Maya de Vitry performs songs from the new album, 'The Only Moment,' live in studio
by Mike Pengra
October 27, 2024
Maya de Vitry is no longer a newbie when it comes to being a solo artist. Formerly a member of the roots trio The Stray Birds, Maya de Vitry’s latest album, The Only Moment, came out on July 12 of this year, and it represents her fourth release as an artist performing under her own name.
While touring in support of the record, de Vitry visited The Current studio to for a Radio Heartland session hosted by Mike Pengra. After playing songs from the new album, de Vitry sat down with Mike to talk about her approach to co-writing songs and about her well-rounded approach to touring that she cultivates in the interest of maintaining a healthy connection to her home in Nashville and her audiences across the map.
Watch the performances in the video player above, and watch and listen to the interview below. A transcript of the interview follows.
Interview Transcript
Mike Pengra: I'm in the studio today with Maya de Vitry, and I love your new record. Thanks for sending it to us. I'm playing a bunch of songs on the air right now on Radio Heartland. Welcome to Minnesota, by the way.
Maya de Vitry: Thank you.
Mike Pengra: Yeah, and you co-wrote that first song we heard, "Odds of Getting Even," with Caitlin Canty. Tell me about the process of co-writing with somebody. Do you do it together or in separate places?
Maya de Vitry: Yeah, so "Odds of Getting Even" was all just in my old like, kitchen dining area, the first house I lived at in Nashville, and Caitlin came over to my house, and we didn't really know what we were going to write about that day, but I had a Rolling Stone magazine laying on the table opened up to an article about Sharon Jones and her battle with cancer, and how music was like, one of her refuges, you know, that she had left in life, even though she had had such a hard time breaking into the music industry and was overlooked for, like, decades as she worked and worked and worked, and she was still actively performing.
And I wasn't really familiar with her music when I saw this article, but I was just really moved by her story and her conviction to just keep going, keep playing, and especially this idea that we can't really, like, get, I don't know, it felt like to me, it felt like that we couldn't get even at the things life throws at us, necessarily, and if that's going to be our purpose, we're just going to get frustrated. But so I came up with that line, "the odds of getting even," and then Caitlin and I just wrote this song that kind of, you know, wasn't necessarily something when we woke up that day knowing we were going to write. It was just, co-writing is like you bounce ideas off of each other, and you're like, "Oh, what about, what about this thing? What about this thing rhymes with this thing?" And "What about — I'm kind of, now, I'm picturing like a horse running in a field." "OK, let's follow that idea." Like, it's very free play, like free association kind of, and putting things down on paper. It's really fun, because sometimes with writing, you get stuck in your own head and you're like, kind of, there's like, the expressive, creative voice in your head, but there's also, like the judgment voice in your head. And when you're co-writing with somebody, you can kind of override the judgment voice sometimes, because you're just like, that other person is like, "Yeah, that's awesome! I like that thing about the horse!" And then you kind of roll with it, instead of getting in your own head, like, "I don't know. Does that make sense?" So it can be really, I think some people are really nervous about co-writing, but it can actually be really freeing and a nice practice to do and get you out of your own ruts and patterns with writing.
Mike Pengra: Yeah. There's another song on the album that you co wrote, I'm drawing a blank now...
Maya de Vitry: It's "Nothing Else Matters."
Mike Pengra: "Nothing Else Matters." Phoebe Hunt, right? Same process? She came to your house and you...
Maya de Vitry: I went to her house and, yeah, that one we, I was messing around on this octave mandolin that they had at their house at the time, and kind of came up with that, the melody, the like, [singing] "doo doo doo doo-doo, doo doo doo doo doo-do," just because of the instrument I was holding. And then we'd been talking about something that Phoebe was processing and going through. And then the song just sort of rises up out of that, you know? And then there's another co-write on the album with Oliver Wood, and I went to his house.
Mike Pengra: Oh, OK! All right.
