Shelby Means: Bake to Bass-ics

By Stratton Lawrence

In Shelby Means’ childhood home, weekends were for bluegrass. The best pickers in Laramie, Wyoming, gathered at her house, where she anchored jam sessions on the upright bass while her father and brother played guitar and mandolin. Another constant? Chocolate Bundt cake in the oven and a pot of chili on the stove.

“The motto around my house was, ‘If you eat good, you play good,’” Means recalls. As the bassist in Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, it’s a mantra she still lives by. After winning the Grammy for best bluegrass album earlier this year (besting fellow nominees like Willie Nelson and Sam Bush), she and the band splurged on
a bottle of champagne (“You can’t drink prosecco to celebrate a Grammy,” Means laughs) and dinner at L.A.’s Musso and Frank Grill.

Means’ bluegrass journey began in her Kentucky birthplace before moving west. At the University of Wyoming, she traveled to Ger- many and Austria with her choral group, whetting her appetite to form a group, the High Altitude Bluegrass Band, that returned to Europe for gigs in Slovakia and Sicily. On those trips, she planted the seeds for her all-female band, Della Mae, a group that eventual- ly landed her first Grammy nomination in 2014.

On a Charleston tour stop with Della Mae, Means met Joel Tim- mons, her now-husband and musical partner in the Americana duo, Sally & George. The couple rented a house in Nashville, giving Shelby the chance—between tours and recording sessions—to pursue her other passion, baking.

Growing up, Means’ mom made “dump truck” cakes. Her kitchen shelf included a cake cookbook that young Shelby would thumb through with starry eyes. She dressed as a baker for a Halloween, with flour on her cheeks. But it was the Barbie cake her aunt made for her fifth birthday that hooked her for life. Still, Means’ baking career almost didn’t survive her first foray making oatmeal and chocolate chip “cowboy cookies” for a 4-H Club contest in middle school. “There was something about the way the baking soda react- ed that made air bubbles in them, and the judges marked me down,” she laughs.

Fortunately, her family gobbled them up, along with the cinnamon rolls she bakes around the holidays to this day. After Means’ crafted a cake for a friend’s birthday in Nashville, she was soon recruited for her first wedding cake, a lavender chocolate work of art with Earl Grey mascarpone frosting. Another friend came calling, and for her second wedding cake, she discovered the “magical moisten- ing” power of pineapple in carrot cake.

Next up was Baked Alaska for Joel’s 40th birthday, complete with flame-charred meringue; for her brother’s wedding, she nailed a champagne cake, with a full bottle of bubbly in the batter. With each new venture, Means researched and perfected nuances—alti- tude adjustments for baking time, or how ambient humidity affects buttercream frosting.

“You have to learn cake math,” Means explains. “When you play bass, you count, like: 1, 4, 1, 4, 5. But with a wedding cake, you have to calculate how to make it for 150 people, with the right amount of flour and the correct tempera- ture and timing.”
Each Means original begins with a test run, just like her songs begin with a demo recording. But Means’ ease on stage—even in front of thousands at ven- ues like the Ryman Auditorium and Denver’s Red Rocks—belies her intensity in the kitchen.
“Joel can attest to how stressed I get when I’m baking—it’s not pretty,” Means admits, citing the complication of steamy summers in Nashville and Charles- ton. “With a wedding cake, you really can’t mess up.”

When she’s not on tour, Means and Timmons now live on Folly Beach, where they tend to their garden, paddle surf, and take long walks with Casper, their Cavapoo. Although Means recently collaborated with Folly Beach’s Dead Low Coffee on a vegan strawberry chocolate cake for her sister-in-law’s birthday, her baking career has slowed as her music career explodes. Since joining Tuttle’s group in 2021, she’s been to the Grammys twice, jammed with Dave Matthews, and planned her first solo record with a studio band that includes Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, and Ron Block. And it’s all happening at a time when bluegrass bands like Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway can fill venues once reserved for pop and rock acts.

“It’s been an insane two years,” says Means. “Bluegrass is back. “