The Sit Down with Maya de Vitry
Nashville based singer songwriter Maya de Vitry has announced a UK headline tour this April. The announcement comes after her recent visit supporting John Craigie across Europe, which included a stunning show at London’s Bush Hall.
Having grown up in a musical family in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, she understands music to be a place of gathering and a way to spend a summer night around a campfire. Maya first travelled and performed as a fiddling street musician, and then in bars, theatres, and on festival stages as a founding member of The Stray Birds between 2010 and 2018. Her subsequent solo endeavours have produced three full-length albums and she released her latest EP “Infinite” in October last year, which is an especially intimate collection of five songs performed with astonishing depth and tenderness.
Throughout the upcoming tour, Maya will be performing songs from the new EP along with songs from her three albums as well some fan favourites from her previous band, The Stray Birds. Ahead of the tour, we spent some time with Maya to talk about the upcoming UK shows and the background behind “Infinite”.
Hey Maya, thanks for taking the time to speak with me and you’re going to be back over here again real soon. How many times have you managed to get over here before?
“I think I was there at least three times with The Stray Birds, which was the band that I was in for about seven years and then there was a pause where I wasn’t really touring much. I was making records but I wasn’t really touring so, this will be my second time as just myself with my own music but I’ve been there a good few times now.”
So, you like it enough to want to come back after that first trip in a while earlier this year.
“Yeah, I was already starting to put this April tour together before I was asked to join the John Craigie tour. That’s always how things seem to work in music, there’s never a formula of steps that make sense, I seem to do things out of order but they look like they happened in order.”
It will be good to have you back and the London show is up at The Green Note in Camden so, hopefully the weather will have made it’s mind up over here by then. I did the whole google search to look at where you’re from and whenever I see Pennsylvania my mind automatically goes oh are they from the outskirts of Pittsburgh or just outside Philly but Lancaster County isn’t either.
“Lancaster County is much more of an agricultural place, it’s known for Amish culture and tourism but like a lot of the US it’s more like suburbs and farmland. I grew up with a farmhouse and land around it, my parents aren’t farmers but we there was a lot of land with places to run and play outside, surrounded by fields of tobacco, cantaloupes, soybean and cows. I lived on that land until I was eighteen so almost all of the first two decades of my life was in that pace of running out the front door into mud, dirt, trees and flowers so I always feel very relaxed when I get back to the countryside. If I can walk out a door and feel grass right away that’s one thing and if I walk out onto a street in Boston or Philadelphia or New York, I’m like when do I get to go back to the countryside?”
I saw on your Instagram that you really love the outdoors and could tell straight away that you were not someone that grew up in the middle of a big city but now you end up in Nashville which is a very different place all together.
“Totally, the thing I like about living here in Nashville is that I’m a fifteen minute drive from some of the studios on Music Row and some of the places that I work a lot with some of the behind the scenes stuff in music, then I’m fifteen minutes from the airport but also we have a big yard. This was especially nice during the pandemic and we even had chickens so I can walk out of the door and there’s grass. It’s like a nice balance for me here, it’s not like completely built up like some big cities.”
What became your draw to move to Nashville? I hate to be putting anyone into a box musically but when I’m describing your sound to my friends, you are more folk orientated where Nashville is seen as this big and commercial country music machine which is all very polished and shiny so what is there that is the big appeal within the folk and Americana communities?
“When I first moved here, there was already and had been for decades like a really vibrant scene of people who were not really in that shiny country space but in a more singer-songwriter or Americana thing here with elements of country music and elements of other music but it’s not packaged the same. It’s not presented the same and not really as shiny where it’s a little more raw and rough around the edges. I have so many friends that tour in this circuit of festivals and venues where it is a lot more connected, maybe it’s the intergenerational aspect of folk music, bluegrass and old time music where going to festivals and learning songs from the older generation then passing things down in more of the community aspect of it, I guess that’s really strong here. Yes there is the country music engine and you can do it all, I could be writing in that pop country world if I wanted to be reaching out and trying to connect with certain people to be more in that world. I don’t think those worlds are really in competition with each other, they just live side by side here.
