Reading · Maya de Vitry's Newsletter

A few years ago, my last show of the year was at a distillery in Chicago. It was early December, which, if you’re feeling at all strung-out as a touring musician, is when it really hits you. To make yet another roadkill-dodging, timezone-juggling, criss-crossing lap around the country for another year as a touring folk singer is already an inherently precarious activity. But by December, try as you might to maintain counter-intuitive levels of positivity on those endless highways, the burnout can show up as unwelcome and suddenly as Christmas music at every a gas station.

I’m sure that Christmas music is comforting to some, but in those moments of year-end traveling, for my hypersensitive heart it can instead invoke a roaring nostalgia for a home and hearth that feels disturbingly far away — especially when one has truly spent incalculable hours far away from home and hearth that year. It’s like the decision of another year spent on the road — another year at sea — hits you all at once and straight to the core, like that icy Chicago wind. (I’m sure the simplest explanation to my recent gardening obsession is an attempt to restore rhythms of home and hearth that I have sacrificed for so long for the sake of the song.)

Anyway, back to the distillery in Chicago. It was December 2023, and it was my last show of the year. My hardworking duo companion Joel Timmons and I carried our guitars and suitcases into the friendly and crowded bar, rearranged some microphones, and did our typical soundcheck. Oftentimes you check the levels of the microphones and do all that soundcheck business in a quiet, empty music venue, so that the audience doesn’t have to hear any of the sonic pops and squeals that usually accompany it. This was the opposite — straining to hear ourselves over the cacophony of a distillery crowd excitedly discussing their weekend plans. But I didn’t mind at all. The hubbub in the bar felt promising, and like we might be able to except a delightful audience full of warmth. But as the minutes ticked on towards show time, the bar slowly emptied, table by table.

The motivating fire for a touring folk singer is not typically an external achievement-oriented thing. And if it ever mistakenly is, it quickly gets rescued from your mind and demoted to its rightful place in a jar of marbles that one could label “unreliable reasons”. At least, this is what seems to be the case from my experiences on this path. The motivating fire that has sustained me all these years — and the fire that sustains me as I imagine how to navigate a lifetime in music into each future year — is the connective tissue that appears out of thin air between me and my listeners in each room. It’s the alchemy of song, and how the interplay of rhythm and lyrics heals something in my soul — and I have learned, through stories my listeners have shared, that it heals something in their souls too. The space that we create together in each town is unique, like a one-night snow globe of presence and deep feeling. We gather to connect the dots of our memories, to feel our cells breathe more easily when we place our attention fully on music and song for an unbroken hour or two.

But anyway, back to the bar. By the time Joel and I were tuning up to start the show, there were just a handful of folks left in the room. But, the energy of one table in particular, a table right up front, was already invigorating. They were smiling and nodding their heads before we had even played the first note. They had the energy of long-time fans who were delighted to have finally found a show that worked for their calendar. I hadn’t gotten a chance to meet them before the show, but I was already looking forward to our conversation afterwards. I was so glad that in all of Chicago, these exact four people were here to take the ride of these songs with us that night. “Well, it’s a light crowd tonight, but we’ve got superfans at the table up front!” I whispered to Joel.

Their energy never wavered. They jammed to every song, listening with so much emotion and joy. I was getting so excited to learn their names, and talk after the show. There were a few other people listening with real attention in the bar that night, too, but this table in particular was bringing the energy that I didn’t know I needed that night — energy to battle my own December demons and dig deep to offer up something as true and wholehearted as what I’d given to every other audience that season.

After the show, I thanked them for bringing such vibrant energy. “Oh, no problem!!” They said. “We looooooved it!”

I eagerly asked them how they’d found their way to my music.

“Oh, we only just heard you for the first time when you did your soundcheck earlier today! We loved it so much, we totally skipped dinner and just kept drinking whiskey so we could catch the whole show! So, we’re all feeling pretty crazy on our empty stomachs right now, but that was a hell of a show!”

I was astonished. They had completely fooled me! Here I was thinking they were my four Chicago superfans — that they had saved the date and booked a babysitter and made a night of it. And that maybe they’d even been looking forward to the show for months! Nevertheless, they found themselves in a distillery on a cold December night, got pleasantly side-tracked by some folk music, and filled their bellies with whiskey and their hearts with songs.

They set off to find some late-night food, and I wasn’t sure if I would ever see or hear from them again. But the gift that they gave me — and the energy we all shared on that cold Chicago night — is something I will not forget.