Tag: punk

Forgiving Herself, Maya de Vitry Feels Better and Better on New Solo Album

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

When Maya de Vitry quit her most recent full-time touring gig, she did it for self-preservation. Before her solo debut Adaptations was released in 2019, the multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter prioritized her life by centering community, home, and a sense of place in what had often been a frantic, taxing, and nomadic daily life.

Her second, just-released album, How to Break a Fall, was tracked almost immediately after Adaptations hit shelves, and with a harder, more grizzled, rockier aesthetic it demonstrated the growth and transformation that had occurred in the meantime. A sense of movement, of excited, unapologetic momentum permeates the Dan Knobler-produced project. Where Adaptations had seen de Vitry through a transition to stillness, How to Break a Fall was poised to carry her into still another new period for the budding solo artist. 

Enter a global pandemic. With nearly all of that momentum and her entire release cycle squandered on a music industry that had to shutter itself in the face of COVID-19, de Vitry found herself once again prioritizing, enjoying each individual moment at home, focusing on community in whatever shape it can take at this point, and baking banana bread, too. It turns out practice does make perfect. 

BGS spoke to de Vitry over the phone, immediately diving into how serendipitous this collection of songs is for a moment of global pausing.

BGS: The last record, Adaptations, was written in isolation and now you’ve landed with this new record, How to Break a Fall, and on the back end of it you’ve ended up in isolation again. I wondered if you’ve thought about that? Or considered the strange symmetry, the way that these records are bookended by the idea of intentional solitude?

de Vitry: [Laughs] Wow, I absolutely did not connect those dots and that is so wild. It’s so ironic, because I was feeling very frustrated and angry about losing all of these shows this spring and I was finally feeling like [I was ready to get on the road] — because with Adaptations I didn’t tour really at all. I wasn’t emotionally or mentally healthy enough to be touring my music, I wasn’t ready to be on stage. Then this time, I felt emotionally healthy to go out there and play shows and it was like, “Oh, but the world has another health situation going on.” 

In some ways, How to Break a Fall was also written in isolation. I had kind of cut myself off a bit from the East Nashville scene, because I needed some space from the patterns and circles of people. I needed space from touring and leaving [the Stray Birds]. I was working at Starbucks while I was writing the album and I was essentially in isolation. You go to work for eight hours, come home, and you’re just in your house again. It was still voluntary, and I definitely still had some community. I could still pop out and play a show. 

I’m kind of an introverted person, so I’m always in isolation when I’m writing — in some way. I’ve been writing so much in the last couple of weeks. I was ready to kind of emerge, I was ready to go and be out there, and in interaction, instead of isolation. Now it’s like mandatory isolation and I’m going to write.

What does that feel like to you? Does it feel like a grinding of the gears? Like, “Oh, hold on, we’ve gotta turn this ship around and it’s going to take some effort and energy for me to go back into the writing frame of mind when I was ready to be in the outward-facing, extroverted frame of mind.”

It feels like muscle memory. It’s like a pivot. That part of it has not been difficult. I think accessing the writing part, the inward part of being an artist, is [always] within reach. I get as much satisfaction from creating the stuff as I do performing the stuff, if not more. I would say the process of writing an album, recording an album, and being in the studio with people is so fulfilling to me. Just creating it. There’s almost a grieving process when that’s over. Then there’s the next thing, when the songs come alive… I was looking forward to that, seeing how the songs would live and evolve and change. How they would land, out there in the world in real time with people. What other choice do I have? Let’s just pivot. Let’s write another record. [Laughs]

“Better and Better” is about the idea of building something and the song feels pertinent in this moment of… pausing, let’s say, because I think we could all eventually agree that life isn’t about being the best, it’s about being better. It’s about being better than the moment before, the day before, the year before. How do you see that song’s potential for connecting with listeners right now?

That song was like the doorway for writing the rest of that album and it was the doorway because, through writing it, I was realizing that I was actually unwell. Some of the things I was singing about, those lyrics were all things that I wanted to believe, and I realized that I had to make changes. I had to stop doing something that felt normal. I had to leave the band that I was in, I had to stop touring for a while, and yeah, that in some ways does remind me of this moment, too. The only thing we really can control right now is how we take care of ourselves — and that’s also sort of the only thing we ever can control. But it’s easier to feel that when it feels like other things are so outside of our control. 

