From supporting the likes of Angus & Julia Stone, Alex Lahey, Evermore, The Butterfly Effect and more, gender fluid artist – Woody Samson debuts their new solo project with the single ‘Don’t Let Them’, a track to tell people to take a step aside and check yourself inside.

The Naarm-based artist has always turned to music as a rock in their rollercoaster life. Growing up music was always at the centre of what they did. They started off with classical trumpet at the age of 7 before turning to singing in church choirs. This musical life was always enforced by Woody’s mother. At the age of 14 Woody’s mum left, leaving a huge hole in their life. Lucky for Woody that consistency and support of music was always there and they turned to gain-driven guitars and songwriting to get them through.

Just like their life, their music has been painted with many colours. They joined a prog metal band (Alex Anonymous) shortly after school and spent a good part of their 20s getting over the trauma of their past. Just prior to COVID they returned to their love of music, this time ditching the retail job to be a full-time musician, starting off as House of Wood, writing and releasing music, selling out the Gaso for their EP launch and playing a sold-out show at the Leadbeater in celebration of the coinciding single release. Then COVID hit. Post COVID they have been playing 5+ shows a week at the busiest pubs around Naarm to pay the rent and hone their craft.

Fast forward to now and Woody surrounds themself with 5 instruments on stage on a weekly basis and writes music focusing on sharing insight into their life while being unapologetically themselves. This is exactly what ‘Don’t Let Them’ is all about, “It’s a celebration of celebrating yourself.” And this is exactly what Woody has done. They found themselves with other creatives, some of whom they perform with – Tejo D’Cruz, Lewis Ciavarella, Kiwat Kennel, Thea Fitzgerald, Lewis Toms, Camryn Jordans, Marcus Knight and Remedy to name a few. They say to surround yourself with like-minded people that will drive you to do and be your best and that’s what this collective of artists have done for Woody.

Much like a lot of their life, this single set a challenge. Steering away from your traditional 4 count beat track Woody wrote the song with the vocals in 5/4, guitars in 3/8 and drums in 4/4. What this means is that the four rhythms don’t meet until the 60th beat. You’ll feel it when it all comes in at a nice climax.
Woody spent their whole life listening to what others thought of them. With this debut, they saw this song as a way of taking back that power. As part of that they turned to Instagram and asked “what kind of things do people get challenged on that’s not the other person's business”. From this came an empowering track.

To celebrate the release of the track Woody will launch it at Baxter’s Lot in Fitzroy on the 23rd of September with a show in Tasmania later in November (more details to come).