[“Girl in a Hurry,” by Shelly Bush: “I’m a girl in a hurry so make up your mind, if you don’t know what you want I’ll leave you behind. Life’s too short and there’s no time to worry”]

Welcome back to Girl in a Hurry: the Shelly Bush story.

[“Girl in a Hurry,” by Shelly Bush: “Break my heart, make it fast. I’m a girl in a hurry.”]

I’m your host, Ellen Angelico.

In episode 3, we took the journey with Shelly from post office employee to bandleader. Now, we’re going to try and make it from bandleader to superstar.

Shelly was a beautiful woman, no question about it. She had long blonde hair and a warm smile, looking every bit the part of the “girl next door.” On top of that, she was phenomenally talented and had a rippin’ all-girl band. There was something else about Shelly that was getting noticed too. I asked Layla Vartanian, the owner of Layla’s Bluegrass Inn where Shelly played so many shows, what her first impressions were when she met Shelly.

• Layla: Just another musician on the street trying to, you know, make it in the music world. She was a kind girl, hard worker, had a great voice, walked with a limp. I know that too.

Shelly Bush had a congenital disability. She never spoke about it to me or pretty much anyone else, so I had to ask her mom, Shirley Bush, about it.

• Shirley: Shelly was born with her one leg. There was a muscle that was on the side of her leg instead of the back, so she couldn’t really pick up her heel real good. They couldn’t fix it. When I first found out about it, she was six weeks old, and they told me she’d probably never walk. I said, “Oh yes, she will. She’ll walk.”

Shelly’s disability was visible when she walked, but Shelly never acknowledged it and it was not public information. She went to great lengths to conceal it. Here’s her longtime friend Rod Janzen:

• Rod: The first time I ever met her she always kept one sock on too. I’d be like, why do you got one sock? Well, my feet get cold at night. I’d be like, what about the other one?

Only one member of Shelly’s band could recall a time when she addressed her walk head-on, one of her drummers, Amy Acklyn.

• Amy April: Some just random person that was probably drunk and being belligerently rude, and said, “Why do you walk funny?” And Shelly without skipping a beat, she goes, “Why do you walk funny?”

But according to Shelly’s mom, Shirley, it wasn’t all that uncommon:

• Shirley: So many people would say, “What happened to your leg?” And she never let it bother her. She tried to hide it, but she couldn’t. And she said, “It’s just the way God made me.”

There was something else bassist Amanda McCoy noticed about Shelly when they first talked on the phone, before they met in person.

• Amanda: She kept, like, clearing her throat and I’m thinking, like, “Does she have a cold?”

Shelly also had Tourette’s Syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes sudden motor and vocal movements called tics. Shelly’s bandmates Beth Garner and Mandy Shucher told me Shelly did her best to conceal her tics.

• Beth: They always there and she wouldn’t do them in the car or anything. It was just, like, once we got in our hotel room, you could hear her down, a little bit down the hallway.
• Mandy: She never really wanted to room with anybody. I roomed with her a couple of times and I could see why she just wanted her own space. She never talked about that stuff a lot. Especially in that era, you know, anybody with a disability is just immediately dismissed.

I used to volunteer at a camp for people with disabilities called Association of Horizon, and as an aside, it’s my favorite thing ever and someday if I have loads of money, I’m giving it to them. My own parents met at a Muscular Dystrophy Association camp in the 80s. I grew up lifting power wheelchairs onto my parent’s porch in a Chicago suburb and sitting with friends in the handicap section of Wrigley Field for Chicago Cubs games. 

Steven E. Brown, the co-founder of the Institute on Disability Culture, wrote an article in 2002 for a journal called Disability Studies Quarterly. In it he explains, “People with disabilities have forged a group identity. We share a common history of oppression and a common bond of resilience. We generate art, music, literature, and other expressions of our lives, our culture, infused from our experience of disability. Most importantly, we are proud of ourselves as people with disabilities. We claim our disabilities with pride as part of our identity. We are who we are: we are people with disabilities.”

