General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20266 min read

Stick Figure

Stick Figure is an American reggae and dub (reggae style built on remixing instrument-heavy versions of tracks) project founded by singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Scott Woodruff, who writes, produces, and records every element of the studio music himself, supported on stage by a six-piece live band.¹ Woodruff began recording under the name in 2006 in Duxbury, Massachusetts, and the project later grew into one of the top-selling independent acts in American reggae, with four albums topping the Billboard Reggae Albums chart.²^•¹

Key fact	Detail
Origin	Solo studio project begun by Scott Woodruff in 2006 in Duxbury, Massachusetts²
Studio method	Woodruff records every element himself, guitar, drums, bass, keys, and vocals, on each album¹
Chart peaks	Burial Ground (2012), Set in Stone (2015), World on Fire (2019), and Wisdom (2022) each reached No. 1 on the Billboard Reggae Albums chart³^•⁴^•¹
Catalog sales	Over one million copies sold and more than three billion streams⁵
Certification	"Smokin' Love" featuring Collie Buddz became the band's first RIAA gold single on November 29, 2023, exceeding 500,000 units⁶
Label	Ruffwood Records, Woodruff's own label; recording base at Great Stone Studios in Oakland, California, the former home of Green Day⁷^•⁵
Live mascot	Cocoa, a rescued Australian Shepherd tour dog, who appears on stage and has her own 501(c)(3) charity⁵

Origins as a solo project

Woodruff started playing drums at age 12 and later taught himself guitar, keyboard, and bass to build his own tracks.⁸ In high school he began recording albums under the Stick Figure name, trading bootleg CDs of unreleased demos while producing music from his bedroom.⁵^•⁹ His debut, The Sound of My Addiction, found listeners through word of mouth and social media, and sales of tens of thousands of copies of each self-produced release funded his travel.⁵

Using looping, Woodruff built rich reggae and dub arrangements entirely alone, and he founded his own label, Ruffwood Records, releasing several albums before recruiting anyone to play the material live.⁷ In his first six years as a solo artist he produced and released four albums.⁸

The move to California and the live band

Woodruff lived in Duxbury when he began his career and moved to California in 2012 to form a band, settling eventually in Santa Cruz.⁸^•¹⁰ The move placed him closer to a thriving American reggae community and connected his studio-based project with live performance culture.³ Keyboardist Kevin Bong, known as KBong, joined after answering a Craigslist post, and the band's first touring offer came with The Green.⁹

Playing live, the band currently consists of keyboardist KBong, drummer Kevin Offitzer, bass player Tommy Suliman, guitarist and keyboardist John Gray (Johnny Cosmic), who also sings harmony, and percussionist Will Phillips, while Woodruff handles guitar and lead vocals out front; extra vocals come from TJ O'Neill.⁵ Bong, Offitzer, and Suliman have been with the band for ten years.⁵ Cocoa, Woodruff's rescued Australian Shepherd, joins the band on stage and is the only dog to receive a trophy for her role in selling out Red Rocks Amphitheatre in one day.⁵

Albums and chart success

Burial Ground (2012) reached No. 1 on Billboard's Reggae Albums chart and marked a turning point, showing that an artist working largely on his own terms could build serious momentum.³ As recently as 2012 Woodruff was putting up his own posters for the album at the California Roots Festival; by 2019 Stick Figure headlined that event.⁵

Set in Stone (2015), written, produced, and recorded by Scott Woodruff himself, as were his previous releases, also reached No. 1 on the Reggae Albums chart and topped the Heatseekers Albums chart.¹⁵ 1 on the Reggae Albums chart and topped the Heatseekers Albums chart.⁸^•⁴ It includes "Smokin' Love" featuring Collie Buddz, "Sound of the Sea," and "Fire on the Horizon."⁸ "Smokin' Love" became the band's first RIAA-certified single when it was certified gold on November 29, 2023, for sales and streaming equivalents exceeding 500,000 units.⁶

World on Fire (2019) peaked at number 34 on the Billboard Top 200, reached No. 6 on the overall Top Albums chart, and hit No. 1 on both the Independent and Reggae album charts, selling over 300,000 copies including streaming equivalents according to Nielsen SoundScan data.⁵ The title track, a collaboration with Slightly Stoopid, was among the first songs made in Woodruff's new studio and was, by his own account, originally about the California wildfires.¹⁰^•¹¹

Wisdom, released September 9, 2022, is the project's seventh studio album, written, produced, and recorded by Woodruff at Stick Figure-owned Great Stone Studios in Oakland, with bandmate Johnny Cosmic co-mixing each track.⁵ It dethroned Bob Marley & The Wailers' Legend from the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Reggae Albums chart, a rare achievement in recent reggae chart history.¹² The album features Barrington Levy, the veteran Jamaican reggae vocalist, on "Soul of the World."¹

Free Flow Sessions, released November 14, 2025, debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Reggae Albums chart with the strongest first-week sales and streams of any reggae release that year, including over 3,526,490 Spotify streams globally.¹² Across eight studio albums, the catalog has sold well over one million copies and been streamed over three billion times.⁵^•¹³

Sound and production

Stick Figure's music is built on roots-dub reggae with cavernous grooves, thick rhythms, and electronic orchestration; the melodies lean toward the accessible side of roots reggae, and the lyrics reflect warmth, love, unity, and good times.⁵^•² Woodruff has cited reggae figures including Bob Marley and the band Slightly Stoopid as inspirations.⁸ For Wisdom he took a more holistic approach to writing, and the album's sound has been described as owing as much to electronic artists like Kygo or Tame Impala as to Bob Marley or Sublime.⁷^•⁵

The project remains fully independent, with no major label or outside producers, and works with the independent Ineffable Music Group for touring and market support.⁵^•¹ Ineffable's president, Adam Gross, has described the arrangement plainly: Stick Figure is a band name, but one person creates all the music and runs the business.¹

Live impact

On an almost entirely sold-out 2022 tour, Stick Figure averaged over 4,200 tickets sold per show according to Pollstar.⁵ A later summer tour placed the band on the Pollstar Live 75 list, with over 100,000 tickets sold and more than $8 million in ticket sales across twelve headline dates, plus headline shows in Brazil and Chile drawing over four thousand people each.¹ The band has a long history of sharing bills with California reggae and roots acts including Pepper, Slightly Stoopid, Rebelution, Iration, and Fortunate Youth.¹³ Concerts are marked by audience sing-alongs, hard-hitting bass, extended improvisational interludes, and the entrance of Cocoa the tour dog.⁵

In 2026, the band's 2019 song "Angels Above Me" drew renewed attention when AI-generated tracks with near-identical names, lyrics, and melodies went viral on streaming platforms, sending streaming traffic back to the original human-made recording.¹⁴

References

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 17, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 17, 2026; Oct 25, 2026