Guitar Talk: Singer-Songwriter Maya de Vitry Sees Her 000-Sized Blueridge as a Trusted Friend
There’s a humility and a groundedness to Maya de Vitry’s music. Maybe it’s the result of growing up in a musical family in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, learning songs around the kitchen table and playing in Sunday morning gospel-hour jams. Her years of traveling and busking and camping out at old-time festivals surely play a role, too. De Vitry taps into something pure and essential about music, something that exists not in any press release or recording studio, but in the moment when a song enters the air and spins an invisible thread between the singer and the listener.
As a founding member of the Stray Birds, a harmony-driven roots trio, de Vitry honed her skills as a songwriter, singer, multi-instrumentalist, and performer. The band recorded five albums and toured internationally before parting ways in 2018. Immediately after the disbanding, de Vitry took a break from the music industry, working at a Starbucks in Nashville and writing dozens of songs in her free time. (A co-worker ended up inspiring one of her most affecting songs, “Stacy in Her Wedding Gown,” which appears on her 2023 EP, Infinite.)
In the post–Stray Birds years, de Vitry has home-grown an abundant solo career, self-releasing four albums and an EP while collaborating prolifically with other songwriters in her adopted hometown of Nashville. She has also grown into an identity as an empathic and insightful producer, lending her talents to forthcoming albums by Joel Timmons, Shelby Means, and Hannah Delynn. De Vitry has begun producing her own releases as well, including her newest full-length album, The Only Moment.
Recorded at Mike Elizondo’s Phantom Studios near Nashville, The Only Moment features de Vitry’s frequent collaborators Anthony da Costa (guitar), Ethan Jodziewicz (bass), Dominic Billett (drums), Alex Wilder (keys and engineering), and Phoebe Hunt (vocals). The album’s emotive songs follow themes of presence and movement, and the production seems to grow organically out of the sound of de Vitry’s voice, which flows from a gentle whisper to a soaring howl.
On a Saturday morning Zoom call, de Vitry and I (full disclosure: she is a longtime friend) talked about her formative musical years, her deep rhythmic relationship with the acoustic guitar, and her love of instruments that don’t feel delicate—that she can throw in the back of the van and bring to the lake.
Tell me about how your primary guitar, that Blueridge [BR-143], came to you.
I just ordered it from the internet. I didn’t even play it before I bought it. It was when I was in the Stray Birds. My Martin D-1 and our various other guitars had gotten really beat up, and it was too anxiety inducing to keep bringing those guitars on planes. I had wanted a smaller-bodied guitar anyway. Sometimes I do love playing a big, powerful dreadnought, and growing up in Pennsylvania, an hour and a half from the Martin factory, I always loved the idea of having a Martin dreadnought. But for what I do, something smaller works better.
After I bought the Blueridge, I went to Carter Vintage Guitars and bought a Calton case to match it, and it felt funny that the guitar was less expensive than the case. But the guitar is still in perfect condition, and I’ve traveled everywhere with it. I wasn’t looking for a guitar to spiritually love when I ordered it. I was just looking for something that physically felt more comfortable to play, and that I could trust. It’s like a relationship, you know? Like, I just need to be able to trust you.
And to know that you’re not going to be super temperamental.
Yeah. It’s not my soulmate guitar, but it’s like a really good buddy, a trusted friend. I’ve written so many songs on this guitar at this point, but sometimes I play other guitars and I’m like, Oh, hello, soulmate! Like the one I played on the new record, that was just amazing.
Was that one of Mike Elizondo’s guitars?
Yeah, a 1963 Martin 000-18. I was so overwhelmed because I was producing the record myself, and we were tracking live, so even though there were a bunch of instruments at the studio, I chose to just play this one acoustic guitar because it was one less decision to make for each song. And I loved that guitar. I really like acoustic guitar in rock song settings. I love Tom Petty; I love when the acoustic guitar is really present in a band. And I love playing it as a percussive instrument.
It can be so much more percussive than electric guitar.
Yeah, and I feel like I’m really dialed in with playing that role. For years I’ve been playing in duos and trios where, as the acoustic guitar player, I am the drummer. And my Blueridge is really good at that. I’m not trying to get lush, beautiful sounds out of that guitar. Again, I’m trying to get a sound I can trust, and a groove I can trust.
But different guitars change how you play. On the song “Compass,” I’m not playing percussion at all. Dom [Billett] is really covering that on the drums, and I’m just playing these long, delicate strums that are mixed super-hot with people rocking all around me. The guitar is definitely a strong character in the mix, and I think it’s really cool that it can have that character on the record. But I have to adapt that guitar part for playing live when there’s no drummer, and I have to provide that rhythmic scaffolding.
Tell me more about how your playing changes on different guitars.
At home, I play the Blueridge a lot, and I also have two parlor guitars that are set up poorly and in weird low tunings. When I pick up one of these little parlor guitars, I’ll play a C chord but it’s not actually a C, and I really like that I don’t know what it is. I might play something different because my voice will react differently outside of the little bubble of the key of C that I would normally sing in.
What are those parlor guitars?