Society is constructed in a way that isolates disabled people, but my disabled friends growing up in Chicago shared a disability culture that Shelly didn’t–or couldn’t–access. What was valued in Stover, Missouri, like a lot of rural towns, was self-reliance and keeping your head down, not being proud of what makes you different. And there weren’t–and still aren’t–disabled country stars for Shelly to have been inspired by. She wanted to be seen as a capable and strong performer, and Amanda said, to Shelly, that meant keeping her disabilities as private as possible. 

• Amanda: She didn’t want anyone to know. I think she would have, even today, as different as it is, she wouldn’t have admitted it.
• Ellen: No.
• Amanda: We’d be kidding ourselves saying like, “Oh, you know, it’s such an inclusive nature today.” No, Shelly wouldn’t have admitted shit.

I’m not naive enough to think that Shelly would have had an easier path had she been open about her disabilities, and I’m not even saying that I wish she acknowledged them. She might not have wanted to, I just wish she had lived in a world where she had a choice in the matter. 

[“I Ain’t Letting Go, by Shelly Bush: “But until my heart tells me so, I ain’t letting go.”]

When I sat down with Shelly’s longtime drummer Karen Dee, she put it plain and simple:

• Karen Dee: It’s difficult, this life, when you’re different. You know that, I know that.
• Ellen: Yeah.
• Karen Dee: Shelly knew that.

What my hero is referring to here, dear listener, is that Karen and I are gay. And not only are we gay, we are full blown butches: the kind of people who get stopped on our way to airport bathrooms and are told the men’s room is down the hall. A proud legacy of resilience and flannel, and a poor track record of success in country music. So if Shelly wasn’t going to talk about her disability, fine. It wasn’t the only thing we weren’t talking about!

[“On Again Off Again,” by Shelly Bush: “It’s a little bit tacky, sorta kinda wacky, the way that we hem and we haw. One day we’re all about it then we’re dancing all around it. Beats all I ever saw.”]

Shelly went way out of her way to avoid singing about homosexuality. I remember when the song “Honeybee” by Blake Shelton came out. The chorus goes, “You’ll be my soft and sweet, I’ll be your strong and steady.” Shelly would rearrange the “you’s” and the “I’s” in that song, so that no one would think Shelly was looking for someone “soft and sweet.” As an aside, this made singing background vocals on that song extremely difficult.

Sometimes Shelly would creatively reinterpret lyrics to avoid even the slightest impression of impropriety. I talked about it a little with Mandy Shucher:

• Ellen: In “Toes” by Zac Brown Band, she said, “Gonna lay in the hot sun and get me a sunburn.” And I don’t know if that’s because she forgot it or because she…
• Mandy: No, that’s definitely because she didn’t want to say “roll me a fat one.”
• Ellen: Didn’t want to sing about marijuana.
• Mandy: Because she would make up, in “Chicken Fried,” instead of “see the love in my woman’s eyes,” she would say, “see the love in my dad’s eyes.” I said, Shelly, why don’t you just say, like, “see the love in my lover’s eyes” or “see the love in my man’s eyes?” I mean, like, why, Dad?

Whether she talked about it or not, Shelly knew she was different and bassist Dawn Richey knew exactly what Shelly was up against:

• Dawn: The reality is that’s not what is on CMT, you know. They want young, they want perfect, and she wasn’t that.

Anyone who moves to Nashville to try and “make it” has felt the pressure to conform to unrealistic standards of beauty, and the pressure is especially strong on women according to Shelly’s guitarist Beth Garner:

• Beth: Back in the day, it’s Dolly Parton, it’s Emmylou Harris, it’s Loretta Lynn, it’s gorgeous women, and then guys that look like Porter Wagoner, okay? They’re not good-looking men but they’re still sexy, you know? There’s a difference. But the women had to be gorgeous. They had to look like Dolly Parton. Today, Jelly Roll. Do we have any women that resemble Jelly Roll in country music? No, we still don’t.

