With Golden Highway having reached the end of the road, bassist Shelby Means strikes out on her own with her self-titled debut. 

In doing so, she continues making the brand of high-test bluegrass featured on 2022’s Crooked Tree and ’23’s City of Gold. The 13 tracks on Shelby Means explore the genre’s many paths from the balladic neo-pop of “Million Reasons” to the melancholy waltz of “the Old, Old House” to the celebration of rural beauty on “Farm Girl,” co-written by Means’ husband, Joel Timmons. 

“Farm girl/cattle-brandin’/farm girl/hot and sweating /farm girl/herbal remedy/farm girl/boll weevil enemy/farm girl,” Means sings of the object of the narrator’s desire.

Former Golden Highway bandmates Molly Tuttle, Kyle Tuttle and Brownyn Keith-Hynes lend support on the opening “Streets of Boulder,” setting the scene for a Golden Highway reprise of sorts with the help of bold-face ’grassers like Bryan Sutton; Union Station’s Jerry Douglas and Ron Block; and the likes of Billy Strings, Sam Bush, Tim O’Brien, Michael Cleveland, Ronnie McCoury and Sam Grisman. 

And though these players and singers’ presence is audible and identifiable, Means’ personality permeates the music and words, particularly on the autobiographical “5 String Wake-Up Call,” about her school days, and “Suitcase Blues,” about her career. 

“Eleven years of paying dues/glued rhinestones to my cowboy boots/kickin’ grass with some of Nashville’s best/I got a road gig with an all-girl string band/dragging my bass through foreign lands,” Means sings in harmony with Strings on the latter. 

And with that, Shelby Means sets the stage for Shelby Means’ next 11 years and beyond.