Theo Sawyer to play debut UK show

The 23-year-old New Zealander headlines London’s Camden Club next month
PR Handout
El Hunt25 July 2023

Until the last year or so, it’s possible that New Zealand singer-songwriter Theo Sawyer was most famous for a bizarrely specific family achievement, which featured in the local newspaper of his small town, Devonport, when he was 15 (he, his brother, and his dad all have black belts: “karate has made me the person I am today,” a young Sawyer is quoted as saying). He was pretty well-known as a regular busker around town though, having taken up the guitar aged 17, and playing on a street corner a couple of minutes away from his house. Gradually, locals began stopping to watch. “It developed into people stopping by and saying: ‘hey, we’ve got this event coming up. Would you like to play?’” When Sawyer won a songwriting competition in his final year of high school, it solidified his ambitions.

Next month at north London’s Camden Club, the 23-year old will play his first ever show on UK soil, on August 4.

Over the last year, Sawyer has released a handful of singles; the likes of Love Drunk, Forget Your Ex, and Get Together (Lonely) all explore various facets of falling in and out of love atop thumping and snappy indie-pop. The former is his biggest release yet, racking up 66,000 views on YouTube.

Besides the iconic British rock band Queen, who had a formative influence on Sawyer when he was young, “I think my biggest hero in songwriting would be John Prine,” he says. The late American country-folk singer-songwriter, who counted none other than Bob Dylan as one of his biggest fans, was hugely influential thanks to his nuanced, witty narratives of life and love. He died in 2020, aged 73.

“I saw him a few years ago before he died, and the way he communicated those stories was so special,” Sawyer says, adding that the show planted a seed for him, in terms of his own musical path.

“The intelligence that he had, talking about normal everyday things in such an articulate way, made me go, wow, I want to do this, you know?”

Sawyer’s first London show – and indeed his first time visiting the UK – comes ahead of a new six-track EP, which the musician has just finished recording, and plans to release before the end of this year. Following his gig at Camden Club on August 4, Sawyer is briefly popping back to New Zealand, where he’s currently based, before flying halfway across the world to live here in the capital for good. He expects that moving from New Zealand – which has a smaller population than that of London – will prove an “interesting” experience.

As well as airing past singles, Sawyer will also give punters a hint of other songs in “the pipeline at the moment” – so in other words, expect an early glimpse at that debut EP. For now, it looks like karate’s on the back-burner.

Theo Sawyer plays Camden Club on August 4

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