JD Sampson - Biography

JD Sampson, is a musician and a musical producer. He was born on this August 4, 1978. JD Samson’s work often examines questions of gender identifications through an aesthetical lens. JD Samson has performed with the groups Le Tigre and Men. JD Samson embodies the ideology and aesthetics of “nerdy cool.”

On August 4, 1978, JD Samson was born in a small town outside of Cleveland, Ohio. She was named Jocelyn Samson. Both of JD Samson’s parents had artistic temperaments. Her father took a job as a miner of sand and gravel and her mother had employment as a party decorator. For the first year of her life, the Samsons lived on a farm in the town of Newbury, Ohio. The Samsons moved to Pepper Pike, Ohio to give JD Samson and her sisters access to better education.

JD Samson was active in extracurricular activities and athletics, including the Environmental Club, the Orange High School Field Hockey, and the Northeastern Ohio All Star Team. Although JD Samson seemed like a typical teenager, she felt a distance and complicated relationship with her environment. When she was only fifteen-years old, JD Samson came out as a lesbian. JD Samson founded the first Gay/Straight alliance at her high school. JD Samson would travel to Cleveland in order to have access to queer friendly spaces. JD Samson had a lesbian aunt who lived in Los Angeles who offered the young woman emotional support.

When JD Samson was seventeen, she left home to attend Sarah Lawrence College. JD Samson studied queer studies with a focus in feminist experimental film. In 2000, she received a Bachelor’s degree in film. During her time in college JD Samson was able to explore the music scene in a way she had not been able to when she lived in Ohio. While in school, JD Samson worked as a campus tour guide and a manager at a café. She also worked for a queer theory professor as a research assistant.

JD Samson helped produce and direct the Sarah Lawrence College Film and Video Festival. One summer, she also traveled to Chicago in order to teach a course called The History of Graffiti for the Robert Taylor Boys and Girls Club. On instructions from a Queer Theory professor Beth Freeman, JD Samson sought the film maker Sadie Benning while she was in Chicago. JD Samson met Benning at the annual Chicago Dyke March. The two women became fast friends. JD Samson also began to focus on drawing and painting. She began to explore the limits of the various mediums she explored. She would take such experiments into her work in music.

When JD Samson was a senior at Sarah Lawrence College, in 2000, she joined Le Tigre. JD Samson originally worked for the group as a projectionist. JD Samson replaced Sadie Benning in Le Tigre as an actual performer in the group. In Judith Halberstam’s In a Queer Time & Place, Judith Halberstam holds Le Tigre as an example of one of the recent female punk bands who act not only as cultural producers but as cultural critics and archivist. The cultural production that JD Samson engages in is absolutely of high caliber but it also serves a rhetorical and critical function.

JD Samson collaborated with Tara Mateik and Emily Roysdon to form the group Dykes Can Dance. This conceptual dance collective that set to disprove the stereotype that lesbians did not have the skills to dance. Dykes Can Dance was also an attempt at protesting the New York requirement that clubs spend an exorbitant fee for cabaret licenses. In 2003, JD Samson and photographer Cass Bird created JD’s Lesbian Calendar. This project hoped to increase the visibility and appreciation of butch lesbians.

Around this time, JD Samson joined Sarah Shapiro to join The New England Roses, another band project. They release an album called Face Time with Son. JD Samson has collaborated with The Hems, the singer Peaches live band. She has also worked with the band Junior Senior.

Following her work on JD’s Lesbian Calendar, JD Samson toured the United States in a recreational vehicle in 2006. She used the images from this trip to create a project called JD’s Lesbian Utopia. In 2007, JD Samson and fellow Le Tigre member Johanna Fateman joined forces to form a new group Men. In this new electropop group, JD Samson continues to use music as a rhetorical tool for examining queer life. She also addresses trans concerns, sexual investment, and the economics of war. JD Samson has also appeared in John Cameron Mitchell’s Short Bus.