CAAMP SUMMER TOUR STARTS TOMORROW!
Tour Dates:
May 17 - The Louisville Palace - Louisville, KY
May 18 - The Factory - Chesterfield, MO
May 20 - Freshgrass Festival - Bentonville, AR
May 23 - Belly Up - Aspen, CO
May 25 - Pepsi Amphitheatre - Flagstaff, AZ
May 26 - Brooklyn Bowl - Las Vegas, AZ
May 28 - BottleRock Napa Valley - Napa Valley, CA
July 11 - Big Sky Town Center - Big Sky, MT
July 14 - Under The Big Sky - Whitefish, MT
July 16 - Snow Park Outdoor Amphitheatre - Park City, UT
July 17 - Gerald R. Ford Amphitheatre - Vail, CO
July 19 - Red Rocks Amphitheatre - Morrison, CO
July 20 - Red Rocks Amphitheatre - Morrison, CO
July 27 - The Met - Philadelphia, PA
July 28 - Newport Folk Festival - Newport, RI
Aug 02 - Massey Hall, Toronto, ON CANADA
Aug 03 - Massey Hall, Toronto, ON CANADA
Aug 25 - Beach Road Weekend - Vineyard Haven, MA
Aug 27 - WonderBus Music Festival - Columbus OH
Sept 03 - Thompson’s Point - Portland, ME
Sept 05 - Ting Pavilion - Charlottesville, VA
Sept 06 - Red Hat Amphitheatre - Raleigh, NC
Sept 08 - Skyla Credit Union Amphitheatre - Charlotte, NC
Sept 09 - Moon River Music Festival - Chattanooga, TN
Sept 12 - Arvest Bank Theatre at The Midland - Kansas City, MO
Sept 14 - The Salt Shed - Chicago, IL
Sept 15 - The Salt Shed - Chicago, IL
Sept 16 - Welch, MN - Treasure Island Amphitheater (co-headline with Trampled By Turtles)
Sept 19 - Masonic Temple Theatre - Detroit, MI
Sept 20 - TCU Amphitheatre at White River State Park - Indianapolis, IN
Nov 02 - The Ryman Auditorium - Nashville, TN
Nov 03 - The Ryman Auditorium - Nashville, TN
More About: Caamp - Lavender Days
Starting tomorrow Caamp will hit the road on their expansive North American Tour playing multi-night stints, festivals and some of the most beautiful amphitheaters across the country. Today, they’ve announced additional tour dates including stops in Big Sky, Montana, Portland, Maine, Charlottesville, Virginia and a two night sting at The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN. Tickets go on sale May 19th at 10AM Local time except for Big Sky, MT which will go on sale May 23rd. Last week, Caamp was also nominated for duo/group of the year for the 2023 Americana Awards taking place September 20th in Nashville, TN.
The tour kicks off tomorrow in Louisville, Kentucky and continues through November. Highlights include Pepsi Amphitheatre in Flagstaff on May 25th, Snow Park Outdoor Amphitheatre in Park City on July 16th and Caamp’s two night residency at Chicago’s new venue The Salt Shed on September 14th and 15th, plus a few special acoustic nights throughout the tour including the newly announced Ryman Auditorium residency. Last summer the band had a victorious two night sell out at Red Rocks Amphitheatre and will return for two nights again at the legendary venue on July 19th and 20th. Caamp will also appear at major festivals throughout the summer including BottleRock Napa Valley, Under The Big Sky, Freshgrass Festival, Newport Folk Festival, Moon River Festival and more. Full tour dates below with new shows added in bold.
Last summer Caamp released their latest album, Lavender Days via Mom+Pop. The album quickly sprung to the top of the Billboard charts with opening positions in the Top 10 on 4 different charts, including Americana, Alternative, Vinyl and Indie and Top 20 positions on 7 charts total including #83 on the Billboard Top 200. The band also hit #7 on Spotify’s U.S. Album Debut Chart. Caamp’s music has dominated the charts at Triple A radio scoring three #1 singles and five total songs that have landed in the top 10. The band appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and CBS Mornings and toured extensively, selling more tickets than ever before including their first arena headlining show. Lavender Days was produced by Caamp and Beatriz Artola and featured Nathaniel Rateliff and Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield on vocals. Lavender Days is available here.
Caamp hails from Columbus, Ohio and was founded by Taylor Meier and Evan Westfall who grew up together. They launched the band out of Athens, OH where Meier was attending Ohio University. Caamp has released three previous full lengths - their self-titled 2016 debut, 2018’s Boys and By and By (Mom + Pop) in 2019. The band has amassed over a billion streams globally. They have headlined sold out shows and performed at major festivals around the world including Firefly, Shaky Knees, Forecastle, Outside Lands, Austin City Limits, Great Escape and many more. Caamp has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and CBS Saturday Morning multiple times and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
On their earthy, jubilant new album, the Columbus, Ohio band Caamp examines those in-between days that make up a life—not the best or most eventful days, certainly not the worst or most tragic, but those full of small pleasures and forgotten disappointments. Taylor Meier, the group’s singer and primary songwriter, came up with the phrase Lavender Days to describe them—a phrase that struck him out of the blue, “like a coconut out of the sky,” he says with a laugh. Why lavender? “It’s nostalgic. It can remind you of your grandmother’s perfume or maybe the air freshener in your mom’s car. It can summon up all of these incredible memories and transport you to those in-between days, which I think everybody remembers with more clarity than the big events.”