I had a great conversation about this with guitarist Paula Jo Taylor too. She talked about the flaws men in country music are allowed to have, but for women?

• Paula Jo: You can’t when it comes to the female country singers. You know what I’m saying? Boy, they better get all the Botox and look as young as they can.

Shelly knew the music industry wasn’t going to cut her any slack if she didn’t fit “the look.”

• Paula Jo: She’s very, very fashionable. And we used to laugh because we would get to places like Vegas, especially. And she’s got all these suitcases. It looks like a train. They’re all hooked up and she’s yanking them across the airport.

Shelly owned a whole lot of clothes, racks and racks of stuff from fashion-forward stores like Express and Rue 21. She wanted to have the latest and greatest stuff, and Rod told me she never left home without options:

• Rod: I think the first time I ever met Shel, I gave her a ride to the airport. She had two suitcases full of shoes for three days. I mean like, I didn’t really know her that good. I’d be like, all right, here, load that up for you.

Even Shelly’s mom Shirley, who definitely believed in looking put-together when one left the house, was a little baffled at the volume.

• Shirley: She liked fancy boots, and fancy clothes, and stuff. And I’d say, “Shelly, what are you buying all those clothes for?” She said, “Well, I can’t wear the same clothes twice.”

She even had a special shower rod-type thing that she hung up in the van, so her nice clothes didn’t get squished in a suitcase. Drummer Amy Acklyn remembered one time it just couldn’t handle the load.

• Amy April: She had 8,000 pieces of clothing on the hanger, that, like, hanger thing she’d bring. She went to open the door and, like, they all just fell out. And her clothes are on the dirt and gravel. She just goes, “Fuck this whole day.” [laughs] “Fuck this whole day.”

Little was more important than making sure Shelly’s clothes came with on the road, which sometimes meant that less important things got left behind. Mandy Shucher told me about a time they got to a gig and drummer Amy Acklyn began setting up her drum kit, when Mandy noticed something was missing.

• Mandy: Amy sets up her full kit and she doesn’t have the floor tom. And I was just kind of looking around for it because why would you just not have a floor tom, right?

The floor tom is a large cylindrical drum that sits on the floor and makes a resonant “boom” sound, perfect for the last note of a flourish from the drums. It’s a big part of the sound of modern country drumming.

• Mandy: And she just, like, deadpan is like, oh, yeah, Shelly made me leave it in Nashville because her second suitcase wouldn’t fit in the car. So it was my floor tom or her second suitcase for this two-night gig.

That’s right. They left one of the drums back in Nashville, so Shelly could bring her two suitcases.

• Mandy: And so all night, Amy would phantom-hit this drum and just make the noise with her mouth. [laughs]

These were the kinds of things that sent Karen Dee over the edge:

• Karen Dee: Yeah, you’re doing a one-nighter and she brings three suitcases! Just hang up a shirt!

Shelly’s relentless focus on her image created pressure on the other members of Broadband, especially Paula Jo Taylor. Paula Jo had a whole career in Indiana, her dad had a successful band and a TV variety show in Fort Wayne, Indiana called the Joe Taylor Showcase. There’s some awesome YouTube videos of Paula Jo playing on the show. Her children were grown and she had a grandkid on the way when she first got the call from Shelly.

• Paula Jo: I had to try to be younger. I had to try to look thinner. I had to struggle, because I was part of the Broadband, okay? And I had to not look like I was 48, 49, 50 years old when everybody else was 35.

This was especially true when it came time to have new press photos taken for Broadband, one of which Amanda McCoy was involved with:

• Amanda: It looked like one of those Sears photoshoots, where there was, like, a lot of props and boas and wigs. It was in this lady’s basement.

I had an experience like this early in my career. If you ran into me today and had to describe my style, the word “girl” would probably not come up. I’m decidedly masculine-of-center, preferring straight leg jeans, desert boots, and white T-shirts for my everyday wear. I had top surgery in 2019 and have a nice, aerodynamic silhouette. I still end up in the occasional all-girl project, I suppose, because I have the requisite plumbing, not to mention pretty good high background vocals. But the reality is that doesn’t really jibe with my gender presentation.

