recording studio,” she told me. “But I’m always working on songwriting and just trying to be creative, and hopefully keep moving forward with the next record, which will hopefully be successful like this one.”
Means is thrilled, in the meantime, to be able to return to Wyoming and perform her first solo album in front of her home state on Saturday night at the Gryphon Theatre.
Built in 1926 as a major addition to the East Side School, it is now part of the Laramie Plains Civic Center. It is a historic venue on the National Register of Historic Places, and Means remembers it as a magical place to grow up.
“It is one of my favorite spots in Laramie,” Means said. “When I was really little, there was this talent contest I entered, and I think I was 6 years old or something, on stage at the Gryphon.”
She could never have imagined returning to Wyoming to perform as a headliner with a Grammy and appearances on numerous prestigious stages around the world.
She described it as a dream come true to return to the place where she grew up learning to ride horses, do 4-H baking, and play bluegrass music with her father’s band.
“It was just a pretty lovely, lovely upbringing,” she told me. “And it was my pleasure to come back to Laramie and perform for its festival.”
