Shannon Lowery still remembers it like it was yesterday. “Just talking about it right now, I can feel my heart beating,” he says.

It was Sunday evening, April 18, 2021. The 56th Academy of Country Music Awards was broadcasting live from locations across Nashville, and Lowery was at home in Fort Worth, watching it on TV. His wife Lauren sat beside him, feeding their young son in his high chair while also keeping her eyes on the screen. What they were waiting for, they didn’t exactly know.

Then it happened.

Mud Lowery’s pieces accentuate the hero stone: turquoise from storied mines like Kingman, Carico Lake and Royston.

After a commercial break, the ACMs returned with three artists sitting on stools and holding their guitars, poised for an acoustic set. It was Jack Ingram, Jon Randall and Miranda Lambert, and all three wore head-to-toe denim. But it was the way that Lambert’s look was accessorized that made the Lowerys leap from their chairs. Lambert was decked out in silver and turquoise jewelry — rings, bracelets and an oversized squash blossom necklace — all handmade by Lowery for the brand he and Lauren had recently started, Mud Lowery.

Lauren started to cry. “We just looked at each other and said, ‘this is going to be a thing,’” she recalls. Lowery remembers feeling grateful but also a bit overwhelmed. “I thought, ‘This is so great, and nothing like this will ever happen to me again.’”

Except it did. Many, many times. And there’s no end in sight.

Today, Mud Lowery is a thriving brand, designing and producing bespoke western jewelry incorporating silver, gold, crystals and lab-grown gemstones, all accentuating the hero stone: turquoise from storied mines like Kingman, Carico Lake and Royston. Shannon Lowery designs and makes each piece, working evenings and weekends at his jeweler’s bench after logging off from his full-time job with Lockheed Martin. He takes commissions for custom work but also creates pieces to sell via the Mud Lowery website, teasing the drops on Instagram. He takes the photos; Lauren is model and muse.

But Mud Lowery is more than jewelry. Lowery also designs graphic trucker hats and T-shirts. These products appear alongside his jewelry on the Mud Lowery website, but they’re also sold through Cavender’s, in-store and online. Extras like framed prints, mugs, sweatshirts and tumblers also make occasional appearances on the Mud Lowery website, available until they sell out.

Up for a challenge

Lowery grew up in suburban Cocoa, Florida, but he spent summers and vacations with his father’s family in North Carolina, amidst the community and culture of the Lumbee Tribe. (Lowery is a registered member, as is his son.) Lowery attended University of Florida, and for a time, he balanced his studies with a stint as a fashion entrepreneur — he’d always been artistic, and when he designed a line of graphic T-shirts, the sales allowed him to quit his part-time job at a grocery store. Following graduation in 2013, he decided to try his hand at team roping, and that led him to Fort Worth.

Shannon Lowery designs and makes each of his pieces, working evenings and weekends at his jeweler’s bench after logging off from his full-time job with Lockheed Martin.

“I started roping in high school and loved it, but it didn’t love me back,” he says with a laugh.

He stayed in Fort Worth, and for the next several years, he worked in marketing for a boot company and also in sales at a lifestyle retailer in the Stockyards. (That’s how he met Lauren — her mother was a client of the retailer, and she introduced them: “I was so shy and socially awkward, but the moment I saw her, I was like, ‘I’m going to marry her.’”)

During his down time, however, he began testing his talents in artistry and entrepreneurship. He started tooling leather but quickly realized the importance of a higher price point. Everyone around him in the Western world was wearing turquoise and silver jewelry, he observed — why not learn to make it?

The idea was new, but the inspiration had been there all along, he says, thanks to his Native American heritage. “My grandmother always wore turquoise jewelry — I’d been around it my whole life and was always drawn to the color,” he says.

Learning the art of jewelry-making was a challenge, he says, but the design ideas flowed and his skill soon caught up with his vision. When it came time to name his new venture, the decision was clear, clear as mud.

“People had started calling me ‘Mud’ in college, so I had that as my name on Facebook,” he explains. “When I moved to Fort Worth, people connected with me on Facebook and assumed that was my real name, so when I started making jewelry, I thought it would be easier to stick with the name people already knew.”

Miranda Lambert’s appearance on the Academy of Country Music Awards, decked out in Mud Lowery’s silver and turquoise jewelry, was a turning point for the Fort Worth brand.

Because of his experience in PR and marketing, Lowery knew how to reach out to stylists and artists’ reps, and he says he gradually built up the courage to reach out.

The first celebrity to wear his jewelry was Blanco Brown, a singer-songwriter whose debut single, “The Git Up” spent 12 weeks at number one on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart in 2019. Blanco has since become a friend, and earlier this year introduced Lowery to another country star who’s become a client, Shaboozey. (Look for Mud Lowery pieces in Shaboozey’s video for “Drink Don’t Need No Mix;” he also wore a Mud Lowery bolo tie during his appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show this summer.)

Lowery was at his sister’s wedding when another big call came through, inviting him to help accessorize superstar Carrie Underwood for “Reflection: The Las Vegas Residency,” which began in December 2021. (Underwood recently extended the shows into 2025.) Underwood remains a client, and he continues to work with Lambert, Brown, Shaboozey and others, crafting special pieces for them to wear on stage and also in real life.

But Lowery has yet to design for one dream client: Dolly Parton.

“I know her people, but I have never reached out — I am too scared of rejection,” he says. “She would be really cool, but I am excited to work with every client. I just love what I do.”