The Staves: Tiny Desk Concert

VPM | By Kara Frame

Published May 17, 2024 at 9:00 AM EDT

When we last heard from The Staves, its members were in the kitchen of their Watford, England, childhood home. Sourdough was on the table and sunlight streamed through the curtains as the folk-pop group’s sisterly harmonies and banter made their Tiny Desk (home) concert feel familiar and approachable. Three years later, The Staves finally made it to the NPR Music office.

What was founded as a sister trio is now a sister duo — Emily Staveley-Taylor, the eldest, is taking time away from the band to focus on her family. The Staves’ new album, All Now, reflects that change; on record and in this performance, Jessica and Camilla Staveley-Taylor quiet any qualms that they would be able to carry on the harmonies for which the group is known. Instead, the Tiny Desk setting perfectly illuminates the power and talent of their voices.

SET LIST

“Fundamental Memory”
“All Now”
“I’ll Never Leave You Alone”
“So Gracefully”

MUSICIANS

Jessica Staveley-Taylor: vocals, guitar
Camilla Staveley-Taylor: vocals, ukulele
Marcus Hamblett: guitar, bass
Rob Pemberton: piano, bass, vocals
Glyn Daniels: drums

TINY DESK TEAM

Producer: Kara Frame
Director/Editor: Maia Stern
Audio Technical Director: Neil Tevault
Host/Series Producer: Bobby Carter
Videographers: Maia Stern, Kara Frame, Elizabeth Gillis
Audio Engineer: Carleigh Strange
Production Assistant: Ashley Pointer
Tiny Desk Team: Hazel Cills, Joshua Bryant
Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed
Series Creators: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson
VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins

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Kara Frame

Kara Frame is a video producer and director for NPR Music's Tiny Desk Concerts series. To sum up what she loves most about working on the iconic series, she says, "We put joy into the world." In addition to this work, she manages the NPR Music Instagram account. Prior to her work on the music team, she crafted stories about housing segregation in Baltimore, Md., motherhood in a refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece, and food deserts in Washington, D.C.

Frame's personal projects have focused primarily on veterans and PTSD. In 2016, her short documentary I Will Go Back Tonight was awarded first place for long-form multimedia at the NPPA Northern Short Course.

In her free time, Frame volunteers with Women Photojournalists of Washington (WPOW), a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to educating the public about the role of women in visual journalism and fostering their professional success. She organizes the annual WPOW portfolio review and seminar, an event that invites visual journalists of all career levels to share their work with some of the world's top editors from organizations such as NPR, National Geographic, Washington Post, The New York Times, Vox, Smithsonian Magazine, among many others.

Before starting at NPR in 2016, Frame received a B.A. in African-American Studies from Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa., and a M.A in New Media Photojournalism from the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. When she's not working on videos or volunteering with WPOW, you can find her in her garden, hosting a dinner for friends or getting lost in the woods in her teardrop camper, Sunshine.

See stories by Kara Frame