Maya de Vitry: It just happens in people's houses a lot of the time. Went to his kitchen dining room table, and we ate some soft boiled eggs and then wrote some songs.
Mike Pengra: Wow! Big fans of all those people that you co-write with.
Maya de Vitry: Yeah?
Mike Pengra: Yeah, that's good stuff. So that was a couple of years ago that "Odds of Getting Even" you wrote, because she put it on her album, Caitlin did. So this album's been in development for a while, I take it.
Maya de Vitry: Yeah, this album is not — even though it came out in July of 2024 — it wasn't, like, made, even in 2023. It was actually, like, the process for this, the writing started back, as far back as including songs from like 2017, 2018, and the recording for it started in 2021, so it's like a gathering of all these different places and times and songs. And I think sometimes it can be ... it's not like it's confusing to have a record and one release state associated with it; it's just like, on the inside, it feels totally different, because I know that this album was like years of simmering and kind of gathering things. But sometimes, I think on the outside it can look like, OK, and then there's this clean chapter, clean break. Now she does this record, clean break. Now there's this record or something, and it's very blurry on the other side.
Mike Pengra: So this album is number, like, three of being the solo act, Maya de Vitry as a solo act?
Maya de Vitry: Let's see, this is actually...
Mike Pengra: Plus an EP, right?
Maya de Vitry: This is actually the fourth.
Mike Pengra: Fourth. Yeah, right.
Maya de Vitry: Yeah.
Mike Pengra: So I want to kind of rewind here. You came from a musical family. You grew up in Pennsylvania playing guitar, fiddle.
Maya de Vitry: So I grew up playing fiddle and learning fiddle from my dad, because he plays a bunch of string instruments, and he doesn't read music at all. He's, like, totally self taught. And so I was learning fiddle tunes from him, and we were going to old time and bluegrass festivals. I was just around a lot of people who were jamming, and I was also playing classical violin in school, so playing, like, I was learning to read music on the page, and playing, you know, concertos and stuff like that. And I was really into it. I was in, like, youth symphony, Lancaster Youth Symphony Orchestra, stuff like that. And I was also taking piano lessons from my grandma, and she, like, could kind of read music, but not really. She was really mostly learning by ear. She had an amazing ear, like, ear to hand connection, and she could play like beautiful, like Chopin piano music. And she was composing a lot, too; like that was her big love was composing pieces on the piano. So I think from an early age, I had this idea that you could make stuff up and you didn't have to read. Like that it was just as valid to make up a melody or make up your own thing at an instrument as it was to like, you know, pull out a piece from 1850 and play that. So that was really my musical, my formative musical time when I was really little. Then I didn't pick up the guitar until later. I did learn a couple chords, when I was in like kindergarten, my dad taught me a couple chords on guitar, but I didn't really play guitar until I was, like, later teenager, kind of starting to write songs. And then banjo too, also, same thing, like starting to write songs and and wanting to kind of, it's hard to write songs on the fiddle, for me, it's just not as satisfying as playing chords on guitar.
Mike Pengra: So that's when you wrote songs as a teenager, starting out, wow,
Maya de Vitry: Yeah, yeah. Just like started dabbling with that. And I didn't, I was more around traditional music, as far as the people I knew personally growing up, like people who played old-time Appalachian music. And, like, we'd go to this festival in West Virginia every summer and camp out with all these people who were just playing really old tunes and really old songs. And I wasn't necessarily around, like, songwriters and songwriting culture, even in, like, the bluegrass scene, I just kind of thought like, "Oh, that's cool. These songs, they just found them somewhere." But I wasn't thinking about them, writing them. I was a big Nickel Creek fan when I was a teenager, and so I was, that's where I started to kind of put together like, "Oh! They're writing these songs."
Mike Pengra: Did you ever play in a bluegrass band?
Maya de Vitry: Not really like a bluegrass band. Yeah, just like, for fun. Just like, jams. Yeah.
