By Kyle Buchanan
D Samson first hooked up with the band Le Tigre as a projectionist, but when she joined the group as a full-fledged member in 2000, she became an instant lesbian icon. Though the band is currently on a break, Samson is as busy as ever, appearing in films, art projects, and her own series of lesbian calendars. Because her body of work is so eclectic, we knew we had to find out what makes JD tick.
Let’s talk about visibility. I know you had a gay aunt growing up...was that the first time you realized someone was a lesbian?
Yes. I remember clearly that my parents brought me to the restaurant that we used to go to every Thursday night and they were like, “We have to talk to you about something.” I was really scared because I thought that something bad had happened, and then they told me, and I was like, “That’s it? That’s really all you want to tell me?” [Laughing] I had never known anyone who was gay, and that was the only person I knew who was gay until I came out. I saw another lesbian in the world and I thought to myself, Oh, my God, there’s, like, a community for lesbians. That realization made it feel OK for me, because there were other people out there.
How do you think it’s different for young lesbians right now as opposed to when you were growing up?
Well, definitely, the Internet has changed everything. I wasn’t sure about other gay people in the town where I grew up in Ohio, but I know that with the Internet, there’s a space where people can find each other. I talk about that a lot, because the Internet is bringing people together, but it’s also doing this thing that makes people a little less appreciative of their community.
How so?
I’ve found that there’s just a lot of shit-talking on the Internet, so instead of joining together to make your community grow stronger, there’s a lot of infighting that’s allowed to happen. It’s scary. I don’t know what’s going to happen.
People who know you solely as a musician might be surprised to find out that you studied film at Sarah Lawrence. What sorts of things were you doing there?
I started doing a lot of different things when I got to college. Of course, I started with experimental film, and for the first two years that’s what I was into. Then it was documentaries, and in the end I really got into animation. I had started taking drawing and I kind of developed a new medium that lies somewhere between animation and drawing. It’s almost like moving paintings on the wall that are edited together, if that makes sense.
Do you still produce art like that?
I do, but it’s hard. The venues for where you want to put your art change so much once you get into a certain community. Now that I’m involved with the music industry, it’s hard to keep going with my other artistic interests. I feel nervous getting involved with different scenes, you know?
Do you think your fame in the music industry would help or hurt your interest in pursuing other art?
Well, I was really excited to do a show at Deitch Projects Gallery two years ago in New York for my 2006 calendar. That was really exciting and awesome—so many people came out and I was glad to have a venue to display so many of my visual arts—it’s just hard to keep doing that because so many of my connections are in the music industry. Of course, it would be really great if everybody could be more “multimedia all-around.” That’s what makes an artist an artist: to push against any medium that confronts us.
Now, I’ve interviewed a lot of musicians lately, and I’ve noticed that a lot of them majored in film in college. What kind of skills from film school carry over into a career in music?
For me, some of the skills I learned in film class are things I definitely, 100% use with writing songs. Continuity, keeping drama alive, the idea of the climax...a lot of the same kinds of ideas I had with filmmaking really can switch right over to writing music. Something else that really helped me a lot was working with video editing before I started working with electronic music. When you’re programming electronic music on the computer, the programs are so similar to the editing programs for making videos, so that was a really good thing to have known beforehand.
Speaking of movies, I saw Itty Bitty Titty Committee recently, and in the press notes they said one of the characters was sort of inspired by you. Have you seen it?
I haven’t seen it yet, but I was actually supposed to be in the movie and I had to drop out at the last minute because I had a tour planned. I have seen one scene from it, and I know a lot of the people in it and I can’t wait to see it. I think it’s such a great idea and I’ve heard only good things about it.
You also had a small role in Shortbus, so I’m curious—with all these credits and your film school background, have you ever been interested in putting your own film together?
I don’t know. I mean, definitely when I was working on Shortbus, my interest was so intensely shifted from being behind the scenes to acting. I never had been that involved with that kind of major motion picture, I guess you could say. It was actually really fun and awesome. The acting bug bit me! I got excited to do that, so if anything, I think I would want to act some more. Performance is something that’s right up my alley.
Were there any women in the arts that really clicked with you as a kid?
When I was younger, I was really into Lynn Breedlove from the band Tribe 8. She was my biggest inspiration, I think, for sure. When I was coming out, I had heard about Tribe 8 coming to Oberlin College, and they had taken their shirts off and the college had made them stop playing and the police even came. I was so into that story! I was pretty into how those bands could be punk rock and they didn’t have to be conservative country singers.