Early in my career, I was still kind of figuring all that out. I still had boobs and hadn’t cut my hair yet. I remember the first all-girl band I was in, before Broadband. I was really good friends with the fiddle player, and I often shared clothes with her. When she would wear them, she would get compliments on how pretty she looked. Then I would wear them, and I would get critiqued on how I could “doll it up” with just a little more makeup or jewelry. We did a promotional photoshoot and they hired a stylist and makeup artist to wrangle me into a look they thought the music business would accept. Turns out, you can put me in whatever you want–doesn’t matter if it’s a lacy blouse or a potato sack–I’m still my butch self underneath. When I look back at those photos today, I look like someone doing drag for the first time. It’s just not a convincing illusion.

• Amanda: I remember, you know, taking the photos. It was all very fun, well and good. Then getting the photos back and my fucking teeth were perfect. Like, it was so photoshopped. My teeth were, like, perfectly straight… They were, like, Paula Deen white. I’m like, “Why did she fix my teeth up?”

Shelly had a disability, the drummer was a big old dyke, and the guitarist was a grandma. It was nothing a little photoshop couldn’t fix, as far as Shelly was concerned. However, it did mean that once in a while, local promoters who booked Broadband thinking they were getting a band full of young hotties were a little surprised when the real Broads rolled out of the van. This dynamic led to an especially legendary Broadband gig in Vegas in 2013 when Shelly hired a dancer to join the band on stage. Dawn Richey gave me the scoop:

• Dawn: I was, like, eight months pregnant. We were playing a gig in Las Vegas and in the contract, she had to have, like, a six-piece band or something like that.
• Ellen: I heard a rumor that it was Shelly had sent such a young photo of you all. That the promoter wanted a younger vibe. Is it– so it’s not that?
• Dawn: That could be it too. That could be it. She just told me that they wanted a six-piece band. See, she knows what to tell me. She’s dumb as a fox.

Dumb as a fox. That’s what Shelly was. I told Amanda about Dawn’s version of the story.

• Ellen: Dawn said that it was because the promoter wanted a six-piece band and they only brought a five-piece.
• Amanda: I don’t know.
• Ellen: I’ll just say for the audio that Amanda has given me an epic eyebrow raise at that comment.

Karen Dee played drums that night:

• Karen Dee: But I’m the drummer, okay, and I’m you know, the dyke from Hell already with the fedora and, you know, not Skinny Minnie. We’re all not so young anymore. So Shelly, in her mind decided that we needed, we needed more excitement on the stage and a younger, you know, someone hip looking, you know? And so she hires this dancer. And this girl shows up, and I mean she is a knockout. She is hot.
• Dawn: Rather than try to find another musician, she found a dancer. Melanie, I believe the girl’s name was. We’re playing our music and Melanie’s just dancing, with the, you know, half-naked and Shelly goes to the crowd. She’s like, “All right, everyone, give it up for Karen Dee on the drums,” and everyone goes– [claps softly] “Give it up for Paula Jo on the guitar.” [claps softly] “Give it up for Melanie.” [screams] Just the crowd roared.

I asked Karen Dee if Shelly manufactured the need to get a hotter girl, or if it was necessary to keep the gig.

• Karen Dee: I don’t think it was necessary. Now, I think, some of the younger guys in the crowd certainly enjoyed it, but for everybody else it was like, oh, okay, well that’s interesting.

There’s a spectacular video of this on Paula Jo’s Facebook page. There’s Broadband, doing their thing, playing “Better Dig Two” by the Band Perry. And then it pans over to the right side of the stage, where someone in what I can only describe as a short cut dirndl–like a sexy version of a St. Pauli Girl dress–is doing a sultry dance and wearing a cowboy hat. Paula Jo is next to her, being the absolute legend that she is, simultaneously shredding lead guitar and chuckling to herself.

