Nick Caito Photo
Michelle Saxton.
Michelle Saxton recalled her first foray into booking and promoting shows under the name GO KAT GO! with a big smile at Three Sheets, the former Rudy’s.
“My very first show was in this room, right on that stage!” she said. “It was September 2003, and the bands were the Blind Pharoahs from New York and the Tombs Tones from New Jersey, both old friends of mine, and I was like ‘Let’s do this you guys! Come up and play!’ And the rest is history.”
Saxton is now in her second decade of bringing acts to New Haven from as far away as Europe and as close as this city itself. For the past 15 years Saxton has set up between 30 and 50 shows a year, two to three bands each night.
Her annual GO KAT GO! birthday show, the 15th at Cafe Nine — featuring the Screamin’ Rebel Angels and the Moonrisers — is scheduled for this Saturday the 26th. But her musical memories of New Haven began back in the 1990s while a student at Southern Connecticut State University.
“I’ve always been into music,” said Saxton. “When I started college in New Haven I really got into the local music scene. I went to the Tune Inn in my earlier years supporting a lot of the ska and punk bands there. I was there pretty much every weekend.” She also spent a lot of time at the Daily Caffe and Rudy’s, seeing as many punk and ska shows as she could.
“I got to know a lot of the bands and was going to a lot of shows, and from there is where I really decided I wanted to be a little more involved.”
It was at WNHU where GO KAT GO! became an actual entity.
“There were a couple of friends of mine that were community volunteers for WNHU and they were like, ‘hey, why don’t you do a show?’” Saxton said. “And I had been there for a couple of interviews and thought, ‘oh this is pretty cool,’ and I’m supporting all the bands that come through and all of my friends were in bands, so in May 2001 I decided, ‘screw it, let’s try to do this.’”
Armed with the tagline “GO KAT GO: Keeping New Haven greasy since 2001” Saxton held the Tuesday night 8 to 10 p.m. slot at WNHU until 2010, playing “mostly all rockabilly and psychobilly. I would also throw in a little punk and Western swing, and branch off from there.” Saxton eventually used the radio show as a launching pad to become a booker and promoter of live shows that included bands she knew, loved and wanted to bring to New Haven.
“I was always going to NYC and Boston for shows,” said Saxton. “What actually happened was a lot of the bands I wanted to see would completely skip over New Haven. So I’m spending all this money and time and gas to drive out of state, and I’m thinking everybody has to drive through New Haven, so if these bands are playing in NYC and Boston and Providence they are literally driving right through. I just decided one day I want to see these bands right here in my back yard.”
“It was nice to have the radio show to promote and spin the bands, so I kind of used that as a little gateway,” she continued. “I would spin the bands I booked on the show and then say, ‘hey I’m booking shows now. Go see this band on Saturday night. They’re coming through.’”
Her first birthday show at Rudy’s was in January 2004. Her first show at Cafe Nine was in February of the same year. All of her subsequent birthday shows have been at Cafe Nine.
“Even when I moved to Massachusetts for two years I never went away completely,” Saxton said. “I stopped doing the radio show, but I still had my birthday show here and I still booked a couple of shows here. I thought a decade was a good round number to end [the radio show] on. There were no issues or anything, I just figured it was time, but when I moved back here I got right back into it with the booking.”
Saxon became the most excited when talking about booking the live shows, referring it to numerous times as her “passion.”
“It started with me saying ‘let me book these bands that I know and that I really like’ and then it grew from there. The radio show was a huge help because I would get record labels and bands from all over the world sending CDs and stuff, and after years of playing these bands they were finally like, ‘hey, they’re going to be on the East Coast. You want to book them?’”
“And I said yes!” she continued. “Some worked out that way, and other ones, bands that I really loved, I hunted down. I would say, ‘you got to let me know when you’re on the East cCoast because we will make a New Haven show happen.’ Some of them took years, and when I would get them I would say, ‘we’ve been emailing for six years! We’re finally going to see you guys live!’”
The excitement Saxton brings to GO KAT GO! comes from the place of being a fan of the music and the local scene and wanting to marry the two.
“That’s always really exciting, getting those bands I love to come to New Haven, and the cool thing over the years is just the rapport that I’ve built with a lot of these bands. I think it just kind of speaks volumes, these huge bands that won’t usually play a place as small as café nine. Los Straitjackets, for example, have played for ten thousand people. They tour the world, and they always come back to café nine. Over the years via word of mouth so many bands come here, and they think New Haven is a cool little city and they’re like ‘wow, you’re really nice’ and they end up coming back.”