I felt myself stop, stock still in the moment that I heard the line, “Forgiving myself is the most I can do” go by, because I don’t think a lot of people realize that’s what we’re doing every day right now, to get through. Letting ourselves just be enough. Where does that line come from for you?

That line is specifically about staying. About staying in the situation I was in. Before I was in [the Stray Birds], I was a musician. I was playing fiddle tunes, I was really into old-time music, I was writing songs, and I started to draft up what would be a solo record — in like 2009 and 2010. Then the band became like an invisible fence. There was no room for anyone to be doing anything outside of the band. There was no physical room, for all of the time we were on the road, and there was no emotional room with the interpersonal dynamic of the band. It was not possible to continue to be myself, to nurture my own voice as a writer and musician and also be a member of that band, because of the environment of the band. 

Forgiving myself, in that line, is about forgiving my nineteen-year-old self for not knowing any better at the time. And forgiving myself for my fears, because it was easier [to avoid them instead]. It’s vulnerable to sing your lyrics at all, ever, and I’m forgiving myself for those fears I had. Instead of standing up with my name and my lyrics, it was easier to climb inside the identity of a band and feel protected and more secure.


Which is quite the contrast from How to Break a Fall, because, to me, this record feels like a statement, a declaration for women to be allowed to take up space. And to be allowed to access and enjoy as much of the oxygen in those spaces as they like. Songs like “Something In the Way She Moves,” “Gray,” definitely “Open the Door” all speak to this. And the rock ‘n’ roll aesthetic often feels angry and impassioned, but the music doesn’t feel hostile in the way that it channels those energies.

That’s one hundred percent right. That comes from that process of forgiveness. It comes from walking through that doorway, the doorway being “Better and Better,” and walking into this landscape of songs and being receptive to writing that story. I think the record doesn’t sound hostile because it’s not. These are the songs, these are the sounds that I felt like making, this is a story. These things are true for me. 

There’s this video of Sister Rosetta Tharpe playing incredible guitar, walking up and down this train platform, it’s an iconic taking-up-of-space. An iconic expression of joy. That kind of spirit is what’s behind this music and this record. For as much as I can control what people can get from it, I would hope that some of what it unlocks or awakens is, “Huh… there are a lot of female characters on this record taking up space and doing what they want.”

It’s not hostile because it’s taking the responsibility of going inward by going to my own interior and inviting listeners to go into their interiors and see what’s going on in there. In the song “Revolution” it’s like, What are these walls? What’s inside of me? If this is the way that my eyes have been trained to see, what new world am I going to see? If I can’t shift the lens or something on the inside, how am I going to see a world that’s [different?] It’s happened so many times in history, whether it’s women’s rights or gay rights or the civil rights movement. We have to practice imagining the impossible. That’s connected to why it’s not hostile. 

When that’s the reason behind the music and the intent behind the record, the volume of it or whether it’s an electric or an acoustic guitar or if it’s rock or folk — none of that matters to me. [Laughs] This is the story I’m telling! 

All photos: Laura Partain

Cowboy Junkies: Everything Unsure, Everything Unstable

Posted on by Editor

It sounds like the start of a horror movie. A husband and father packs up the car with some clothes and a few guitars, bids farewell to his wife and kids, then drives deep into the Canadian countryside. He bunks at a friend’s country retreat, isolated from society, miles from the nearest human being. Or is he? Cue footsteps in the night, a dead bird on the doorstep, a shadowy figure barely glimpsed at the window. Perhaps there’s a death cult searching for the lost city of Ziox. Or some maniac with a pickaxe. Or some unnamed evil haunting the forest.

“It’s exactly like a horror movie!” laughs Michael Timmins, who is the man in that scenario and who write songs and plays guitar for the veteran Toronto band Cowboy Junkies. To pen tunes for their sixteenth studio album, All That Reckoning, he had to get out where nobody could hear him scream. “When I write, I have to be writing full time. As the years have gone by, it’s gotten harder and harder to do that, because I have more and more responsibilities at home. So I have to get away where it’s quiet, where I can sit around and think about nothing but songs. I have to get my head into it, so I have to isolate myself completely.”

