Samantha Ronson

I don't want to put up some formal bio detailing my background, my childhood etc.... I waste enough time on my shrink's couch doing that... so I will just let you know what i think matters. I started playing guitar at around the age of 20. I grew up in a musical household, and after many years of avoidance i figured if you can't beat em, join em. So i took the guitar, my step-father (he has a band called Foreigner- he plays guitar)


(oh yeah- NOT Mick Ronson as some people seem to think) had left me when I started my freshman year of college, off the wall (roughly two years later) and started messing around. I bought a couple guitar books, mainly beatles songs, and decided to teach myself how to play. When I got bored of playing other people's songs (or trying to) I started writing my own.






A year or so later I started a band with my childhood friend, Max, who was a far better guitar player than I was. We played under the name lil red. The original band members were- Mike Williams on drums, Nigel Mogg on bass, Max LeRoy on lead guitar and me. Max and I wrote together and played a bunch of shows. A friend of mine brought Duncan Sheik to one of those "train wrecks", I was a fan of his music and had met him a few times so it wasn't that random. Anyway, after the show Duncan offered to help me record one of those songs, so I put down one of the two Jack and Cokes I had in my hands and wrote down his address. I showed up the next day, stood outside for about 20 minutes before ringing the bell, then just before I lost my nerve I buzzed. 3 years and 9 songs later (recorded) I signed a deal with roc-a-fella records. I guess I forgot to mention in the meantime I was dj'ing a lot in different clubs/lounges and spinning lots of private parties- that's how I met Damon Dash, at the end of one of those nights of dj'ing i played him my demo that I had been working on ( that kinda reads like I played him the demo the first night I met him, but I didn't it was a while after i met him just at the end of a night)- just as a friend, not to sign with him or anything like that. Oops, he liked it- oops I signed with him. I don't regret it- how many white girls who play the acoustic guitar do you know with a roc-a-fella chain??? Anyway, I wrote and recorded most of what was to be RED with Duncan, did a few songs with Dallas Austin- one of them being Built this Way which was in Mean Girls- probably the reason you are reading this- I also worked with a cool guy named Damon Elliot and I managed to work with my brother, Mark Ronson in between his various projects.