The Impact of Place, and the Art of Collaboration With Maya De Vitry and Joel Timmons

Southern Songs and Stories

It never ceases to delight me how connected we are in the roots music world. Take Maya De Vitry and Joel Timmons, for example. The two have been making music together for five years, and have worked together with Joel’s wife Shelby Means, the bass player in Molly Tuttle’s Band. Molly Tuttle’s partner is Ketch Secor, who was our guest a couple episodes ago. Maya’s partner and bandmate Ethan Jodziewicz has played on record with former Southern Songs and Stories guest Sierra Hull, and forthcoming guest Lindsay Lou. Joel, also a founding member of the Charleston, SC band Sol Driven Train, has known one of my best friends since he was a child.

These connections color wide swathes of the mural of our lives, fostering creative endeavors as well as giving us an array of common reference points to pick up on whenever we meet people who live in or travel through the universe of acoustic, roots and Americana music. They can be the difference between having a career or not, and are overall far more valuable than any one hit song, podcast episode or viral meme could be.

This episode bears witness to the connections listed above, including one that happened much more recently than I had imagined, as our preceding guest Margo Cilker recruited Maya De Vitry to play with her at the Albino Skunk Music Festival only weeks before they were to arrive. This is one of the stories that Maya tells here, and she is joined by Joel Timmons in his own interview in an episode which highlights how important their connection to home is in their songwriting, how beneficial collaborations can be, the importance of leveraging ever-capricious streaming platforms while remaining independent, and more, including music from Maya De Vitry’s performance at the spring Albino Skunk Music Festival in May 2024.

Maya De Vitry performs at the Albino Skunk Music Festival, Greer, SC 05-10-24

photo: Joe Kendrick

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This series is a part of the lineup of both public radio WNCW and Osiris Media, with all of the Osiris shows available here. You can also hear new episodes on Bluegrass Planet Radio here. Thanks to everyone on staff at Albino Skunk for their help in making this episode possible. Thanks also to Jaclyn Anthony for producing the radio adaptations of this series on WNCW, where we worked with Joshua Meng, who wrote and performed our theme songs — you can link to his music here. This is Southern Songs and Stories: the music of the South and the artists who make it. - Joe Kendrick