He made it out alive, of course, but if All That Reckoning is any indication, the real horrors are the ones he encountered once he returned to society. An angry album whose outrage simmers coolly just beneath the surface, a thorny collection that ranks among the band’s best efforts, it chronicles a period of alienation, disappointment, fear, and paranoia. The guitars lurch and grind, the rhythm section lays out chunky, funky grooves, and singer Margo Timmins spits her brother’s lyrics with a strident combination of disgust and compassion. This is the Junkies in punk mode, decrying the hate and hostility that are scarier than any boogeyman.

“I’m not a protest writer,” says Michael, “but there are times in one’s life when the two collide. When I was all alone writing this album, I began to realize that the personal songs are little political analogies, and the ones that are a little bit political are really personal analogies. One feeds the other, and you really see how they cross. I felt like I was taking stock of what’s going on in my life and in the Western world, thinking about having to pay the price for a few things.”

Cowboy Junkies don’t usually traffic in dissent or social commentary; they’re better at documenting the personal than the political. Over the last thirty years they’ve crafted a sprawling body of work whose main subject is their own lives, their sons and daughters and wives and husbands and brothers and sisters. The band is rooted in their everyday lives, such that it feels more like an extension of family than a profession. “Margo and I are basically the same age,” says Michael. “We’re only about a year apart in age. We have our separate lives and things we go through, but when I write about something, she can relate that to something that’s happening in her world. And then she’s able to relate it to the listener by singing it, by giving it voice.”

It wasn’t always that way. After brief tenures in a punk group called the Hunger Project and an improvisational act known as Germinal, Michael Timmins and bass player Alan Anton returned home to Toronto, where they started a new band and eventually persuaded Margo to join as singer. Early shows were wildly spontaneous, with the band laying down a groove over which she would improvise lyrics or sing snatches of other songs. They covered old blues songs by Bukka White and Robert Johnson; they played “State Trooper” like Springsteen was an old bluesman himself. Released in 1986, their debut, Whites Off Earth Now!!, was a modest success, further entrenching them in the Canadian alternative scene but doing little to break them south of the border.

“Before anybody was listening,” says Margo, “we were just playing for ourselves—like all bands. You start in the garage or the basement or wherever, and playing music is fun. So you do a rock song. And then you do a country song, and then you do a blues songs. Nobody cares because nobody’s there.”

For their follow-up, they booked time in Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto, claiming to be a Christian vocal band to allay any suspicions of sacrilege or heresy. The band recorded around a single microphone, capturing an ambience so strong, so distinctive, so immersive that the church becomes a member of the band. They reimagined “Blue Moon” as a eulogy for Elvis Presley, reinterpreted Patsy Cline’s “Walking After Midnight” as an anthem of urban paranoia, and most famously recorded what Lou Reed declared to be his favorite cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane.” The Trinity Session sounded unlike anything else at the time, and it pointed in new directions roots and folk music might travel: lo-fi, place-specific, history-steeped, atmospheric yet conceptual, beautiful and weird.

“What happens is you have any album like The Trinity Session and then suddenly everybody wants you to sound like that forever,” says Margo. “They want you to do that quiet album again and again. And we just couldn’t do that. We knew it would kill us. We’d get bored really fast, and it would be the end of the Junkies. We did it the way we wanted to do it, and we’re still here.”

After the misstep of 1990’s The Caution Horses—a little too clean, a little too slick—Cowboy Junkies proved themselves a deeply curious and extremely experimental band, one that had much greater range that previous releases had hinted. Black Eyed Man from 1992 is their country record, featuring songs rooted in Southern experience, some written by Townes Van Zandt (including a lovely version of “To Live Is to Fly”). They followed it up in 1993 with Pale Sun, Crescent Moon, a lowdown and occasionally abrasive album featuring guitarwork from J Mascis. There can’t be much overlap between John Prine and Dinosaur Jr, but the Junkies made it sound like a natural progression.

Since then they’ve largely forged their own path, never fully embracing or embraced by the roots community but also never feted as a major postpunk influence. Their most recent albums have been a linked quartet of experimental releases based on seasons of the year: One record was based on Michael’s experiences living in China, another gathered eleven Vic Chesnutt covers. Cowboy Junkies have reached a point where they can exist well outside the trends and slipstreams of contemporary pop, indie, and roots music, where they become a scene in and of themselves. Perhaps more crucially they’ve shown how a band might settle into a long career, enjoying a cult audience more than hit albums. They’ve shown how to make a life in music.

