While on tour with CSS, JD Samson and her latest project MAN hit up the Culture Collide festival in Los Angeles. Backstage at the festival, I caught up with the member of Le Tigre to discuss the tour, MAN’s latest record and “coming out” as a poor musician on The Huffington Post.
So how is the tour with CSS going?
It’s going awesome. We just kind of started it. We met up with them in Vancouver and then came down the coast. Unfortunately we didn’t get to play a regular (headline) show with them here (in Los Angeles), it would have been fun. But yeah it’s been awesome. They’re really cool and great live.
I saw photos of them last night, and it looked like they killed it.
Yeah I’m sure tonight’s going to be really fun with them.
You’re on a little bit before them, about 4.30pm, how do the day spots treat you at these sorts of events? A good bit of sun today too…
I like that. It’s fun to play during the day sometimes. When people aren’t wasted. It becomes more about the music then.
I think the last time I saw you in band mode was in the same context, doing a day spot at Big Day Out with Le Tigre. What have your experiences been like in Australia?
Oh I love it. I’ve been there every year since Big Day Out. I usually do DJ gigs, so that’s been really awesome to have a great fanbase there.
It’s usually around New Years you’re there right?
Yeah I’ve been there every year for New Years for the past four years. And this is my first year being there in a long time. But we’re coming back to do Mardi Gras in March.
The last time I saw you DJ was at the Perez Hilton party at SXSW. What have your SXSW experiences been like?
I actually hate it. It’s one of the worst things in the world to me. When people invite us to play, or say that we should play, I get really angry because I don’t want to do it. MEN did it last year and we played like eight shows in four days or something…
The experience of trying to get your gear to the place, and walking down the street because you can’t drive… I just don’t like it.
Perhaps you’d enjoy it more as a punter?
I guess. Because having an artist pass doesn’t really get you in anywhere.
So let’s walk about MEN. The debut album was released in February of this year, and was quite a while in the making. I understand some of the tracks date as far back at 2007? So I can’t imagine you ever sitting idly… are you already working towards a follow up record?
Well yeah that’s right, we do have a lot of songs. We’ve finished a lot of new songs this Summer. We were working on material for the new album in upstate New York. And now we have them and we’re not sure how we’re going to release them. But they’re there and we’re talking with some producers and a bunch of stuff…
I relistened to much of the record today and was reminded as to how much fun the music is. This seems to be something you’ve always been quite good at putting together…
Well this might change on the new record. I think I’ve found myself feeling really… you know it’s like you’re famous for something, and it’s hard to try and work out what that is. But on the MAN record, for instance, it does sound fun, but the lyrics are actually really depressing. And so I guess it started making me think about whether or not I could do what I wanted instead of what people expected of me. As in making the music feel like the lyrics. So we’ll see. It’s a dance record, but will be a little different, and we’re exciting to be trying new things. And I think part of it is also just taking chances. I think the record we put out was easy and smooth, even just mix wise. We’re excited to put our fingerprints all over it, and be as punk as we are.
When it comes with the collaborative process of MAN, there seems to be so many components to it, on stage and on record… there’s the spoken word performance part, there’s the performance and production side of things (e.g. dance) and of course the music itself. How does that come together as a group?
With the record you know, that was myself and Ginger (Brooks Takahashi) and Michael (O’Neill) writing the record. Ginger actually left the band before the record came out. So it was interesting. We had to actually… everything changed then in terms of writing. Now Michael and I write everything together, and we work with a producer who’s more like an engineer, co-producer. Then we mix the record. So collaboratively, we both write it. We both usually start with an idea, like a sample or a drum beat, and then say “let’s write a song like this” or “this is what this song is about…” Then I guess lyrically and vocally, that would be my part. It’s a cool collaboration.
We also started this band with visual artists, and I think as we’ve gotten more and more like a band, the visual artists have said “this is weird, I don’t want to do this anymore”. So we definitely have input from other people, who aren’t on tour with us.
When it comes to the visual arts, are you handling the projections? Going back to your roots?
I do think it’s very important for me to get visual a couple of weeks before tour. It’s some weird thing for me, whether it creates a lot of stress for me or not is the question, but I definitely need to get on my hands and knees and paint something before I go on tour.
You’ve been working in visual arts since you were quite young. At what point did that translate into working on music… or was it the other way around?
I went to school for experimental film, and then went on tour with Kathleen, Johanna and Sadie (Le Tigre) doing slides, and they were like “you’re going to be in this band now” from pretty much the second I started working with them. So that’s how it all happened, and it was definitely a weird thing because I had no idea how to be in the music industry. But there I was… and I did!
Speaking of the industry, I was sent the link to your Huffington Post article yesterday, in which you “come out for the second time” – this time as a poor musician. It’s a beautifully written piece and I felt that your main point was that there are too many expectations for what it means to be an artist, or a celebrity. Because when there are people like “Snooki” running around, the very definition of it has changed.
Exactly.
What do you think could change it? Does it start with people like yourself engaging in conversation on the topic?
There’s clearly a problem with the economy… we need to be putting our money into credit unions and not the banks first of all. The Occupy Wall Street thing happened at an interesting time with this article, all that coming to a head at the same time, was really why this article means so much I think. But I think there are a lot of different things we can do to improve the economy from a government standpoint, but I think for the arts it’s important that we raise awareness that we’re all in a failing economy, and we’re in a wartime economy, and for these reasons we can’t look at somebody and place expectations on them.
I don’t know how much money Snooki has either, to be honest with you. She might be famous, but she might not be rich. We’re all the same. That’s something that’s always been really important for me to prove as an artist. My sentiment and sensibility has always been that I’m not different than you and you’re no different than that guy over there. So that’s why I wrote that article. And also we’re told when we’re little that we can do whatever we want do. And that might be true, but that might not put you where you want to be.
I think that instead of telling your kids that you can do whatever you want to do, you should be like, you can do whatever you want to do but you should think about what your life is going to be like if you do do that.
I think even if we had been told that though, we probably wouldn’t have listened.
*laughs* I know, right. My Mum wrote to me after reading my article, and was just like “I hear you,” you know what I mean? It’s funny… it’s been really interesting to say the least, every person I’ve seen has said something about it, and everyone’s writing me e-mails.
It was only posted a few days ago wasn’t it?
Yeah. It’s definitely struck a chord with people of our generation, for sure. And I’m glad to have made people think and to have start a conversation.
I think you said something along the lines of how there comes a point where ‘getting by’ just isn’t enough, even if it might be ‘living the dream’…
Yeah I think that’s the thing… there’s a difference between survival and living okay… To me, I think I’m living OK until I realise I haven’t been to the dentist in 10 years, and that’s actually a problem. And if I had to go I don’t know how I’d pay for it. And THAT’S survival. Every human deserves that sort of care.
Any thoughts to open up your own cinema in New York?
That’s the thing though, I have no interest in starting up my own business, I’d much prefer to work for someone else. It’s getting to that point in this economy where it’s too much of a gamble to start up anything yourself.
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Don’t miss JD Samson when she returns to Sydney to perform at Mardi Gras in March (full details TBA), and the debut record from MAN Is in stores now.
You can read JD’s Huffington Post article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jd-samson/i-love-my-job-but-it-made_b_987680.html