Having grown up in a musical family in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, she understands music to be a place of gathering and a way to spend a summer night around a campfire. Maya first travelled and performed as a fiddling street musician, and then in bars, theatres, and on festival stages as a founding member of The Stray Birds between 2010 and 2018. Her subsequent solo endeavours have produced three full-length albums and she released her latest EP “Infinite” in October last year, which is an especially intimate collection of five songs performed with astonishing depth and tenderness.
Throughout the upcoming tour, Maya will be performing songs from the new EP along with songs from her three albums as well some fan favourites from her previous band, The Stray Birds. Ahead of the tour, we spent some time with Maya to talk about the upcoming UK shows and the background behind “Infinite”.
Hey Maya, thanks for taking the time to speak with me and you’re going to be back over here again real soon. How many times have you managed to get over here before?
“I think I was there at least three times with The Stray Birds, which was the band that I was in for about seven years and then there was a pause where I wasn’t really touring much. I was making records but I wasn’t really touring so, this will be my second time as just myself with my own music but I’ve been there a good few times now.”
So, you like it enough to want to come back after that first trip in a while earlier this year.
“Yeah, I was already starting to put this April tour together before I was asked to join the John Craigie tour. That’s always how things seem to work in music, there’s never a formula of steps that make sense, I seem to do things out of order but they look like they happened in order.”
It will be good to have you back and the London show is up at The Green Note in Camden so, hopefully the weather will have made it’s mind up over here by then. I did the whole google search to look at where you’re from and whenever I see Pennsylvania my mind automatically goes oh are they from the outskirts of Pittsburgh or just outside Philly but Lancaster County isn’t either.
“Lancaster County is much more of an agricultural place, it’s known for Amish culture and tourism but like a lot of the US it’s more like suburbs and farmland. I grew up with a farmhouse and land around it, my parents aren’t farmers but we there was a lot of land with places to run and play outside, surrounded by fields of tobacco, cantaloupes, soybean and cows. I lived on that land until I was eighteen so almost all of the first two decades of my life was in that pace of running out the front door into mud, dirt, trees and flowers so I always feel very relaxed when I get back to the countryside. If I can walk out a door and feel grass right away that’s one thing and if I walk out onto a street in Boston or Philadelphia or New York, I’m like when do I get to go back to the countryside?”
I saw on your Instagram that you really love the outdoors and could tell straight away that you were not someone that grew up in the middle of a big city but now you end up in Nashville which is a very different place all together.
“Totally, the thing I like about living here in Nashville is that I’m a fifteen minute drive from some of the studios on Music Row and some of the places that I work a lot with some of the behind the scenes stuff in music, then I’m fifteen minutes from the airport but also we have a big yard. This was especially nice during the pandemic and we even had chickens so I can walk out of the door and there’s grass. It’s like a nice balance for me here, it’s not like completely built up like some big cities.”
What became your draw to move to Nashville? I hate to be putting anyone into a box musically but when I’m describing your sound to my friends, you are more folk orientated where Nashville is seen as this big and commercial country music machine which is all very polished and shiny so what is there that is the big appeal within the folk and Americana communities?
“When I first moved here, there was already and had been for decades like a really vibrant scene of people who were not really in that shiny country space but in a more singer-songwriter or Americana thing here with elements of country music and elements of other music but it’s not packaged the same. It’s not presented the same and not really as shiny where it’s a little more raw and rough around the edges. I have so many friends that tour in this circuit of festivals and venues where it is a lot more connected, maybe it’s the intergenerational aspect of folk music, bluegrass and old time music where going to festivals and learning songs from the older generation then passing things down in more of the community aspect of it, I guess that’s really strong here. Yes there is the country music engine and you can do it all, I could be writing in that pop country world if I wanted to be reaching out and trying to connect with certain people to be more in that world. I don’t think those worlds are really in competition with each other, they just live side by side here.
I was really drawn to Nashville because this is a place where regardless of genre or anything, I feel Nashville is a place where people feel belonging as an artist, it can feel really normal like if you go to the bank to discuss a loan for a car and say that you are a touring musician or a songwriter for a living, people just go ok. I wanted a sense of belonging and wanted a sense of an artistic community, it’s just brought a lot of ease and a feeling of rest to my life on one hand to feel that belonging but it's also a more difficult place to let go and fully relax because you know that the engine here is still churning even if you want to take fifteen minutes to step back. I’ve just sort of got used to that’s the balance, that’s what you get here and I need to kind of keep tabs on myself but I was drawn to a place where people can unapologetically and without too much explanation just pursue music as a real thing which I think is a valid way to exist.”