In that regard All That Reckoning is all the more surprising for how relevant it sounds, for how well it surveys our current climate, most crucially for how it suggests that the band’s defining traits—the quiet vocals, the erratic guitars, the menacing midtempo jams—are specifically calibrated to speak to this very moment. As Margo sings on “When We Arrive”: “Everything unsure, everything unstable.”

It’s not easy to write about these topics, but it can be even harder to sing about them. Before she even records her first notes, Margo road tests her brother’s songs, playing them in front of audiences, living with them so she can burrow into them, figure them out, and devise a plan of attack. For All That Reckoning she set up a makeshift studio in the ski chalet where Michael wrote the songs. “Often I don’t know what a song is about, and Mike won’t tell me. When he writes them, he just writes them. They’re mine to interpret and bring my life to and figure my way around.”

She has always been an imaginative singer, but these songs contain some of her best and most precise performances. The disgust in her voice on “Missing Children” is palpable, as is the disdain on “Shining Teeth,” but she sings “The Things We Do to Each Other” as matter-of-factly as possible, as though the lyrics were self-evident, as though a little compassion might help the lesson go down easier.

“Mountain Stream” plays like a record skipping, Michael’s guitar jangling like a pocketful of ill-gotten coins and Margo sounding hazy even though she’s relating a very grounded story about a king surveying his crumbling kingdom. “I wanted to sing it like… you know when you have a dream and you wake up the next morning and you tell somebody about it? You’re telling it in that kind of confused, almost stilted way of talking? You’re shaking your head going, I was here and I was there and then this dog came along. I wanted to sing it in that bewildered sort of way. But it eluded me. I don’t think I got it.”

Perhaps not getting it, perhaps hitting just off the mark, is what gives the song its haunted quality, as though nothing quite lines up, nothing quite makes sense. Everything unstable, everything unsure. “There’s something weird out there, something undefinable,” says Michael, pinpointing the album’s appeal. “We can’t really define it or figure it out, but it’s been out there forever, and for some reason it seems to be getting more common, more present.” The Junkies stare it down on All That Reckoning and they never flinch.

Photo credit: Heather Pollock

Root 66: Dexateens’ Roadside Favorites

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

Name: Dexateens 
Hometown: Tuscaloosa, Birmingham
Latest project: Teenage Hallelujah 

Tour Food: I'm not sure that I have ever seen anyone in our band eat sushi. Maybe Matt does. He tours with Drive-By Truckers all the time now, so we only have him for a percentage of the time, and he is a vegan … but apparently his doctor told him he was nutrient deficient and that he really needed to start eating fish … so maybe he eats sushi. Who knows? So we are probably more of a hamburger kind of band. We ate last week at Storms when we were passing through Lampasas, Texas. We heard that Elvis used to eat there when he was stationed at Fort Hood so, obviously, we anticipated a bacon, egg, peanut butter, banana lard burger. They didn't have that, but we all had the triple meat burger. It killed. Bo had a malt that was the size of his head. He couldn't finish it. 

Backstage Hangs: Dexateens play dive bars, so this means that there is no such thing as a backstage hang for us. The bar is the backstage and we are sharing it with the people who come to see us play which, for us, is cool. We usually make friends that we can look forward to seeing the next time we are in town … and we like having drinks bought for us, so that's also a plus. Every now and then, we meet someone that wants to press buttons, but Brian knows how to defuse that pretty easily. He is a bartender at the Nick in Birmingham and he is in the business of defusing problem clients. 

Radio Station: Favorite radio station is WFMU in New Jersey. We have been supported by them and get to play the studio when we are in town thanks to our friend Joe Belock. Kevin Nutt does a super cool show called Sinner's Crossroads. He wrote the liner notes for our new record, and they are hilarious. He wrote them from the perspective of an old-time radio minister: "Gospel friends, I wish I could say I was immediately blessed with their fine singing and unique approach. But I can’t. It sounded like a lot of racket. It sounded like the world’s largest bumblebee had got lose in there. I thought there was a mistake. I keyed the talkback button: 'Hey son, you can’t play no rock 'n' roll on a gospel station for Christ's sake! Lord.'” Kevin used to see us perform back in the day when we were a young band while he lived in Alabama … We put his liners on the back of an old-time church fan that comes free with the Teenage Hallelujah vinyl. 

