Caamp: Tiny Desk Concert

VPM | By Kara Frame

Published March 19, 2026 at 9:00 AM EDT

In 2016, Caamp submitted an entry to the Tiny Desk Contest. After a few glasses of wine, Taylor Meier and Evan Westfall recorded “All the Debts I Owe” in front of a fireplace with just a banjo, guitar and Meier’s soft, raspy vocals. At the time, Caamp was brand new, but certain of its chances: “We were sure we were going to win,” Meier admits, laughing. And now, ten years later, Caamp realizes a dream.

Since forming, three more members have joined the band and, together, they’ve made Caamp a well-known name in the folk and Americana scenes. In fact, that Tiny Desk Contest submission resurfaced on TikTok and went viral among Caamp’s fans. It feels fitting to mark the anniversary with their own Tiny Desk concert — a performance in which they play a range of old and new songs — saving “All the Debts I Owe” for last. “It’s a fan favorite, it’s our favorite,” Meier told me. “It’s a nice song for me to sing from the heart, you know? I wrote it at such a young age, not knowing much — still don’t know much, but it still feels right.”

SET LIST

“By and By”
“Millions”
“So Cool”
“All the Debts I Owe”

MUSICIANS

Taylor Meier: vocals, guitar
Evan Westfall: banjo, background vocals
Matt Vinson: bass, background vocals
Joe Kavalec: keys
Nick Falk: drums, background vocals

TINY DESK TEAM

Producer: Kara Frame
Director/Editor: Maia Stern
Audio Director/Mix: Josh Newell
Host/Series Producer: Bobby Carter
Videographers: Maia Stern, Kara Frame, Joshua Bryant
Audio Engineer: Josephine Nyounai
Production Assistant: Alina Edwards
Photographer: Elizabeth Gillis
Tiny Desk Team: Ashley Pointer, Felix Contreras
Series Editor: Lars Gotrich
Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed
Executive Director: Sonali Mehta
Series Creators: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson, Robin Hilton

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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