Lowcountry Love Song: Meet Grammy-Winning Bluegrass Artist Shelby Means And Her Holy City Rocker Husband Joel Timmons
WRITER: Stratton Lawrence
PHOTOGRAPHER: Hunter McRae Lawrence
Shelby Means wasn’t quite sure about this e-mail attachment. She’d met Joel Timmons in 2012, at a music festival in Bristol, Tennessee, where he seemed to go out of his way to hear her perform, and again when she visited Charleston to play at Awendaw Green in fall 2013. But what was this MP3 file? She pressed play.
I saw her on State Street, on the Tennessee side
And I knew in an instant, someday she’d be mine
I went to her concert; I wore a disguise
And I couldn’t hold steady when she flashed them bright eyes
My heart was a’ pounding as I emptied my glass
Struck blind by a vision of things that would pass
Shelby and her bluegrass band, Della Mae, called Nashville home but spent most of the year on tour. With her tall frame, blonde hair, and classic beauty, it wasn’t the first lovestruck fan the upright bassist had encountered. Not to mention, she had a boyfriend, and she’d told this guy about him back in Awendaw. Still, she listened as Joel’s prophecy continued:
Our courtship was torment, with us both on the road
Long Mondays and red eyes and tears on the phone
So I moved to Nashville and became a side man
Got to play at the Opry, but I still missed the sand
She taught me to horse ride, we took trips to the sea
And on Cumberland Island, I got
down on one knee
Whoa, she thought, the boyfriend definitely shouldn’t hear this. Shelby played it for her mom and for her brother. What she didn’t do—for two anguishing weeks—was reply…