This was years before Instagram influencers, but Shelly put quite a bit of effort towards curating her and the band’s image. Amanda showed me a photo of Shelly, posing in front of a shiny tour bus backstage at a festival, beaming with a smile.

• Amanda: And it’s like, this ain’t my tour bus, but take my picture. People were like, “Oh, my God, Shelly.” She would never say it wasn’t hers.

Shelly ensured that a cursory glance at Broadband on the internet revealed a bunch of sexy, successful musicians, with a packed schedule of appearances.

• Amanda: I do think it’s to have the illusion. Most of the time, no one’s going to look into the shows that you’re playing. Shelly is just going to tell people, “I played ‘x’ amount of gigs this month or this year.”

Even if it meant stretching the truth a bit.

• Karen: And shitbird, 

By the way, “Shitbird” is what Karen Dee calls all of us younger Broadband members. I think I’m Shitbird 45. In this case, Karen is referring whatever to number Shitbird a fiddle player named Ivalee is.

• Karen: She almost had a nervous breakdown. Because she hadn’t done many gigs with us and Shelly sold this whole package of, “We’re opening for Rascal Flatts!” Well, we played at one and they played at nine, but okay. But when Shitbird figured out that was the deal, she melted down.
• Amanda: “We’re opening for Rascal Flatts,” and everyone was like, “Sweet.” At 10:00 AM, Shelly, no we’re not. Stop, stop telling people that.

Shelly was navigating a competitive landscape. She had to sound the best, be the best, and look the best to keep getting gigs. And in a reflection of these intense pressures, she sometimes prioritized musicians who fit the industry’s conventional standards of attractiveness.

• Amanda: Karen’s feelings were hurt a couple times because Shelly would use certain pictures or leave her out of things. And Karen was like, it’s literally because of how I look and how I present.
• Dawn: Well, when Anita came into town, there went Karen Dee. When Beth Garner came into town, there went Paula Jo.

Beth knew she was getting hired for gigs that otherwise would have gone to Paula Jo.

• Beth: I remember Paula Jo getting really pissed off because, you know, Shelly wanted to use me right away.

I look up to Paula Jo a lot. A breast cancer survivor who fashioned a custom double guitar strap so she could still play guitar after her mastectomy, Paula Jo is always professional, a great band leader, and super entertaining. I didn’t want to reopen an old wound, but this is real life and I wanted to know how she saw all this business with Shelly’s band members.

• Paula Jo: She had a lot of people I know, probably, that were backing her that gave her financial backing and stuff as well, and they put a lot of pressure on you. That’s no different on a record label or anybody else. Okay? But does that hurt? Of course, it does. You give your all. And then the only reason that you’re replaced or jumped on by somebody else is because they’re young, and they’ve got a good body, and they’re hot. And it doesn’t mean they were necessarily a fabulous, more fabulous guitar player than you were. It was because of what they look like. But you know what? That’s the name of the game in entertainment. I mean, boy, have I learned that over the years. Vince Gill said it’s a young man’s town. And it is all about looks, more so now than ever.

That’s the uncomfortable reality of being in the music business. Everyone deals with it, but it disproportionately affects people who don’t fit the shiny, airbrushed image of what a star “should” look like. And when you’re trying to push your career to the next level, those pressures pile on. If you could just get a little more money, you could get in front of a few more eyeballs, and you don’t want those people to see you and your band as anything other than the full package. That is where one Garnett Douglass comes into our story.

[“What a Man,” by Linda Lyndell, “What a man, what a mighty good man. Yes, he is.”]

• Rod: I play with girls to this very day. And there’s always some guy from some town that always shows up to see. It’s none of my business, whatever. I don’t ask too many questions. But that’s just part of the business, really, in a a weird way. You’re never going to see that not happen.
• Beth: There’s always a benefactor. You need them. You got to have somebody like that. You have to have somebody that supports you as your cheerleader, bankrolls a few things and believes in you. You have to have somebody like that. We love Garnett. You got to have that rich old man back there.

