Behind the Songs: Maya de Vitry – “All My Faith”If you arrive at All My Faith looking for something that sounds like Gillian Welch, you might find your thirst briefly satiated by No Time to Rush, the final track on Maya de Vitry’s 2026 release, but it’s only a slight parallel. The song is melancholic yet enchanting. But this record plants her feet firmly in the alt-country camp with sparks of thoughtful ‘70s folk rather than lingering in the purgatory of a folk-pop singer. There’s a common thread running through this record of being willing to name the painful and difficult parts of human relationships, but it is how she tells these stories that surpasses the topics. She adds a sly twist to many of these songs, in particular Nobody Else, a different sort of love song that De Vitry describes as “an ode to the tension and tenderness of growing pains in a long-term relationship, and it specifically takes place after a fight in the kitchen over who knows what. Some days we are civil to strangers, but then we come home and take things out on the people who are closest to us.”
All My Faith achieves a wondrous feat of relatability, even if you don’t think what inspired these songs are universal feelings. de Vitry’s splendour is her innate ability to make our own experiences feel denser and louder. When she sings on Adaptation about the idea that people’s ability to be so incredibly adaptable can also get us in trouble and keep us trapped in the status quo – “we get good at our situation / just to keep our heart from breaking” – anyone who has confronted the horrific clamours of stagnation and monotony may feel it deeply. You can liken her response to lostness to pebbles holding court on a shoreside, to understanding why generations dwindle.
The ten songs on this album are vibrant and deeply lyrical, underlining her difference from similar artists with bold strokes of a pen. Everything you hear on the record was captured in real time with no edits over three days at The Tractor Shed in Goodlettsville, Tennessee with an ace band, including Spencer Cullum and Ethan Ballinger (both members of Miranda Lambert’s touring band) for pedal steel and guitar, alongside Jo Schornikow (of alt-country/indie band Phosphorescent) on keys. They are joined by frequent members of de Vitry’s live band: Ethan Jodziewicz on bass, Dominic Billett on drums, and Shelby Means and Joel Timmons on harmony vocals. The band’s playing is responsive, uninhibited, and emotionally spot-on, embroidering the record with raw, cherished instrumentation that fills the open spaces.
She has the knack for evoking truths that allow listeners to step in and become a part of the stories. There are glimpses of worry, of crucial moments in which parts of ourselves get left behind and the memories of friendship we pull from the wreckage. There is longing to be felt, yes, but there is also a resilient happiness outweighing all of that. After all, sentimentality is a strong sign that are hearts are rebuilding.
“Faith is woven into the fabric of my life in music,” de Vitry asserts, “faith in what is possible in a relationship when I am the truest version of myself; faith in strangers opening their hearts to my songs; faith in this wild idea that sharing stories of our shared human condition can pull us toward compassion and gratitude. We’re just these hungry and thirsty bodies wandering this planet in our brief and intersecting lifetimes, and I have faith in how we can be each other’s’ keepers, each other’s’ teachers. I’m finding a new faith in imperfection, a new faith in mistakes. I’m living this faith that love – real, nuanced, imperfect love – is simply so worthy of an endeavor.”
Travelling in one way or another is a recurrent theme, whether waiting to board a plane (Bachelorette Lessons), touring (Cold Lake, Good Snacks) or the deeply personal Traveller. de Vitry generously agreed to let Americana UK readers hitch a ride with her as she describes her thoughts on these tracks.
All My Faith – This is the last song that we recorded during the 3-day session for this album. I think you can hear the lay-it-all-out-there energy, and everyone’s comfort with each other, in how settled the groove feels and how celebratory this whole track is. We never made a plan for the end and we just kept it that way, loose and wild and imperfect, and I like how it feels like a giveaway to the fact that these tracks are completely live and unedited.
Coin in Your Soul – I love how the band gives and receives so much during this track — small rhythmic gestures, swells — everyone was listening so calmly and responsively. The 3-part harmony vocals between me, Joel Timmons and Shelby Means are very exposed on this one, and I love our delicate blend so much.
Bachelorette Lessons – One of my production decisions on this album was to only have drums on a few songs, because I wanted to honor just how rhythmic my guitar playing usually is in my live show, and how it usually fills some of the role of a drummer. By the final chorus in this song, I feel like the groove between everyone is just so deep, and I’m so proud of that.
Occasional Oranges – When I was writing this one and working out this whole lyric about monkeys and citrus I remember thinking, is this too weird? But then I remembered reading something about how we have to hold to human strangeness in the age of AI, so I pressed on.
Adaptation – I’ve long been interested in adaptation as a concept. I titled my debut solo record Adaptations. This song is a little more of the darker shades of adaptation, the adjustments and sacrifices we’ve made for this fast pace of modern life and technology and billionaires… and everything that comes with it when we let ourselves feel that we have no other choice.
Nobody Else – How about the way the snare drum sounds on this one? That’s Dom Billett. And how about the gorgeous hook harmony lines played by Spencer Cullum on pedal steel and Ethan Ballinger on electric guitar?
Confidence of the Sun – Ethan Jodziewicz is on fretless electric bass, and listen for how he stays static on that one note while everyone else moves around it, both at the beginning and ending of the song. What a cool choice on his part. And listen to how the harmony vocals are in unison, until they split into 3-part harmonies towards the end. I love these contrasts in the arrangement.
Traveller – The spelling of this title is a wink to my grandmother, wherever she is now, because she loved Scotland and England, and that’s how they spell it there.
Cold Lake, Good Snacks – If you don’t make time to swim, you’ll get burned out. When we recorded this one it felt like, yeah, everyone in this band gets it. We’ve all been there.
No Time To Rush – I started writing this one when I was on a whitewater rafting trip through Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. In the studio, we didn’t quite have a specific thing planned for the beginning of the song, we just wanted to set an atmosphere. I think it turned out beautifully. Ethan Jodziewicz sequenced the record (picked the final order of the songs) and I love how this is the last one.
