Based out of Portland, Oregon, MAITA is the full-band vehicle for the songwriting of Maria Maita-Keppeler. Splitting time between her mom’s Japanese-speaking home and her father’s English-speaking home, Maita-Keppeler found an expressive avenue out of her childhood shyness through music.
Are you finding the isolation of the pandemic conducive to your writing or is it hindering the experiences you can write about
We’ve been in this pandemic for so long, that I’ve had time to go through many phases. I’m very private about creating, so during the deepest moments of isolation, I felt less able to write because all my roommates were home all the time. The other side of that was that because we weren’t leaving the house or gaining many new experiences out in the world, older memories became more potent. I found myself writing about events that happened years ago with emotional clarity.
What is your current music project about?
MAITA has always been about getting to the root of a feeling and trying to express it in the truest way possible. This feeling can range from bold and cathartic to the subtlest of emotions. I love taking a moment to disconnect and figure out what isn’t working. It is a bit of what I do in my own life, and how I navigate conflicts or negative thought patterns.
How do you deal with writer’s block?
One of my favorite exercises for writer’s block is actually to listen to music that I don’t feel connected to. For example, I got a lot of writing done in the back of the room at open mics. I’d listen to a song and think about the lyrics, wonder why a line felt cliched or uninspiring to me, and write my own truth about that subject. I do this with pop music sometimes too, anything with more general lyrics. I think about my own specific story I’d have to tell.
Do you enjoy recording and production?
The recording is one of my favorite parts of the process. I work with a very creative band and though I write the words and melodies for songs before heading into the studio, I like to leave the door open for production ideas, for how the song should sound and feel. I might bring a song in and expect it to be a folk song and find that it’s actually a rocker. This happened with Pastel Concrete, a song off “I Just Want to be Wild for You.” This process is immensely exciting and I love seeing what Matthew Zeltzer, Nevada Sowle, and Cooper Trail come up with the music.
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Would you have any advice for would-be artists or songwriters wanting to follow in your footsteps?
Be prepared for so much rejection and try to remain true to your craft in the process. When I first started playing live, I played any show I could get my hands on, and often it was a dinner crowd or a bar crowd that didn’t know or cares about my music. Doing this helped me get used to the idea that not everybody is going to like or connect with your music. It’s not an easy path to success, and part of staying afloat as an artist is being able to redefine what ‘success’ means for yourself. We want to feel lucky to do what we do, and not defeated when a show or a tour doesn’t measure up to our expectations.
What makes you nostalgic?
I have a powerful memory attached to the feeling of getting into a bath to The Cranberries’ No Need To Argue. I used to take exclusively baths as a kid and my sister and I listened to that album a lot with our parents. I like to reserve that ritual for special occasions to keep that feeling potent—it completely transports me to this melancholic, bygone era of my life.
What was the last thing you dressed up as for fancy dress?
I dressed up as Britney Spears from “Hit Me Baby” for Halloween. I don’t actually identify with Britney that much or know much about her; I just had everything I needed in my closet. I wasn’t prepared for how much I would get asked about how it felt to get out of my conservatorship.
As a kid were you ever frightened of a monster under the bed or in the cupboard?
Under the bed. I couldn’t let my feet hang off over the side of the bed for fear that something would grab them. I still feel this way.
Which are cooler? Dinosaurs or Dragons?
Dinosaurs because they are REAL! I don’t think any of us can truly imagine the bodily feeling we would have standing next to a Brachiosaurus; we’ve literally never been in the presence of a moving creature that huge. It would be dizzying.
Do you have any superstitions?
I get really scared of mirrors at night because I’m terrified of accidentally saying “Bloody Mary” in my head three times. The more scared I become the more my brain actually tries to think it before I have a chance to look away. Also when I go to Japan I’d sometimes stumble upon abandoned shrines in the woods and take videos of them to show people later, but I’d always delete the videos before sharing them or rewatching them because I’d get a creepy feeling that I’d see something I don’t want to see.
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