I’ll show you! This one [a Harmony Stella] is more recent. I bought it in Thomas, West Virginia, when I played at the Purple Fiddle last August. This other one I took to Cuba, and I wrote songs like “You” and “Go Tell a Bird” on it.
And you don’t know what that one is?
It doesn’t have any label in it at all.
Where did you find it?
I searched “parlor guitar” on Craigslist sometime around 2015, and a listing popped up in Gallatin, Tennessee, that turned out to be this guy’s garage that was full of guitars. He showed me a few, and I liked this one. I honestly just wanted a guitar that I could throw in the car with no case and take to the lake.
One of my values with instruments is that I don’t want my relationship with them to feel too precious—I don’t want to be afraid to play them. With my guitars, I feel like I can just live my rough-and-tumble life, go to the lake with them, take them on planes, and not worry.
Guitars still feel like another language to me, because I grew up as a fiddle player, so I’m much more tuned into what fiddles need. It’s taken me a long time to grow into thinking of myself as a guitar player. And I think part of how I’ve dealt with that imposter syndrome, and also just my own practicality, has been saying, “Just give me something basic that is not going to fail me.”
Photo: Kaitlyn RaitzTotally. There’s something freeing about not feeling like you need to have the fancy guitar that the fancy bluegrass guys have.
Yeah. Like, I love my 2012 Toyota Sienna. It’s the basic model; it doesn’t have rails for a roof rack, the doors aren’t automatic, and I love that. There’s less that can go wrong. It gets me from place to place, and that’s how my guitar is, and that’s the most important thing to me right now. I also have been opening for people a lot lately, in bigger rooms. My Blueridge has a K&K pickup in it, and the easiest thing for me in that context is just to plug in.
Do you use a preamp with it?
I just plug into a tuner and a [Fire-Eye] Red-Eye preamp, which has a boost for when I’m fingerpicking, and I’m good to go. I’m not trying to capture the most gorgeous, natural wood tones of the instrument in the most aesthetically perfect way. I’m just trying to get a stable, smooth, reliable sound to support my singing. When I first started playing solo, I experimented with plugging the acoustic into an amp. It was fun, but ultimately it compromised the percussive, rhythmic nature of my playing.
Who are some of the acoustic guitar players that inspired you early on?
Originally, it was my dad and his friend who we call Lefty. The two of them just sitting around and jamming songs was so formative to me. I think they met at a bus stop! We used to have “gospel hour” on the porch most Sundays. They’d play a couple of gospel songs to start, and then play whatever they felt like playing. And it would literally last just one hour, because they had other things they needed to get done.
My dad’s playing really showed me how the guitar can support so many different sounds and moods. He’d play a Steve Earle song, and it would have a certain angst and a certain propulsion, and then he’d play a fingerpicked version of [Graham Nash’s] “Our House.” I shared a room with my siblings, and he’d just sit there singing us to sleep with that song. I don’t think I even thought about whether my dad wrote the song or not, but I remember thinking, yes, that’s just so: we have two cats in the yard, just like the song says. Hearing stripped-down acoustic guitar versions of tons of different kinds of songs, that was the absolute sound- track of my childhood, even though I didn’t play guitar yet at that time because I was so violin obsessed.
Another acoustic guitar player I’m really inspired by these days is my brother [Lyle de Vitry]! He’s got a record that’s about to come out, and he’s just a ridiculous player. Lyle and I are both very inspired by Nick Drake, but Lyle is much more of a composer on the guitar than I am.
This is a very abstract question, but I would love to know what some of your favorite sounds are on the acoustic guitar, whether it’s you or another player.
I honestly just love the C chord. On the song “Nothing Else Matters” from the new record, I started by strumming a C chord for a while because I was just loving how that chord sounded on that [Martin 000-18] guitar.
And I love that the acoustic guitar is like a drum. When I’m playing my song “How Do I Get to the Morning,” I can play it really open when I have a full band, but when I’m playing it without a drummer, there’s much more of this chunky, muted, percussive sound. I think a lot of my guitar technique comes from being a fiddle player, playing old-time music, and thinking about right-hand bowing grooves. I love that you can have sustain and then percussion in the same moment if you want to.
Again, I was just obsessed with that guitar I played on the new record, and you can hear it, especially on the song “Watching the Whole Sky Change.” It’s just me strumming that guitar so delicately and basking in that simple strum.
That’s totally what it feels like. You just want to live inside of that sound.
Yeah. Another sound I love is great bluegrass flatpicking. I can’t do it at this moment in my life, but I love listening to it. I was just listening to the Bluegrass Album Band the other day. I love Tony Rice. Some of my favorite sounds coming out of a guitar are in that style of lead playing. I also just thought of this moment in “Dogs Run On,” from [my album] Violet Light. Critter [Chris Eldridge] is playing the acoustic lead on that song.
That’s a beautiful song.
And in his solo, it’s like he’s skating. He gets from point A to point B, but there’s not a ton of definition in how he gets there. It’s all in the feeling of getting there, and then you’re suddenly somewhere else. I love that sound. It’s a very emotional sound.
That’s the power of the acoustic guitar. It can be so many things.
Totally. Now this conversation is just making me want to sit here and play guitar all day!
