The new face of folk: an interview with Caamp

If black coffee and cigarettes on a Sunday morning had a soundtrack, it would be the music of Caamp. Caamp is comprised of Taylor Meier and Evan Westfall, two childhood friends who have been playing music since high school. The duo offers songs ranging from upbeat rock and roll tunes to folk ballads accompanied by dueling guitar and banjo riffs; each piece provides a beautifully honest recreation of the human experience.

Taylor Meier (lead vocalist and guitarist) recently sat down with the B-Side to discuss the past, present, and future of Caamp.

You grew up together in Ohio, right? How has your community shaped or impacted your music, if at all?

Greatly. Our friends and family were our first fans. The first gigs we got were kind of charity gigs, just favors of friends and musicians that helped get us on stage. They had a pretty big impact on us. I don’t really know if we would have kept writing songs and making music if we didn’t have people tellings us white lies that we were good.

And since you guys have been playing music since high school, what do you think has been the biggest learning curve for you as a band?

It was guitar, for me. I was never a great guitarist and am still not. So I guess all the learning stuff was there: learning how to play standing, learning how to play with the pick, essentially learning how to play at all. I guess it was the musicianship. But once we started practicing, the songs just kind of came.

Do you have any favorite memories as a band you’d like to share?

We are big hockey fans back home. We root for the Columbus Blue Jackets. So, we headlined the Mercury Lounge in New York last year and an ex-Blue Jackets players, Rick Nash, who was then on the Rangers, came out and saw the show. Ev [Evan Westfall] played hockey all through growing up and high school; I never played hockey, but I just like it. That night we got to hang out with Rick Nash and a couple other NHL [National Hockey League] players in New York one time, and that was really cool.

Throughout all your music you guys seem to pride yourself on authenticity, is there any way you would change the way music is distributed or listened to?

I dunno. I guess make Spotify free? But I guess in terms of distribution, I think places or companies like Spotify and Pandora are great for artists these days because anyone can make a track. It’s not like you have to be on a major record label and get in record stores and on the radio. Anyone who can pay thirty bucks to put their music on Spotify through TuneCore can kind of just… let your birds free into the atmosphere.

You’ve been opening for Rainbow Kitten Surprise on their latest tour, how has that been? Is there anything that particularly excited you about this tour?

The Kittens are great. This is our fourth tour with them. We started playing with them two Novembers ago, November of 2016. We’ve become great friends with those guys. They’re all really good down home North Carolina boys making really cool music. I think just the opportunity to play for the crowds that they’re getting to play for and also being alongside them just as friends on the road has been a really great experience for us.

On top of touring with RKS, you’ve played a couple festivals recently, what is your opinion on festivals and how do you think they’re going to evolve?

I definitely think that festivals are a great way for bands, at our stage in the game, to get discovered, ya know? We aren’t headlining or really even playing big stages yet. Festivals are a great way to find new music. You buy the ticket for the big names, ya know, and you stumble across a tent and might find your new favorite band. In that way, I think festivals are awesome. As far as evolving, I feel as if there’s only going to be more of them in the future, so maybe they’ll get a little cheaper. I think that’s the only hope, so that people can get tickets a little easier.

I saw you play at the Innings Festival in Tempe, AZ last month and you talked about the importance of the March for Our Lives protest for gun reform and mentioned how you wished to see more love in the world… I’m curious how today’s political climate has affected your music, if at all?

Most definitely. It puts a little different lense on writing love songs when not everyone is getting love or not everyone is putting love into the world. We use the opportunity on stage everynight in front of a couple thousand people, usually, to say a couple things about how we should treat each other. It’s given us a little more of a wakeup call. I think a lot of people are having a wakeup call these days, as far as the way the world goes. There’s a lot of people who are being mistreated for bogus reasons and it’s outdated. It’s time that our generation, and people making art, said something about it.

Do you feel like this has been difficult given that Ohio is conservative?

Yeah. It’s weird. Where we grew up, I never felt like Ohio was conservative until someone told me that. Like the people we associate with, and our parents, don’t hate minorities and mistreat transgender people. That’s just not the way we were raised. I don’t feel a hatred or a grudge against Ohio for being a red state. It’s just a chink in the armor, I suppose.

And finally, what can we expect to see from Caamp in the future?

More music. We’re song-singers. We just want to write the best tunes, record them, and play them in cool places. I think we’re doing a real good job of that so far. So, I just think more of the same.

Written by Makaila Heifner