The fastest road route between Nashville to Pinedale, Wyoming, spans just over 1,500 miles. That’s about a day’s worth of driving — up through Kentucky and Missouri, nearly kissing the northeast corner of Kansas, before heading west across the length of Nebraska and breaking into the Cowboy State.
Maya de Vitry is nearly to her destination, where she’s set to play a Fourth of July show. But she’s in no rush and happily recalls most of those miles while taking a breather in Laramie.
“I left Nashville three days ago, and I’ve been 24/7 in my mini-van the last couple days, driving all day,” the singer-songwriter shares, adding that the scenic solo drive already gave her plenty of time to mingle with the muse.
“Honestly, moving at this pace is really grounding to me,” de Vitry continues. “It was really inspiring to see the connection and subtly to how the land changed from Tennessee all the way out to Wyoming, where all of a sudden you see the rocks poking through the grasses and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m getting closer to the Rockies, closer to the mountains, it’s happening.’”
She’s excited to explore and play around the West over the next month, including stopping through Boulder on Friday, July 11, for a garden show at Stone Cottage Studios with her friend and Lyons native Alexa Wildish. The two have collaborated before, on 2021 single “Working Man.” Her Colorado visit wraps up at the end of July with a RockyGrass appearance.
“I’ll play a couple shows, then have a few days off to hike and enjoy the mountains and be a human,” she explains. “That’s really grounding for me and lets me experience a richer textured version of the region that I’m in. I’m sure I’ll leave feeling more fulfilled creatively than if I was just flying in, dropping out of the sky, playing a quick show in Boulder and leaving.”
Even though de Vitry, 35, admits her somewhat constant state of motion, particularly after releasing fourth album The Only Moment last summer, can feel chaotic, taking a month for such a DIY tour allows her to process what it means to be an indie artist nowadays.
“I’ve been thinking about sense of place a little bit more and how disjointed my sense of place has been in the past couple of years but trying to honor that rather than shy away from it,” she says.
She’s certainly no stranger to making music. Before embarking on a solo career in 2017, de Vitry initially cut her teeth with bluegrass band the Stray Birds back in her hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Most recently, she’s been busy pushing out new music, about a song a month, including EP Over and Over and a string of singles this year.
She points to the Wood Brothers tune “Pilgrim” in describing the nomadic lifestyle her music entails.
“There’s a line, ‘The soul can’t travel that fast.’ I really feel that sometimes, like I can’t catch up, I’m still where I was two days ago, I’m not here yet, like my body got sent there but my soul isn’t there yet,” de Vitry explains.
But hopping behind the wheel gives her a chance to slow down and mull over what it all means.
“Even though it’s so fast to be driving 80 miles per hour down the interstate, it’s slightly more human speed than flying,” she says. “I feel traveling in a van for this trip, and then also digging into a region and being there more wholeheartedly for longer helps me with staying grounded and balancing it all out and digesting it.”
There’s a tranquility that comes with being lost in transit, hopping from town to town, discovering how the day and each show will unfold as it happens. Leaning into the spontaneity of it all, de Vitry comes up with setlists on the spot by reading the room and pulling from her quiver of acoustic songs. It makes for a refreshing unique experience, no matter where she’s at.
“For any independent artist like me there are always questions of what is a destination? What’s your goal? What’s the plan here?” de Vitry shares.
“I think that living in the discomfort of ‘Well, we’re going to move to the next place and play our music and each day has the destination,’” she continues. “Like Getting a roomful of people together in Boulder, people who are strangers but are going to have this common experience of putting their attention in one place when our attention is so fractured, and we feel so isolated right now from each other in so many ways.”
It’s never on the map, but that’s ultimately where de Vitry leads audiences.
“Modern life is very challenging,” she concludes. “But that’s the destination, the next time that we do that.”
ON THE BILL: Maya de Vitry with Alexa Wildish. 5:30 p.m. Friday, July 11, Stone Cottage Studios, 3091 7th St., Boulder. Free.