“The other thing is I’m a promoter, but this is my hobby. It’s my passion. It’s a lot of work sometimes. I can have three or four shows a month, and I’m making flyers and copies and I pass them out and do a lot of leg work, but it’s my hobby and it’s my passion built on my reputation. They know I’m a good person. These touring bands that go all over the country, they sometimes they get shafted. We don’t work like that.”
“Many of the bands are my friends, and if they’re not, they will be eventually, because they’ll play and we will hang out and they’ll be like, ‘hey, we like this place — we’ll come back next year.’ And it kind of just builds from there.”
GO KAT GO Birthday show flyer.
Her birthday show at Cafe Nine has become an annual event. Screamin’ Rebel Angels, according to Saxton, “have gotten really big. They’ve been touring Europe a lot, and they have a brand new album, which drops that weekend, so it’s actually the Connecticut CD release party that night as well.”
The Moonrisers from Boston will also be performing at the birthday show. “It’s their first live show, but it’s an all-star line-up of Boston musicians,” said Saxton. “I’m so excited! And there’s always cake too!”
Saxton is continuing the momentum of 2019 with three more shows at Cafe Nine after her birthday show, the first of which features the return of Robert Gordon to the club on State and Crown.
“He’s a rockabilly legend,” said Saxton. “That show includes an all-star lineup. His band mates are all well known in their own right.” The Tommys from New Haven will also be performing at that show.
Feb. 2 brings the Gutter Demons, a psychobilly band from Canada, and Diablogato from Boston. On March 30 Saxton has booked “something a little different” for Cafe Nine. “We’ve got Straight to Hell, which is a Clash tribute act from NJ, and a Sex Pistols tribute act called The Bollocks, and I just added The Hymans, a local Ramones tribute act, to that. Three kick-ass punk bands you can’t see the originals of again!”
Saxton’s enthusiasm as a promoter and a fan is contagious. “It might sound a little selfish, but these are the bands I want to see. These bands rock, and I want them here,” she said. But as her track record shows, Saxton isn’t the only one who wants to see these bands. “The demand is outrageous. I could do shows every single weekend, but I don’t want to oversaturate the market because then it wouldn’t be as special as the shows are now. They’re more or less monthly, so it gives people something to look forward to.”
Saxton always has her eyes and ears out for new acts to bring to town while also getting as many well-known and legendary acts as she can.
“I try to be a step ahead of the game with a lot of the bands. I’ve always been like that,” she said, though she noted it was not easy to put into words exactly what she looks for in a new band.
“You just kind of get that feeling. It could be different. It’s not even genre based. I don’t know, for me I’m just so into music and my music. It just hits you, and you get goosebumps. There’s just something there. It’s hard to really describe it.”
“Over the years I’ve had some legends … Sleepy LeBeef and Sonny Burges, they recorded on Sun back in the day,” she continued. “I’ve had Wanda Jackson here three times over the years. She’s the first lady of rock ‘n’ roll, the queen of rockabilly. And Old Crow Medicine Show — who have gotten really big, they just played College Street and are playing huge venues now — I had them maybe 13 or 14 years ago at a Sunday matinee at Cafe Nine. Who wouldn’t have loved to see them there?”
The bottom line for Saxton is being able to share the music she loves in the city that she loves with as many people as possible, many who have become an integral part of her life.
“The New Haven scene for me is like family. A lot of people have been around since the beginning, and they’re such a close-knit group. I think when other people from other states and other bands come here you get that vibe. Seeing what bands have to deal with on the road — some of the venues and the club owners and the promoters that can be super sketchy — it is hard to trust. You can’t blame them. That’s why they come back here year after year. Some of these bands, there is nowhere else in the country that they are playing venues this small, but they will come here because after 10 or 15 years it’s like home to them.”
Through it all Saxton is never without gratitude for what she does and where she does it.
“I’m just thankful that I get to do this for a hobby in one of the coolest cities in the country. Like I said, I deal with bands from all over the world and they come here and they’re like, ‘wow, you got something special here.’ And I do know that, and I don’t take it for granted. I know what it is. I’ve been involved in the scene for over 25 years. I’m appreciative of what we have, and I try to spread that and let others feel the same thing.”
Saxton’s annual birthday show is this Saturday, Jan. 26, at Cafe Nine. More info about that show as well as future GO KAT GO! shows can be found at the Cafe Nine website or the GO KAT GO! Facebook page.