 

A photo posted by Dexateens (@dexateens) on

Driving Album: We don't spend a whole lot of time listening to music. I'm usually the driver and I get uptight in traffic when the music is blasting. What I really enjoy doing is scrolling through the channels on FM radio, and of course there is hardly ever anything of value worth hearing, but when I land on one of the three Eagles' songs that I like … man, what a moment! Seems like classic country radio is getting popular now which is cool. Sadly, some of the bad '80s stuff fits in that category. We took an acoustic guitar on tour one time, just for the van experience and that most definitely didn't work. Driving a van with a trailer while someone sits behind you, banging on a flat top, working out harmonies or arrangements might be the most excruciating thing ever. If someone wants to hear music while we are on the road, more than likely they are going to put in their ear buds and rock it out. I like talk radio, myself.

Car Games: We don't really have any road games. The game is, manage to not stink it up for your neighbor, even though you haven't had a bath in four days; throw away your trash; load your own gear; go to the merch table and try and help hustle some t-shirts; try to be nice to jaded, grumpy sound guys … you know ,that sort of stuff. When you are traveling like we do, there isn't time to see the city and absorb the culture. I mean, we might get a meal every now that then that is special, but for the most part, we eat stuff that is in walking distance of the club. We spend a lot of time at Love's truck stops. We probably would know a lot more about the coffee selection at Love's than we would at some artsy-fartsy coffee house. 

House Shows: House shows are the way we came up as a band, and we still love to play them. I probably would have a problem standing in line with college students for a cup of beer, at this point in my life, but having said that, if someone wants to pay us and give us our own stash of drinks, then we really like the idea of getting down and dirty with a bunch of wild animals at a house party. We played a really fun marriage party in a basement in Louisville, Kentucky, a few years back and it was a total blast. We saw the groom at a show in Nashville, and he told us that, unfortunately, he and his wife split up, but the good news was that he had a hell of a "Hope It All Works Out" party.  

 

A photo posted by Dexateens (@dexateens) on

Record Stores: We would probably be more of a thrift store and flea market kind of band as opposed to one who might visit the trendy bookstore. Same thing with record stores … really love the idea of shopping to buy records, but when you have hit or miss nights, the wives tend to get upset when you come home with a stack of records and no cash. So, unless we have been asked to play an in-store, it's not something we typically do. Love our friends at Grimey's in Nashville and the End of All Music in Oxford. We played a set of Rolling Stones covers a few years back at Grimey's and we were told that Bobby Keys was going to show up and play sax with us. Bobby didn't make it, but Grimey did sing "Rip This Joint" with us and that was a lot of fun. I never realized how wordy that song was til Mike showed up with three pages of lyrics. 

Tour Hobby: We recently got an RV. The thing has 22,000 original miles and is from 1994. So it seems like, when we have time, we devote our attention to working out the electrical quirks and trying the make the refrigerator work. We have narrowed the nickname of this thing down to either the Millennium Falcon or the Eagle 5 from Spaceballs. Either way, it seems fitting because we are constantly tinkering with it to make it work. It's probably not the fastest ship in the galaxy, so Eagle 5 might be more fitting. 

Dive Bar: It's hard for me to pick one dive bar that we would love the most. You know, there is just sort of a love/hate thing with those places. On one hand, they are truly disgusting, evil places, but on the other hand, when the audience is there and the band is on fire, it can be a super intimate and exhilarating thing. Especially the bars where there is no stage and you get right there with the audience and pour beer on each other … that's a lot of fun. The other thing about them that I find super interesting is the history that a lot of these places have, all the great acts that have come before you playing these old watering holes … the Nick, in particular. 

Stretch of Road: Favorite stretch of road would be whatever road is taking us out of town, because that's normally the road that takes us back home. Playing music is great and it's clearly something that the Dexateens can't get away from, but first and foremost, we are family men and the music stuff falls in line elsewhere. That mentality hasn't been great for our careers, but it has allowed us to do our thing as a band without divorcing our wives, fathering mystery children, and ruining our lives. If you removed the wives and the children from the equation, this whole thing wouldn't work.