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ni DiFranco, whom Theodore has supported at the Union Chapel, put in a word with Sickafoose, and encouraged by Ian Blackaby whom she describes as her mentor, Theodore sent him an email and a couple of links to her demos. Within two days Sickafoose had emailed back inviting her to the US to record and, thanks to a small inheritance, she went. “I was hungry for experience and to break out of the circle of knowledge I had. Todd’s free and experimental with soundscape. I hadn’t been dealing with that at all. I needed an injection of another perspective that was still on the wavelength of a storyteller. And I found that I shared it with Todd instantly. I was overprotective of the story. I trusted he knew its value and suddenly there were many more options in realising it.”
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The result is thematic, filmic and visceral. As Theodore says, Sick- afoose is “skilled at texture. It’s as if you can reach out and touch the sound.” Together they have created a musical world that brings the stories that her swooping vocals and breathy spoken words so dis- armingly tell vividly to life.
It’s possible that Theobald has storytelling in her blood. Dad’s a writer and educator (his first novel, The Mother And The Monkey is about to be published) who worked for Oxfam and Water Aid and was hugely influential in introducing her to poetry and literature.
Although Dad was a Beatles fan and mum loved Simon and Gar- funkel, Theodore says “We didn’t really listen to much music, it was poetry and artwork at home,” although she adds that she and her sister were trained classically on the violin (Theodore has her grade eight) and that their mum learned the violin with them too. Her mother, she says, “has always had an ideal of folk and fireplaces and real ale and cosy inclusivity” and now runs The Hyde Tavern in Winchester, noted for its sing-along folk sessions.
Her parents split up when Theodore was fourteen, at which time she picked up the guitar, inspired by her sister, who – just eighteen months older – had introduced her to the music of Tracy Chapman and Sheryl Crowe and whose later introduction of Balkan gypsy music inspired Theodore’s first band, the gypsy punk outfit Victor Menace.
Back in Chandlers Ford, snoozing between Southampton and
Winchester, the fourteen-year-old Theodore detuned her guitar and got cracking writing songs. Then she went busking. Her career kicked off in the doorway of Southampton’s WH Smith, right next door to McDonald’s. It was, she says now, a great spot for observing people and providing an educational commentary on consumerism. As far as more conventional education went, Theodore fitted in GCSEs around busking and describes herself as a “stray child” from about the age of sixteen. “I started walking the seven miles back home from Southampton at night, because I’d busk ’til past the last bus.” But after she was offered a regular gig, unbeknownst to her parents she’d sleep in the doorway of WH Smith. “I was working in clubs and bars, not finishing ’til three. It didn’t make sense to go back home, because I’d be back busking first thing.”
Her playing took a leap forward when she was offered a job in a local music shop. For the fabulous sum of two pounds per hour she’d set up the instruments and demo them for potential customers. It was here she met the acclaimed jazz, blues and folk guitarist Leo Kottke, who inspired her to “ditch the one-finger method and play properly!” After work she’d still be gigging or busking.
Theodore pitched up in Winchester when she was seventeen to study sociology, history and performing arts with music, but her focus was on the music. Besides, in transferring her busking activities to Winchester, sociology took on a practical aspect. She says “I’d stay on the floor of a pub or with a friend or in the doorway or with peo- ple I didn’t know. Throughout that time, I was in close contact with buskers, with people begging and sleeping rough. Many times I had my bacon saved by another person who had less than me, less going for them. Yet they’d help me out and offer me something.”
It was a lesson brought home to her in India when on a trip with her father for Water Aid. “In Kathmandu a little girl would meet me in the city, walk with me and hold my hand, she was only four. She could speak English. She’d say ‘Can I have some milk for my baby brother?’ The last day, she tried to give me an apple. I knew how lit- tle she had. I didn’t want to take it. She was insistent. So I took it and shared it with her. The generosity of people with nothing is much higher than the generosity of those who can afford to give.”
Her parents, she says, have brought her up to not be materialistic.
This is handy, given that she’s a musician and the music business has gone belly-up. But neither is Theodore interested in the fatuity of celebrity that success can bring. Again this was revealed on that trip with her father. “We were in a Nepalese village. Everyone was dancing and playing music and some of the middle-aged villagers were trying
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