I know that at one point you were going to put out a CD with New England Roses that was composed completely of Tracy Chapman covers. I’m assuming she was a big influence on you too?
Yeah, totally. I mean, really, at the time I was coming out I was just into anything gay. I didn’t realize that you could still be a part of the same music community that I was part of before I came out. I thought that gay people could only listen to one kind of music or wear one kind of outfit, that all gay people were the same. When I realized that it was possible to not do that, it was really exciting, but at the same time I give so much credit to any of the lesbians who were making music or making art that at that time. I was super into the Indigo Girls and Tracy Chapman and Melissa Etheridge. I was in the Melissa Etheridge fan club!
Oh, yeah?
I was really into anything gay. I was like, “If it’s gay, I’ll try it.” I guess I wanted to explore my community and see everything out there and find my niche.
For your Lesbian Utopia calendar last year, you traveled mostly in the South, taking pictures at RV stops. How did that plan come about?
We really wanted to go across the country to the places we thought would be the most different, so we chose a Southern route. There were places we really wanted to go to in Texas, in Atlanta, in West Virginia, so it just kind of worked out that way. We found a bunch of places that turned out to be perfect for the adventure we were looking for.
How is the gay vibe different in a more rural area, as opposed to New York or Los Angeles?
Everything we take for granted in the city was just really apparent to us as we were traveling. A lot of the people at the parks were not out and couldn’t be out to their family and the people they worked with, and we found ourselves in a lot of places that were very secretive, and we wanted to respect that as much as we could. Also, the general radical view of queer people in urban areas—it’s not like that everywhere. When you go to a dance party or a bar, things are completely different, so it was just very exciting and eye-opening.
Can you give me some examples of how different a dance party might have been there?
Yeah...like, we went to this bear party at this place called Lumberjacks in Georgia, and I think there were only three women there, and they were the only women who ever came there. But it was also the only place they could ever go. Also, many of the people didn’t want to get photographed and didn’t want people to know they were there. But we had a lot of fun—the DJ was playing lots of really mainstream dance music and there was a drag queen doing performances and we had the best time ever. It wasn’t like in New York where you go somewhere to hear a certain kind of music and hang around with a certain kind of people.
So are these rural bars actually more diverse, because everyone has to go to the same place?
Yeah, exactly, every place was so diverse. They’re completely multiracial, with different classes of people, different sizes, and different ideas about what constitutes good music. Did you ever see the film Small Town Gay Bar?
Yes, I did.
It’s so weird, because I just watched it the other day, and it’s so similar to when I went to the campgrounds—like, “Here’s the one place where queer people can go camping.” It’s the same idea as there being one bar that people can go to. Obviously, they do have certain things in common, and that’s what they’re willing to be there for. It’s like this home away from home where people can be free to be who they are. That, to us, was just amazing to see. The hardest thing was how much we were internally challenged. In the calendar, I talk about how we had all these arguments about race and class and gender and all this stuff. For example, the women-only campgrounds never let men in and the men-only campgrounds usually let women in, so that was really interesting for us. How men feel about the lesbian community and how women feel about the gay community...it’s very different.
Do you think those attitudes are different in a rural community than they would be in a major metropolitan area?
I think that the kind of communication we have in a major metropolitan area we take for granted sometimes. There are the same issues everywhere, but they’re expressed differently. Like, we went to this place in West Virginia that was mostly men, and these guys were in a hot tub with dildos on their heads. We were laughing, but they were kind of confused by us and didn’t know what to think. This one dude thought I was a guy, and they were really kind of freaked out. Even though they were gay, they had very interesting ideas about what gender was supposed to be, and they were actually pretty rude about it! We thought that it was our safe space too, but the reality is that it’s only safe for the people who made it. There’s conflict everywhere for millions of reasons.
And finally, before you joined Le Tigre, they wrote the song Hot Topic, which is kind of a love letter to the women and men that have influenced them. If you’d been in the band at that point, and it was up to you to add people, who would you have added to the shout-outs?
Well, I definitely would have added Lynn Breedlove and the Indigo Girls. Also, Joan Armatrading. Hmm, who else?
No Melissa Etheridge? You were in the fan club!
OK, I guess I would add Melissa Etheridge. [Laughing] I really do respect her a lot!