Rej Forester

Here’s a perfect snapshot of Rej Forester—as a toddler she knew all the words to “Black Hole Sun” before she learned her ABCs. Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky by a self-proclaimed “rocker fool” father who was deeply influenced by Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Audioslave and the rest of the “dad rock diaspora,” Rej knew almost before she could talk that music was the only path for her. What else she knew? That she was a young queer woman growing up in the deep American south, at a time when the political climate was still overtly homophobic at best. It was only a couple decades ago, but things were very different just two short decades ago, when Tegan and Sara and The L Word were the rare lesbian touchstones in mainstream media.

Growing up with the influences of hard rock, nu-metal and grunge, in high school Rej was hit with an emo phase (“Myspace was everything!”) and started writing her own music with the top-of-mind influences of screamo. Watching her dad relentlessly champion his own songs, and continually quit groups who wanted to go the cover band route, taught her from an early age to value original music and work as a solo artist. “I always wanted to write original music because I had a lot to say,” she remembers. “I worked on it on my own, even back when I was in high school. Something I learned from a really young age is that no one will believe in you unless you believe in you. People will shit on originality and creativity because it’s not what makes you money.”

Except, in Rej’s case, it did—at least to a point. After high school she moved to Europe, hitchhiking and busking for six years before coming back home to Louisville and transforming the music she’d been performing live for the last half a decade into an actual project. She called it GRLWood. “I played guitar and I had a box drum that I’d stand on,” she explained. “It had a backwards pedal, so it would be like a kick and a tambourine. I was playing GRLwood shows for over a year like that back around 2016-2017.” From the beginning, GRLwood was the synthesis of Forester’s own emotional responses to the world around her, channeled through a brain that seems capable of making a melody out of anything.

Demos and early recordings from that era—which Rej recorded in a closet at her mom’s house—quickly circulated and became known as the White Demos, or GRLwood self-titled. Her hooky, mischievous, brutally honest songwriting style is underwritten by a serious ear for guitar licks, percussion, and bass—unsurprisingly, a record deal, manager, and more industry infrastructure soon followed. As GRLwood developed, so did a cult following fanbase, particularly young queer women who felt seen and heard in these explicit, unabashedly aggressive songs that channeled the rage, grief, confusion, betrayal, loneliness, and yes, humor, that so frequently define the “othering” of the queer experience.

A pair of full-length releases—the tongue-in-cheek, psych-rock of Daddy in 2018 and relentless, bluesy deadpan of I Sold My Soul To The Devil When I Was 12 in 2019—quickly established Forester as a fearless lyricist who was ready to tackle everything from yes, daddy issues, to misinformation, homophobia, lust, sexuality, and school shootings. From this first initial set of albums, “I’m Yer Dad” and “Bisexual” and “I Hate My Mom” all became streaming hits with hundreds of millions of streams.

Soon, Rej was touring regularly with a drummer, but handling all the writing, singing, and guitar herself. She even performs with a bass rig so she can play guitar and bass at the same time. Right up until the pandemic, she continued to create and release music at an almost breakneck pace, as 2019’s Roommate Wanted EP and the 2020 I Need To Get Off My Phone EP illustrate. With two full-length albums and two EPs setting the tone for GRLWood, she’s continued recording over the last few years, but held off on releasing anything new as the music industry was still reestablishing after a period of uncertainty.

Now, as 2025 is quickly approaching, the floodgates have opened and GRLWood will release a trilogy of albums before the year is even up. Blood, the first of these, came out just a few short weeks ago, and will be followed by Sweat and Tears in short order. “Blood is all the rock music that people expect. Sweat is going to sound more commercial, it’s a lot more commercial rock and psych-rock, and then Tears is all pop and hip-hop music. So it’s going to be jarring for fans of GRLwood. But some of those songs have existed since 2017, even before Daddy came out, so that’s a side of GRLwood people haven’t gotten to hear yet.”

As they head out on the road once again, a couple of other notable opening slots have prepped Forester for bigger and bigger stages. GRLWood warmed up the crowd for Ohio hardcore band Devil Wears Prada’s side project God Alone—and Rej even has a scar from when the lead singer accidentally kicked a microphone into her face—and she still counts opening for Against Me! as one of her biggest accomplishments to date, citing Laura Jane Grace as another important inspiration, and part of the inspiration for her core rock sound. “I’m never going to fully stray away from rock music as GRLwood, it’s always mainly going to be rock music,” she says. “But it’s been awesome to really stretch my wings. I hope it opens the door to other things.”

In this new era, nothing is off limits for Rej, who knows her neurodivergence has always been part of the way she processes the world, as she deals with the impact of both Tourette’s syndrome and OCD. That, plus the sort of bad faith and duplicity always comes along with life as a public figure deeply influenced her new body of work. Facing not just the sexism of a male-dominated music industry but the blatant stereotypes and microaggressions that come along with being openly queer, Rej channeled her own pain, anger, and disappointment into a body of work that she hopes will serve as a portfolio. A showcase not just of her musicianship and work as a lyricist, but also the breadth of styles she plans to present in GRLwood.