Justin Kinkel-Schuster: Voice, guitar, words, harmonica
Jason Torbitzky: Drums, percussion, whistling, dobro, guitar, voice
JJ Hamon-lap steel, electric and upright bass, accordion, trombone, harmonica, mandolin, banjo, guitar, electronic toys, voice
Andy Lashier-electric and upright bass, guitar, glockenspiel, banjo, trumpet, musical saw, kazoo, mandolin, keyboards, voice
Influences
As John Fahey writes of American folk music: "Shakedowns, false hearts, the triumph of mechanization, cockeyed worlds, prostitution, TB, death, hunger, orphans, widows, tribulation, storm, fears, doom of millions, depression, fucked up highways, strangers, inflation, poverty, phony preachers, storms of life, failure, persecution, battle, old and feeble, murder, wrong-headed love..."
American Music abandoned buildings H. Williams/J.R. Cash/B. Dylan the Carter Family The Pixies George Jones Jug Bands Jubilee Singers Good Seeds Sown Wrongly Dolorean Townes Van Zandt Damien Jurado Otis Redding Richmond Fontaine The Band Raymond Carver Calexico Charles Bukowski Leonard Cohen Creedence Clearwater Revival Phosphorescent Sam Peckinpah Sergio Leone Peter Sellers Heinrich Boll Show Boat Velvet Underground Richard Buckner Will Oldham Gram Parsons Tom Waits Big Star David Berman The Mummies Sparklehorse
In 2006, Justin and Jason saw each other from across a room. Sparks flew. A song was playing. Next thing, they were playing songs. Then Justin and Jason met JJ, and he, too, started playing along with songs. This felt good, but something wasn't quite right. Where there could have, or should have been more sounds, there weren't. Then Justin remembered his old school chum/racquetball nemesis Andy. Andy said "let's do this" and then the game was really afoot. This was is in the early fall of 2006. Gears started grinding and the boys, finally a unit, began recording their debut full length, the record that would come to be called "Songs for the Weary" soon after. They worked all winter, toured a bit, and played around home. They put their record out in time for a big west coast tour, and things were going great. In Oregon their van died and the fellows were in despair. What will we do, they cried? Miraculously, out of the rabble of shysters appeared a white stallion, or a VW Eurovan. The boys saddled up again and snatched morale from the jaws of utter defeat. When they returned home their album was the toast of the town. After resting on their laurels for a few months the fellows hit St. Louis' Penny Studio to make a new record, called "Defeated, TN." Based upon a small collection of letters they found in an abandoned house in Tennessee, it attempts to document the disintegration of an American family faced with life's toils, troubles, temptations, and dangers. It also attempts to express the ideal of place, of home, as Wallace Stegner writes, as "a notion that only the nations of homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend." Maybe there's hope, maybe there's not. The boys aren't qualified to say. But one thing's for sure. The fellows of Theodore plan on putting out "Defeated, TN" on whatever dimes they can find, driving it 'round this great land of corn and cotton and coal and sawdust, and then there are tracks to be laid down, always more tracks...
Theodore
Feb. 25, 2008
..
We have been lucky enough to share a stage with the following outstanding bands/people at one time or another:
Southeast Engine (Misra),
Phosphorescent (Misra, Dead Oceans),
Deer Tick (Feow),
Band of Annuals (Kilby)
The Gunshy (Sleep, Latest Flame),
Andrew Bryant (Sleep, Magnolia State),
Richmond Fontaine (El Cortez),
Dolorean (Yep Roc),
Peter and the Wolf,
Glossary (Undertow),
Judson Claiborne,
Liz Durrett (WARM Supercomputer),
Southerly (People in a Position to Know),
Alina Simone (54'40' or Fight),
Cory Branan (Madjack),
Two Cow Garage,
Grand Champeen (Glurp),
Rocky Votolato (Barsuk),
Jeff Hanson (KRS),
Neva Dinova (Saddle Creek),
Amy Annelle (Hush),
Ian Moore (Yep Roc),
What are you guys doing around 11:30 on saturday? wait nevermind, I'll just call in to work. I have been going in drunk the past few days anyway. I can't wait!