Mike Pengra: I'm talking with Maya de Vitry in the studio today, and you've had a busy tour, and it looks like it's not letting up anytime soon, according to your schedule.
Maya de Vitry: Yeah!
Mike Pengra: So heading out to the West Coast and then some East Coast things, and you're all over the country. How's it going so far?
Maya de Vitry: It's going great. It's kind of by design that it's all packed in here through the fall, because I'm trying to, I'm kind of trying to figure out how I can feel good while I'm touring. And one of the things for me is if I can make it more of a seasonal job, and I can sort of have these periods of the year where I'm focused on living at home in Nashville and being connected to the music scene there, and working in studios there and working with other artists there. Then I feel good like, when I can be there for long stretches of time, and then now that I'm out here on the road, like, I'm ready to go home for a little break before the next chunk of dates, but I feel more like, "OK,, put all of that on hold for like, a couple months." It's it's easier for me to do it this way, I think, than to do, like, on a week, off a week, on a week, off a week. Yeah, I'm kind of having to compartmentalize that.
Mike Pengra: Got it, yeah. So what's next? What's after this tour, or maybe during this tour, are you already writing songs for your next record?
Maya de Vitry: Yeah, I'm always kind of writing, and who knows? I don't know. I've got lots of, lots of songs. It's, I don't know what the next record is going to look like. I've got, I've got songs... Basically, like, when I'm writing songs, sometimes I just put them in little piles, like, and by "little piles," I just mean, like, put them in this part of Google Docs, and then put these songs in this part of...
Mike Pengra: It's not the rock and roll pile, the folk pile?
Maya de Vitry: No, they, it's like some, for some reason, they feel like they have a gravity or something with each other. And so I move them over there and like, there's songs that I'm like, "I kind of want to record this totally solo," like, just me and a guitar. Or there's songs that I'm like, "I kind of want these for this record that I kind of want to make with this producer." Or "These are songs that I want to remember to show this friend the next time they make a bluegrass record." And, you know, I don't know. Just it's, but it's really not linear. It's not, I don't have a really satisfying, like, linear answer of like, "OK, now I'm going to go in and I'm going to write the next record." It's a lot, like I said, a lot blurrier than that for how I do it. I'm so glad you could come in today. And it was so fun to listen to, guys. Thank you!
Mike Pengra: Keep this band around for a while.
Maya de Vitry: Thanks!
Mike Pengra: You guys are really awesome.
Maya de Vitry: I'm excited because this is actually, like, we have some real consistency in what we're doing this fall. Like this trio that you heard today is going to be playing in Colorado in November, and Joel and I are doing some duo stuff back on the East Coast. And it's, yeah, it's really fun to play in all the different ways, and fun for the trio to interpret some of the songs that were recorded with the drummer, because I get to be a lot more rhythmic on the acoustic guitar, which is fun for me.
Mike Pengra: You guys are very rhythmic.
Maya de Vitry: Thanks.
Mike Pengra: Yeah. I'm so impressed with this record, and it's so nice to finally meet you after all these years of playing your music.
Maya de Vitry: It's fun. Nice to meet you, too.
Mike Pengra: Congratulations.
Maya de Vitry: Thanks for playing it.
Mike Pengra: Thank you so much for coming in.
Maya de Vitry: You're welcome. Thank you very much for your time.
Songs Performed
00:00:00 Odds of Getting Even
00:03:59 Some Rent
00:07:40 Compass
All songs from Maya de Vitry’s 2024 album, The Only Moment.
Musicians
Maya de Vitry - vocals, acoustic guitar
Joel Timmons - vocals, electric guitar
Ethan Jodziewicz - electric bass, upright bass
Credits
Guest – Maya de Vitry
Host/Producer – Mike Pengra
Video – Evan Clark
Audio – Derek Ramirez
Camera Operators – Evan Clark, Eric Xu Romani
Graphics – Natalia Toledo
Digital Producer – Luke Taylor
External Link
Maya de Vitry – official site