Grammy Winner Shelby Means Headlines Laramie Music Fest In Homecoming

Shelby Means was a quiet and shy bookworm when she was growing up in Laramie, Wyoming, but Saturday she was back in her home state, and this time as anything but a wallflower.

Means has been rocking the bluegrass world across the country of late. She was at bluegrass festival AmericanaFest last week, and the International Bluegrass Music Association Conference and Festival this week. 

But that doesn’t mean the star doesn’t have time to come back to her hometown to headline Laramie’s new music event, the Snow Train Festival.

“I really love Laramie, and I love coming back 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 played Saturday night, is one of her favorite places in Laramie. She was particularly stoked because she was able to bring out a really great 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 said. “And my friend Bonnie Sims, who plays in Big Richard, a band based in Colorado (played) mandolin with me.”

Putting together a band was quite a table-turner for Means. Usually, she’s been the one getting the calls, asking her to come join a band and tour with them. Being the one to make the calls and put together is a brand-new trick — but one that feels great.

“It’s also just so cool what John (Gardzelewski) is doing with Snow Train,” Means added. “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,” Gardzelewski said. “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.”

The Laramie music scene, meanwhile, is active with regular shows at multiple venues, including the Buckhorn, the Cowboy Saloon and Dance Hall, The Great Untamed, the Ruffed Up Duck Saloon, and Black Tooth Brewing Co.

“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,” he said. 

“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,” Gardzelewski added.

That led Gardzelewski to challenge colleagues in Lander, Cheyenne, Laramie and Sheridan to do an urban music festival in each of their cities.

“I just beat the others to it,” Gardzelewski said. “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 reached out to all the “Laramigos” who have been doing particularly well in the music world. 

“Alysia Craft who is playing in LEASHY, Ray Carlisle from Teenage Bottlerocket, and Shelby of course,” he said. “I didn’t know her personally, but I knew her dad from UW and the local bluegrass scene. We always wanted a headliner who was big enough to get our festival some attention, so she was an obvious choice.”

After listening to Means’ record, which wasn’t out when he first asked, he was blown away by what he heard and felt he couldn’t have made a better choice for a headline artist for this grassroots Wyoming music fest.

“Just recognizing how relevant and real her songwriting and music is, we are just thrilled,” he said. “It’s the perfect fit for us and what we’re trying to do, being both Wyoming-centric and giving this festival some ‘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 just released a solo album in May of this year that was inspired by the song she wrote with Molly Tuttle called “Next Rodeo” on 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 recalled. “And we came up with a cool melody that we really liked.”

The song became a rodeo love song at the suggestion of a friend, whose name also happened to be Melody. It then went through the usual write and rewrite process common in Nashville, where multiple songwriters work together refining a song’s lyrics and theme. 

Lots of other voices contributed to the work, but Means’ Wyoming roots and experiences still shine through 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 said. “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.”

Thanks to that, Means was able to release her album 100% independently, though she did put together a professional team to produce the album, 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 said. “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 that song when she was a freshman in college, right after breaking up with her summer boyfriend. 

It’s full of those angsty, young-adult questions about love, and what is it even all about — something many never figure out, even into adulthood.

“Who am I to leave you all alone, Who are you to watch me walking out,” Means sings in the chorus line. “How are we to know it won’t work out this time, Who are we to know what love is all about?” 

All of the songs on Means’ new album are full of Wyoming experiences, drawing from her life growing up on a ranch 40 miles north of Laramie, where her parents still live. 

Like “Farm Girl,” which talks about a pickle-canning, boll weevil-hating, wrangler-wearing cowgirl, all hot and sweaty. The playful chorus just invites singing along, and the fun tune has hit Grassicana’s top 10 list of most played songs this week. It was also in the top 30 of Bluegrass Today’s Weekly Airplay Chart for the same time period.

The original version of the song was written by Means’ husband, Joel Timmons, but what attracted Means to it was having a place to list all the different things about farm girls, things 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 said. “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 tickled, in the meantime, that she got to come back home to Wyoming and share her first solo album with her home state at the Gryphon Theatre on Saturday night.

Built in 1926 as a major addition to the East Side School, today it’s part of what’s known as the Laramie Plains Civic Center. It is a historic venue listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and to Means was a magical place while growing 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.”

At that time, she could never have imagined returning to Wyoming to perform on that stage as a headliner with a Grammy under her belt, as well as appearances on multiple prestigious stages around the world.

It’s a dream come true to come back home to the place she grew up learning to ride horses, doing 4-H baking, and playing bluegrass music with her father’s band, she said.

“It was just a pretty lovely, lovely upbringing,” she said. “And it was my pleasure to come back to Laramie and perform for its festival.”

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.