You mentioned how folk has a strong generational aspect and you play quite a lot of instruments, then your sister has got a pretty cool gig at the moment as she’s playing with Noah Kahan who’s one of the hottest artists on the planet right now, so were your parents really big on making music a big part of your lives at an early age? Then for you, what was the first thing that you picked up and learnt to play?
“Music was a really present thing in our family. My dad was completely self-taught, does not read music at all but learnt by ear and just jamming with his siblings and his friends so he plays guitar, sings a bunch of songs, plays fiddle, mandolin, banjo and like every acoustic instrument of bluegrass and old time has been around our house forever but also piano which was always a feature and fixture of our house. My mom has always been a little more shy about singing, but she does sing and really does have an amazing voice and plays a bit of guitar too. I’m the eldest of the four of us and when we were really young, my grandma who was a piano player gave us piano lessons for the first couple of years and then we would move on to another piano teacher because she didn’t really like to read music either. She was very much like you need to learn it by heart, play by ear, you can make your own melodies up and she composed a lot of music. My earliest expose to music was like here’s my dad playing songs but there’s no notes, there’s no black and white notes or sheet music around, it’s just playing songs then there’s my grandma saying here’s some notes written by this composer but also I’m a composer and I made these notes so you can make songs up too.”
You mentioned how folk has a strong generational aspect and you play quite a lot of instruments, then your sister has got a pretty cool gig at the moment as she’s playing with Noah Kahan who’s one of the hottest artists on the planet right now, so were your parents really big on making music a big part of your lives at an early age? Then for you, what was the first thing that you picked up and learnt to play?
“Music was a really present thing in our family. My dad was completely self-taught, does not read music at all but learnt by ear and just jamming with his siblings and his friends so he plays guitar, sings a bunch of songs, plays fiddle, mandolin, banjo and like every acoustic instrument of bluegrass and old time has been around our house forever but also piano which was always a feature and fixture of our house. My mom has always been a little more shy about singing, but she does sing and really does have an amazing voice and plays a bit of guitar too. I’m the eldest of the four of us and when we were really young, my grandma who was a piano player gave us piano lessons for the first couple of years and then we would move on to another piano teacher because she didn’t really like to read music either. She was very much like you need to learn it by heart, play by ear, you can make your own melodies up and she composed a lot of music. My earliest expose to music was like here’s my dad playing songs but there’s no notes, there’s no black and white notes or sheet music around, it’s just playing songs then there’s my grandma saying here’s some notes written by this composer but also I’m a composer and I made these notes so you can make songs up too.”
I feel really lucky that was my first experience of music and that was true for all my siblings from me to my sister Monica, then my brother Lyle and Nina who is the youngest as there is seven years between us so all of us had that sort of experience of music being something that is in you and you can create it. It’s like there’s not as many rules about it as you might feel if you have a really formative experience in school where these are the notes on a page and you must play them this way. Me and all of my siblings went to public school where there was a really good music programme so we were really lucky so I played the violin, Monica and Lyle played the cello and Nina played the violin too so we all started those instruments in elementary school which we played all the way up through high school. That was like the main thing, an orchestra instrument or piano all through high school then whilst my dad was jamming on other instruments, we weren’t really picking up mandolin, banjo or anything like that I can remember. I started picking up guitar by the end of high school and that was like the next thing where everybody got into guitar and we all started writing songs. It was a really relaxed atmosphere though where we were driven to play music because we loved playing music but my parents were like the opposite of helicopter parents, they were not pushing us to practice or anything like that.”
Let’s come back up to date and talk about “Infinite” which came out last year. From what I’ve seen and read about the project, you built it around Stacy and that song was the starting point for the EP. Stacy was someone you worked with in Starbucks but was “Stacy, In Her Wedding Gown” a song you had for a while and now felt the right time to cut?
Let’s come back up to date and talk about “Infinite” which came out last year. From what I’ve seen and read about the project, you built it around Stacy and that song was the starting point for the EP. Stacy was someone you worked with in Starbucks but was “Stacy, In Her Wedding Gown” a song you had for a while and now felt the right time to cut?
