Musician JD Samson

Waiting for JD Samson amid the clatter of the Tate Modern café, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. The New York Times has called her ‘an icon of nerdy cool’. She’s been splashed across the press on numerous occasions speaking out on gay rights. She’s published her own calender and started a performance art group called ‘Dykes Can Dance’. Oh and she’s the poster girl for Le Tigre, the feminist electropunk band that she joined ten years ago, and propelled to global success.

She’s in town to discuss her latest group, MEN (the name comes from the life philosophy ‘what would a man do?’) who are about to embark on a European tour. MEN originally started out as a DJ duo with Le Tigre bandmate Johanna Fateman in 2007. Busy with her salon business and starting a family, Fateman eventually took a backseat and Samson teamed up with Michael O’Neill (Ladybug Transistor) and Ginger Brooks Takahashi (LTTR), to form MEN as it is today.

In person, Samson is soft-spoken, polite and utterly charming, immediately asking how my day is going, and whether I have been waiting long. Through the course of our lunch, conversation ranges from starting out in Le Tigre to her new-found interest in neuroscience. This clearly isn’t just press chat – when I bring up a book I have read on the subject (Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat) she launches enthusiastically into a debate on Sacks’ theories.

Despite visiting London on numerous occasions, Samson is only just starting to find her feet in our maze of a city.

‘For years I felt like London was one of these places that we flew through, but never did anything interesting when we were here. It’s a hard place to be on tour,’ she explains.

‘So it took me a while, but recently I’ve been having a really great time here. I’ve been spending a lot of time at the George and Dragon. It’s made me think new things about London, I’ve had my eyes opened recently.’

When it comes to the London music scene however, she never needed any convincing.

‘I love that there are so many record stores here – people actually selling music – that doesn’t happen in the US anymore. It’s really depressing. Yesterday I was looking at records for hours, it really took me back.’

‘The music scene is amazing here. I never go to shows in New York – it’s just not the same. Musicians aren’t as adventurous. Here you can really stop and think about what you want to do, and people will listen.’

Communicating something important through music clearly matters to her, but Samson insists that expressing political views in her art was never a conscious decision. ‘I’m just interested in the way that people are free or not free’ she shrugs.

After initially joining Le Tigre as a projectionist, she slowly began to get more involved in their stage shows. Coming home from an early tour, she remembers arriving home and wondering out loud ‘am I in this band? I don’t really know how to ask them…’

Fans of Samson’s music fans rave about her bands’ live shows, and it’s clear that the performance element is a crucial part of all her projects. While her main influences lie clearly with early punk bands, she name-checks both Peaches and The Gossip as current inspirations and ‘friends, people who really care about what they’re doing’.

So what about MEN? Originally a DJ project with Johanna Fateman, MEN has evolved into an electropunk tour de force, combining progressive dance music with a performance art stage show. ‘When we have time and money, a great stage show is number one on our list’ Samson says.

Their first single, Credit Card Babies was released earlier this year and the next single, Off Our Backs is out this week, supported by a UK tour hitting everywhere from Glasgow to London.

I was originally going to say that after spending some time with Samson, she’s definitely got a new fan. But something tells me she doesn’t want that. In contrast to the haze of identikit reality TV musicians out there, desperate for fame above all else, Samson seems to be driven by a genuine passion for what she does, and a desire to connect with people rather than to inspire worship.

During the entire interview, her eyes lit up most when talking about Peaches’ recent tour, where the singer walked along on the audience’s hands and they held her up. ‘It takes a lot to ask people for help, to ask people to hold you up’ she says, explaining her passionate reaction. ‘It breaks down so many barriers’.

www.myspace.com/men