Garnett was not the first rich old man back there for Shelly.

• Rod: She always had guys that were willing to give her money too. Like, and, kind of, old guys.

But he was the most important one.

• Garnett: I mean, she was only, like, about $450,000 investment. That I would, get my… All we had to do is get one song and get to the right place, and it’d all have been worth it.

Garnett made his fortune selling a type of shiplap to Home Depot that was much easier to build with than traditional shiplap. He now owns a ton of property in Missouri and hangs out with his dog, Ally, watching the hummingbird feeder on his porch. Retirement looks good on Garnett. But 2005 was a very different time for him.

• Garnett: My wife died in February, and I’d be home on weekends. And we’d sit at the bar at one of the casinos in Tunica and talk about, “My company is worse than your company,” all weekend long. And play video poker.

Shelly happened to be performing during one of Garnett’s many trips to Tunica. She and Garnett struck up a conversation, and he made plans to come back the next time Shelly was playing. Amanda told me that bit by bit, Garnett started turning up at a whole lot of Broadband shows.

• Amanda: Even when we did gigs in, like, Lula, Mississippi, Garnett would just show up to these gigs way away from where he’s from.

Eventually, Shelly and Garnett got to be pretty close. Garnett started helping Broadband get hotel rooms when the venues wouldn’t put them up, and Shelly would call him after long drives to make sure he knew the band got home okay.

• Garnett: She had started already calling me in the evening to see how I was doing. Linda had been gone about six months or so. And, you know, I still miss her every day today. So I wasn’t always all right. And that started a process of her calling me every day and and checking on me.

Shelly would call to check on Garnett, and Garnett would call to check on Shelly. They were really there for each other. Exactly how close Shelly and Garnett became was occasionally the subject of speculation, according to bartender and singer Emily Peck.

• Emily: I thought maybe there was a little something happening. Maybe there wasn’t. They were clearly very, very close. And whether or not that was in more of a romantic way or not, I think they had a very special relationship.
• Garnett: Her boyfriends all thought there was something going on between her and I. And they didn’t like me at all. But it was, there was not. She was like my baby doll.

Shelly often confided in bassist Dawn Richey, and she definitely would have told Dawn if there was something going on between her and Garnett.

• Dawn: He was a financier, but they had a nice relationship, you know? It seemed really more of a friendship to me.

And as Amanda McCoy pointed out for me, you don’t have to be in a romantic relationship to love someone.

• Amanda: I think Shelly loved Garnett. I really do.

All this made me wonder how Garnett himself would characterize his relationship with Shelly, so I asked him.

• Garnett: We were good friends. I guess, “executive producer” because that’s who pays the bills. [laughs]

And pay the bills he did. Garnett financed seven albums for Shelly and they are professional, high-quality products. He paid The Full Moon Saloon to open earlier in the day so Broadband could have a place to practice and learn new music.

• Garnett: I would guarantee a certain amount. You know, sometimes I didn’t have to pay anything. Sometimes I did.

He bought Shelly clothes.

• Garnett: We did lots of shopping. I told her dad and mom, one time, I said, “This house is going to settle in the, down in the basement or on the ground. It’s going to sink if she puts anything else in those closets.” I knew where every Rue 21 nearest casino from Las Vegas to the Gulf Coast.

Knowing every Rue 21 from Vegas to the Gulf Coast, he bought clothes for Shelly and for other members of Broadband, like Mandy Shucher.

• Mandy: He bought me clothes to wear on stage because I didn’t have anything that Shelly deemed suitable.

Garnett himself is a sharp-dressed guy. He always looks like he’s going to an important meeting. Dawn told me this sometimes made him stand out among the crowd at Shelly’s gigs, including a memorable trip to the world’s largest motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota.

• Dawn: He stays the first night, and the next day we’re playing poolside at Broken Spoke, I think it was. And he sees these two girls jump in the pool naked. He says, “I think I’m going to stay a couple of more days.”