Caamp’s music can provoke a similar reaction in listeners: Its unique mix of West Coast folk, Midwestern Americana, and cathartic indie rock sounds warmly familiar, like a favorite comforter, and yet still fresh enough that listeners can make their own associations and find their own meanings. As Meier sings on the album’s achingly quiet closer, “Sure Of,” “I hope when you’re looking back, you look back with love.”
Caamp have been writing and singing about those lavender days—in tender love songs tinged with melancholy and determination—ever since Meier played his first notes with bandmate Evan Westfall more than a decade ago. They formed the band at Ohio University in Athens, playing local coffeehouses and growing more committed to this extracurricular project.With the addition of Matt Vinson on bass and Joseph Kavalec on keyboards, they built up a grassroots following well beyond the Buckeye State based on the inventiveness of Meier’s songwriting, the exuberance of their live performances, and their tireless dedication to touring as much as possible.
In 2020, however, they were taken off the road by the pandemic—a fate they shared with all artists—and were forced to slow down and take stock. “The past two years have been a big learning curve for us, especially since Caamp is centered on travel and human interaction. That all got stripped away very suddenly. I lost my livelihood, then I lost a very deep love of mine. I lost my beloved dog. Then we all got Covid. You start to lose your sanity.” Even as it presented so many tragedies, those lavender days afforded Meier the space to reflect on them. “I learned a lot and I humbled myself. I think I became more patient, and I know I became more vulnerable around my bandmates, my friends, and my family. Getting these songs to tape was a huge part of that process of learning and healing.”
As soon as they could, they were back on the road, writing songs during soundchecks—including “Believe,” a rousing declaration of devotion whose harmonies sparkle like sunlight on water. In February 2021, they took a batch of new songs down to North Carolina, where they recorded at Sylvan Esso’s studio outside Durham. There they worked to figure these songs out, emphasizing the brotherly chemistry and unbreakable trust among the four members. “The boys”—that’s what Meier affectionately calls his bandmates—“recognized what this record meant to me. They saw where I was coming from. So we had this mission to make it sound as real and as true and as human as possible. I had this epiphany one day and realized that I couldn’t have made it here on my own. These songs wouldn’t have the little intricacies and intimacies and the depth that Evan, Matt, and Joe brought out of them. We’re stronger as a band than we would be by ourselves. I’m just papier-mâché without the boys.”
Finishing the album back in Columbus, Caamp thought of Lavender Days as a journey, as a story they were telling to themselves and to their fans. “I like my records to read like books. I want there to be motifs and themes and character arcs and all those wonderful elements from our favorite novels.” Opener “Come With Me Now” is the preface: an invocation to an ancient muse, an invitation to follow them on their journey. It started humbly, as a 15-second voice memo Meier recorded on his phone—barely a kernel of a song. But the boys heard something in it and turned it into a cathartic introduction with a steady, exuberant crescendo into a full gospel chorus. From there Caamp take you on a walk deep into the woods and through the lavender days of a long, loving relationship. It’s nothing so bitter as a break-up album, but a rumination on the work it takes to keep two people together. As Meier sings on the plaintive “All My Lonesome,” “If you’re looking for a good time, this is not your love.”
As a songwriter and storyteller, Meier mixes gravity and whimsy in equal measure, which lends the album a magical realist quality. Not every songwriter would risk comparing himself with an otter, using that humble creature to convey such astonishment at the world. That’s what he does on “The Otter,” whose melody sounds like it’s been passed down for generations in the Appalachian foothills. The song startled him when he wrote it. “I’m enthralled by the way it came out of me. I was sitting in the tour van with my guitar, enjoying the nice weather and just singing to myself, and the song just came out of me. Otters are playful little creatures, but they’re pretty tough. They can crack open an oyster with their bare hands.”
Lavender Days reaches its conclusion with the late-night epiphany of “Sure Of,” which features just Meier’s voice and guitar. ‘That recording is actually a voice memo! I was in my loft in Columbus when I wrote it. It was a significant date for me—a past love in a past world—and I was having a hard time that night. That song came to me and made things a little better. It’s not perfectly in key or in tempo, but that just made it sound more alive to me. So we just used that version instead of trying to make it perfect in the studio.” It’s quiet yet big-hearted, as Meier ponders the nature of love and how it changes us. It’s a sad but generous farewell.
“Sure Of” isn’t just an intimate moment or an insightful song. It’s a testament to how music can get us through our toughest times and how it might help us make sense of our best times. “Songs can put moments into a chrysalis. They’re like time capsules, and they let you look at those moments from the outside. I’ve always written songs based on real-life experiences, but this record is especially vulnerable. I think it’s a record that reassures you, whatever stage you’re at in your life, that it will all be okay. Eventually you’ll look back on these lavender days and take something valuable away from them.”