“I had been singing it live and had it for about a year before recording it. It had just become a staple of the live show and people always really resonated and connected with the song but I found myself caught between album cycles in away. I released “Violet Light” in 2022 and there’s something else coming but I had already recorded it three years ago and I dunno time had passed, then there were some new songs, again like things happening out of order but making sense later. I just thought there was something about this song which is really character and story based that is a little more singer-songwriter than some of the other stuff that I have been doing where I just wanted to tell some more stories in brief intimate ways. I kind of view each collection of music like a little tree where all the songs have to fit as the same apples on that tree rather than being different varieties of apples on this tree so, I had to find if there were other Stacey apples that could live on a little collection and I wanted it to be short. There’s like this thing where the gravity of a full-length record feels a certain way and I feel like it being short and sweet is something that my listeners will be able to listen the whole way through.”
I think it’s really nice and it works like you said. I’m starting to learn more that the longer I spend covering and listening to music, that I know less and less what I think is in my musical arc but typically I’m drawn to really upbeat people who sing quite sad or mellow songs. With the “Infinite” project and “Violet Light” I get a bit of a Rachael Price if Lake Street Dive went into a more rootsy Americana type journey combined with Jill Andrews type words and storytelling type vibe, which are both things that I definitely like but it’s fun and I look forward to meeting you in person when you’re in town.
“Yeah you too. I think it’s taken me a while to understand that the show can feel really fun and we don’t really use a setlist, it’s very spontaneous and reading the room where I’ll turn to Joel on guitar and say let’s play whatever song now. In that we it feels really interactive, present and every single night is totally unique which makes me feel drawn to tour because I know the experience of every night is going to be unique and it is fun. There is some sad material but it’s really cathartic to connect with people and live music gives us a way to gather with people and feel things where it’s almost like through that experience people might find ways to talk about things that are hard for them or hard to find language for. I just feel like my job is to kind of make space and help creating a little bit more of language around certain things to be able to talk and feel about.”
UK April Tour Dates
Fri 19th – The Live Room, Shipley
Sat 20th – The Stables, Milton Keynes
Sun 21st – The Green Note, London
Mon 22nd – Prince Albert, Brighton
Tue 23rd – Retro Bar, Manchester
Wed 24th – Hug & Pint, Glasgow
Fri 26th – Cluny, Newcastle
Sat 27th – Sudbury Arts Centre, Sudbury
The new EP “Infinite” from Maya de Vitry is out now and available HERE and her upcoming UK tour begins later this month with full dates shown above and tickets available from her WEBSITE whilst you can also keep up to date with all that Maya is up to on INSTAGRAM & FACEBOOK.
I think it’s really nice and it works like you said. I’m starting to learn more that the longer I spend covering and listening to music, that I know less and less what I think is in my musical arc but typically I’m drawn to really upbeat people who sing quite sad or mellow songs. With the “Infinite” project and “Violet Light” I get a bit of a Rachael Price if Lake Street Dive went into a more rootsy Americana type journey combined with Jill Andrews type words and storytelling type vibe, which are both things that I definitely like but it’s fun and I look forward to meeting you in person when you’re in town.
“Yeah you too. I think it’s taken me a while to understand that the show can feel really fun and we don’t really use a setlist, it’s very spontaneous and reading the room where I’ll turn to Joel on guitar and say let’s play whatever song now. In that we it feels really interactive, present and every single night is totally unique which makes me feel drawn to tour because I know the experience of every night is going to be unique and it is fun. There is some sad material but it’s really cathartic to connect with people and live music gives us a way to gather with people and feel things where it’s almost like through that experience people might find ways to talk about things that are hard for them or hard to find language for. I just feel like my job is to kind of make space and help creating a little bit more of language around certain things to be able to talk and feel about.”
UK April Tour Dates
Fri 19th – The Live Room, Shipley
Sat 20th – The Stables, Milton Keynes
Sun 21st – The Green Note, London
Mon 22nd – Prince Albert, Brighton
Tue 23rd – Retro Bar, Manchester
Wed 24th – Hug & Pint, Glasgow
Fri 26th – Cluny, Newcastle
Sat 27th – Sudbury Arts Centre, Sudbury
The new EP “Infinite” from Maya de Vitry is out now and available HERE and her upcoming UK tour begins later this month with full dates shown above and tickets available from her WEBSITE whilst you can also keep up to date with all that Maya is up to on INSTAGRAM & FACEBOOK.