Originally from rural Illinois, Shelley holds a bachelor’s degree in piano performance from Vanderbilt University’s Blair school of Music. After graduating, she began working at Plimoth Plantation, role-playing one of the Pilgrims and taking care of the farm animals there. She also began to study the music of 17th century England, and joined an a capella group called For the Nonce which sings in historic costume for museum events and tavern dinners. She found that folk music satisfied her musical spirit more than her classical studies had and has since learned to play the harp, mountain dulcimer, and several other folk instruments. Her other interests include dancing and dance music, historical agriculture, writing stories and poetry, gardening, and being outside.

As a classically trained pianist, Shelley grew up playing music by composers such as Bach, Chopin, Beethoven and Mozart. After graduating from college with a degree in music, she pursued a life-long interest in history and began work at Plimoth Plantation, a museum about the influences of English settlers on New England and the Native Wampanoag people living there. Unexpectedly, she found a book of 17th century English folk music among the training manuals.

Shelley had always felt unconfident about her voice, but she began to sing for visitors to the museum, figuring her job was to portray real people who wouldn’t have had vocal training, rather than displaying vocal finesse. The more she sang, the more she loved it—and she also received positive feedback from the people around her. One visitor around the age of nine said, “You should go professional!” After thinking, “yeah, right,”—for when she was in high school she took a voice lesson where the teacher said “some people don’t have ‘it’”—she later joined a pilgrim singing group, For the Nonce, that sings for Plantation functions and tavern dinners. After spending years studying about classical piano, she was delighted to be paid to sing folk-songs in a historic costume.

Once introduced to folk music, Shelley couldn’t get enough of it. She learned to play the tabor pipe, a traditional instrument amongst English commoners in the 17th century, as well as the tin whistle and mountain dulcimer when a dear friend gave her one in 1999. Soon after, Shelley decided it was time to follow her dream of learning to play the harp. It wasn’t long before she realized it was a perfect fit, and she has been playing the harp ever since. Shelley also enjoys playing a modern folk instrument she has named “big recyclable glass pan pipes,” otherwise known as beer bottles. Her other interests include dancing (especially Scottish, English, and Contra,) writing poetry and stories, historical agriculture, gardening, and being outside.