Amanda McCoy was playing guitar on that trip.

• Amanda: I remember towards the end of that trip that Garnett was on, he, like, was wearing less clothes. He would come out in, like, shorts and, like, his shirt would be unbuttoned to, like, here. Like, he was definitely cutting loose a bit. I remember playing outside by the pool. God, the debauchery that was happening in that pool, none of us swam in it, we’re all smart enough to not do that, which was very good.

Whether out on the road or on the phone, Shelly’s best friend Brenda Nolting said Garnett was a constant presence in the lives of the members of Broadband.

• Brenda: He was almost like their guardian angel in the Broadband.

Mandy Shucher told me Garnett took care of them like they were his daughters.

• Mandy: He took care of me when I first moved to town. I didn’t have anything. He cosigned for my first apartment. He paid for my doctor bills when I fell and sprained my knee and stuff. You know, he took care of all of us.

Garnett’s help with Shelly’s albums and all the investments he made in Broadband were in service of one singular goal.

• Amanda: She was so seeking out a record deal. Like, she was seeking out a traditional type of, “I’ve made it. I have a record deal.”

Shelly Bush was a record deal-seeking missile. She was going to be a star, and she would stop at nothing to get her foot in the door. She was all over town making contacts, recording good albums, dropping off demos.

• Dawn: She was able to get meetings with these, these reputable guys.

Those meetings Dawn is talking about, you don’t get them by accident.

• Rod: She goes, “I’m singing at the Palace tonight,” or something, “and I’ve got a couple people coming out to see me sing.” And I remember going over there. And I look over and she’s got, she’s got Buddy Cannon and Norro Wilson over there. I mean, I don’t even know how I would get a meeting with those guys.

That’s Buddy Cannon, who has three Grammys and is known for his work with Willie Nelson and Kenny Chesney. Norro Wilson has written hit songs for dozens of people including George Jones and Charley Pride. There was attorney Dick Frank, and producer Clyde Brooks, top tier Music Row veterans. How did Shelly get them to come to her bar gig?

• Dawn: Tenacious. If there was one word to describe Shelly, it would be tenacious.
• Rod: I think one of her first projects was produced by Barry Beckett, who has produced all kinds of hit records in this town, you know? It doesn’t get any bigger than that, producer-wise.

Barry Beckett was a legendary Muscle Shoals keyboardist with production credits on records by Lorrie Morgan, Hank Williams Jr., and Shelly’s favorite band, Alabama.

• Mandy: She recorded at Kenny Royster’s place all the time.

Kenny Royster made demos for Craig Morgan, Trick Pony, Lonestar, Randy Houser, and Cole Swindell.

• Mandy: She was always doing writing sessions and recording. And Kenny’s a great producer. I think she really wanted to go the artist route, but was just ignored and told no constantly.

But as we know, and drummer Amy Acklyn reminded me, getting a “no” didn’t change Shelly’s game plan.

• Amy: If you told her no, she’d just… it would amp her even more to get a yes out of you. She just was, like, bulldog like that.
• Rod: She would be down on Music Row a lot trying to find publishers and go through catalogs, the steps that you still take to this day. So she did everything right. She was taking all the right steps.

All the right steps. One foot in front of the other. That was how Shelly always navigated the challenges that came up in her career, from the pressures of the music industry to finding financial partners to turn her dream into a reality. And “one foot in front of the other” is all well and good, unless you’re headed for a cliff. In the next episode, a new battle unfolds for Shelly, one that would put her legendary strength and determination to the test.

[“Girl in a Hurry,” by Shelly Bush: “I’m a girl in a hurry so make up your mind, if you don’t know what you want I’ll leave you behind. Life’s too short and there’s no time to worry. If you’re gonna break my heart, make it fast. I’m a girl in a hurry. Make up your mind what you want. I’m a girl in a hurry.”]

Girl in a Hurry: the Shelly Bush Story was made possible by Whippoorwill Arts and We Own This Town. Special thanks to Karen Pittelman and Michael Eades.