![]() ![]() Unlike the many we all hear about young, aspiring musicians in their teens touring, Jamie and Shaun are different. In the back of our minds, we always wondered ‘what if it works?’ We knew we had to give it a try,” Shaun tells me. We always wanted to make music work, but we questioned how much money we would be able to bring in. “I was working construction, which is demanding, and we had four kids. After they got married, they lived for years in Central Montana raising their four children. While they always played music together, it was not their main focus for many years. They are, quite literally, the Lucky Valentines. ![]() On Valentine’s Day in 2010, Jamie and Shaun got married. In the beginning of their relationship, they recall playing music together and finding that the two of them worked, like puzzle pieces that fit seamlessly together. “It didn’t take more than three weeks before we were dating.” Music was the ultimate matchmaker: two seemingly unconnected people brought together by rhythms and rhymes, and a love born out of the harmony of two lives blending together into one. “Fate kept bringing us together,” she smiles. Shaun’s friend told him that he would marry that girl, and Shaun was actually the one who made the first move. She recalls hearing Shaun and his friend playing for the first time and telling her mother, who was at the benefit, that she wanted to meet him. I remember seeing Shaun across the room and he looked too cool and mysterious,” she says with a laugh. “And then I forgot all about it until the day of when he called me and reminded me. This friend basically conned me into playing at it, and he told me there was this cute guy who would also be playing there,” Jamie says. “A mutual friend was running a Youth Group that was going to help with Hurricane Katrina relief. The Lucky Valentines met in 2019 at a church fundraiser. We gave it a try and it stuck, and that’s what we’ve been doing ever since.” We would play music and write songs together. Shaun recalls playing hooky from high school to play and write music with friends, and he continued to play with bands all through his early twenties. Later in life as a teenager, Shaun fell in love with the blues and had his heart set on an electric guitar, so after saving up money from mowing lawns and doing chores, he bought his first electric guitar and he was a goner. I took two or three lessons and it didn’t take, so the guitar went back in the case and under the bed.” And there it stayed for years. ![]() She found an old acoustic guitar from a farmer with a homemade plywood case. “When I was six or seven she would let me mess with it, and I eventually convinced her to get me one. “My mom’s guitar was the first guitar I ever saw or heard,” Shaun tells me. Jamie grew up playing classical music and singing at church and with the Great Falls Youth Choir while Shaun was introduced to guitar as a young kid. “We both grew up in north Central Montana,” Jamie explains to me amongst the hustle of the Top Hat before a gig. They are soulmates, husband and wife drawn together by their love of music, and of each other. Jamie and Shaun are more than just bandmates. All bands have a story to tell, and you’re going to want to hear this one. Originally from Central Montana, The Lucky Valentines, also known as Shaun and Jamie Carrier, have been making music since, well, forever it seems. Musicians from all over the state come to Missoula, one of Montana’s cultural hubs, to perform, and The Lucky Valentines are no different. But there is another side of Montana that is not often thought of, though it should be-Montana’s musicians. The word “Montana” evokes many images: towering mountains, flowing rivers, and beautiful animals. ![]()
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