British singer and guitarist Maya Delilah is someone who isn’t scared to jump into the deep end musically. She could easily enchant sizeable audiences with her jazzy singer/songwriter tracks, but she is too talented a guitarist to abandon playing guitar solos, which often have an unpredictable, bluesy sting to them. I spoke to her after her set at 2023’s North Sea Jazz festival, which included a couple of brand-new songs, one of which was just a week old at the time.

“I think I’m just a bit chaotic”, Delilah laughs. “I think that I kind of like to throw myself into things, and not have anything prepared. Obviously, I like to rehearse and practice, and know that I’ve got the songs down. Doing that week-old song was a bit of a whim. But I think because I thought: I’m already doing lots of new songs, I may as well throw that one in the mix.

I don’t like to plan what I’m going to say on stage either. That just makes me a bit more nervous. The more high pressure I put myself under, the better it usually goes. That was the mind I had today, at least, haha! This was also the first time I played with this drummer (Joel Waters). We literally had a rehearsal for two hours yesterday, and that was it. He’s playing with Olivia Dean later. I’ve known him for years, but we never played together. It was really amazing for him to step in that quickly, and smash it.

My guitar solos are pretty improvised as well. I don’t really like to pre-plan them fully. I have a vague idea of what I know I’m going to do here and there, but most of it is on the spot, all felt out by emotion. What licks I play and stuff kind of goes with how I’m feeling. It’s all improvised, but I think I have certain structures and shapes I fall back to.”

Losing Track of Time

While Delilah’s live sets tend to be fairly song-focused, with the solos mostly limited to their designated slots within the compositions, there is generally an improvised instrumental song on her set as well. “The thing I think about when I’m ordering my songs for my live shows is the energy and the emotion of each song”, she says. “I try and tailor my set to how it makes sense. And I think it’s nice to have a breather in the middle of the set. That’s when I sit down and play guitar, and have an instrumental song.

Usually that’s just once in the set, but when I do that, I like to try and put it as bang in the middle as I can, so it divides the two halves of the set up. Weirdly, I feel a lot more comfortable when I’m playing sitting down off-stage, and when I’m standing up on stage, I feel a lot more comfortable. Mostly singing-wise.

I like to sit down when I play a song on my own. Usually on the floor. Or on a table. Anywhere I can sit cross-legged, haha! And I used to play on the floor on stage, but then no one could see me, so now I am sat on a chair. Hopefully one day, I can get a table on stage.”

Typically, Delilah improvises guitar solos over a loop in those instrumental spots, with no set time. “It doesn’t usually go too crazy long”, she smiles. “I wish it could. Sometimes I find myself really zoning out when I’m doing it, so then I can lose track of time a bit. I’m never actually sure how long I’ve been playing for when I’m just playing guitar for a song. It does vary. There’s literally no structure to it.”

Not Like a Chore

To truly get a feel for how good Delilah is as an improvising guitarist, the Table Time videos on her YouTube channel give a fairly good impression. “They’re usually quite spontaneous”, she explains. “If I’m playing in my room, and I feel something, I’ll often end up thinking: I’ll film it now. I prefer to be in the feeling and in the zone of what I’m playing when I’m recording it, and not to make it feel like work content. It’s just like: I’m playing this in my room, I’m really enjoying this right now, let me put it out there.

My whole viewpoint has been to do what feels right. When TikTok first became a thing, I was trying a few different TikTok-style videos, trends and stuff like that to get going. And none of those were working. So that’s when I thought: well, I’ll just sit down and play guitar, let’s see what happens. When I did that, that was my first video that really took off. And from that point onward, I thought: this is amazing, I can just do what I want to do, and put it online.

It’s like practicing for me. Because I often really have to sit down and practice. So when I practice, I get to play guitar, and enjoy it, and post it. It all kind of goes hand-in-hand. It definitely can get a bit tedious, because it’s such a big part of the job if you’re an artist these days. You pretty much have to have an online presence of some sort. But I like to keep it as authentic as possible, and then it doesn’t feel like a chore.”

A Whole Other Instrument

Stand-out moments during Delilah’s solos are the quick, expressive downward slides she occasionally plays. “Those are inspired by Derek Trucks”, she says. “I tried learning slide for a while, and then I figured out that it’s basically like trying to learn a whole other instrument, and it was not as easy as I thought it was going to be.

So then I thought that it would be easier to try and figure out more of like a hybrid way to play like that, or at least my own way to try and make it sound more like slide guitar. Or more emotional, which is how I think he plays, without having a slide, which I’m still really trying to do. That’s where those downward slide licks come from. I have two Fender guitars, and one of them I set up as a slide guitar, because I was trying to be Derek Trucks, with a much higher action.

There’s different guitars that I feel match different tones. And I think the guitar I used today, which is a Powers Electric guitar, just felt very fitting. It’s got a really nice, smooth neck for solos, and I knew that there would be a heavy improvised section in this set.

My main guitar is a Maton, the Australian brand, that I don’t tend to take out of the UK, because it’s so precious to me, and I’m scared I’ll break it. So that stays at home for the London shows. Other than that, I use a Fender Parallel Universe Jazz Deluxe Strat and my new Powers Electric, which I’ve only just got.”

Different Ways One Song Can Work

“The Powers Electric is kind of a new thing that I’m playing around with. And I’ve been going back to the acoustic guitar a lot, which is what I started out on. So most of these new songs that I did today are all written and recorded on an acoustic guitar. I’ve been playing a Taylor for about a year now. Which I would have loved to bring, had I been able to bring more luggage. I think that would have made it a bit easier with different tunings and things like that.”

Discovering how the acoustic compositions work within a non-acoustic context is an interesting journey of discovery for Delilah. “It’s definitely different”, she nods. “And I’m really enjoying realizing how different it is, and how I can have one song and have it sound and feel quite different depending on what guitar I pick. And the instrumentation: whether it’s just me or a two-piece, a three-piece or a four-piece band. It’s fun figuring out all the different ways that one song can work.

If I’m going to play with a bigger band, I will have my pedalboard with me, so that I can get a bigger sound. I have a doubler and a distortion pedal. Creating a bigger sound is sometimes necessary. It does depend. Today, I didn’t feel the need to have much with me. I’m not a gearhead though. I don’t know anything about gear. I usually just plug straight into an amp, maybe with a loop pedal.

I do have a pedalboard that has a few pedals on it, but I don’t know much about them. I don’t know much about guitars. I don’t know any theory. Everything I do musically is all kind of: pick it up, and if it feels good, then I’ll do it. That’s the same with the few pedals that I have. And with my guitars, and everything, really. I’m just kind of winging it, haha!”

Looping Chords for Hours

One pedal that is very important to Delilah, however, is her Roland RC-300 looper, which she also got a lot of mileage out of for her Table Time videos. “I’ve been using the looper for about ten years”, she says. “And that is what really developed my ability to solo and stuff. Because I would sit in my room for hours, and just loop chords to play solos over. That really helped me feel more comfortable with that.”

How long Delilah’s new songs take to develop is difficult to predict. “Oh my god, it can be years, or it can be like a week”, she laughs. “It really varies. And sometimes it doesn’t work in an electric setting. There’s definitely a lot of trial and error.”

Maya Delilah’s new album ‘The Long Way Round’ will be released by Blue Note Records on the 28^th of March.

An edited version of this interview appeared in Gitarist 390 (September 2023)

This interview is part of Kevy Metal’s Gateway to Jazz series.