DJ and producer Lady Kate has spent most of her life behind a set of turntables. Growing up, she would tag along with her teenage sisters to the skating rink in her native Southern California neighborhood. On Friday nights, there would be a skate party featuring a DJ, and Kate found herself completely captivated by the person in the booth controlling the tunes and setting the vibe for the skating teens. Only 10 years old at the time, Kate quickly weaseled her way into the booth and started studying the features of a turntable. By the time she turned 12, she went out and got a work permit and became the official Friday night DJ for the skating rink.

Fast forward to the present, and her years of tireless dedication to her craft have paid off. Lady Kate has become the first-ever female DJ not only for the Sacramento Kings, but for the entire NBA, a title that she says, “has been so much fun and an honor to be a part of breaking that ceiling.” She is responsible for the audio entertainment that fills in the gaps and adds character to moments in the game, and can be seen doing her thing from a booth overlooking the court just right to the main entrance of the Golden 1 Center. Starting this month, the DJ will begin her weekly residency at Revival at the Sawyer, a move that she says will help her usher in a new phase of her career and cement her persona as an artist who is true to the human elements of her craft. We spoke with DJ Lady Kate about her new residency, as well as the moments through her career that have helped her get to this point.

How did you land a gig with the Kings?
So basically, the Kings did a call out for DJs back when they were still at Sleep Train Arena. The first round was that you had to send in a three-minute video of yourself doing all your tricks and also tell why you want to be a Kings DJ. So I sent in the video and told them why and they ended up choosing me and about 10 other DJs for the second round. Then, they held live auditions at Sleep Train Arena, which was totally nerve-wracking. No pressure at all. They sprung a lot of challenges on us and had us talk on the mic and pretend we had a stadium full of people.

Wait, they had you pump up a non-existent party? The arena was empty?
There were no people! It actually made it even more nerve-wracking than if there were people there. I’m doing my thing and it’s dead quiet in the arena. We were totally improvising the whole thing and it ended up going really really well. They chose me and two other DJs to represent the Kings officially, and the rest is history. I’ve been with them through the old generation at Sleep Train and now the new generation at the Golden 1 Center … It’s really a dream come true.

How do you craft an experience for fans at the games?
The games are incredibly fast-paced. One thing that I love about DJing for the Kings is that there is never a dull moment. At any given time, we have multiple people in our ear feeding us cues and directions. I have to make sure I am in sync with the crowd, the actual flow of the game, the audio-visuals and any other unexpected things the event may throw at me. DJing a live Kings game is actually incredibly dynamic and interactive, and you have to be prepared to do tons of things at once. That’s what I enjoy the most. It’s a lot of responsibility up there and you really have to know how to juggle. The game is constantly changing so you have to be prepared to alter your material for all of those moments. Everything is freestyled and based on
the game.

You’re the first and only female DJ in the NBA! Tell me what it’s like holding that title.
It has been so much fun and an honor to be a part of breaking that ceiling. I think the last 10 years of this industry has been the most trying for women. We go through a lot of judgement; lord forbid if you dress like a woman and rock heels behind the DJ booth, because if you do, they are going to assume that’s why you got the position. There is a lot of sexism going on, and I’ve experienced it firsthand. I’ll go up into a DJ booth and I can’t even get the other DJ to shake my hand or say what’s up because they think I’m a joke because I am a girl. But, the second I do my thing and step out of the booth, they see what I am about and I get my respect. I’m a human, I’m a woman and there are days when I want to wear heels and a dress and then there are the times I’m going to wear my hat on backwards and rock my oversized Kings jersey. I can be and do what I want. I’m done with all the stereotypes and I’m so glad the Kings are my partner in helping break these molds and giving me a platform.

You’ve also worked in radio for a long time. Tell me about your show.
It’s called Clubhouse Radio and it is a syndicated music show. All we play is EDM and house music. We air on Friday and Saturday nights every single weekend and we air on stations all over the country. I’ve been in radio for a very long time. When I was 14, a guy from a Palm Springs radio station came into the rink with his family and ended up hearing me on the mic. He asked me if I ever thought of working in radio. Him and my parents ended up exchanging info and he got me involved in radio. I interned at the radio station until I was 18, and when I was 18 they hired me full time.

You now have a DJ residency at the Revival atop the Sawyer Hotel on Saturday nights. Tell me all about it.
I connected with them because I was really seeking a place to call home and pursue a residency. They accepted me with open arms and I am beyond excited to have a weekly platform there. This is my inaugural residency as an artist. My whole entire career, I’ve been a DJ. Now, the term “DJ” is so loose, and to transition from becoming a DJ to an artist is the hardest part for any DJ’s career. This is my opportunity to play music that I produce, that I personally like, and to give support to others in the industry. The Revival is so fun and the view from my booth is priceless. You can catch me there Saturday nights.

Do as the Lady says and catch her at her new weekly residency, Encore, at Revival at the Sawyer (500 J St., Sacramento). The party starts at 9:30 p.m. every Saturday night. Follow DJ Lady Kate on Facebook at Facebook.com/ladykatemusic.

**This interview first appeared in print on pages 22 – 23 of issue #263 (April 9 – 23, 2018)**

The last time the beloved American rock band Cage the Elephant played Sleep Train Arena in Sacramento, they opened for the legendary Foo Fighters and nearly stole the show with their stage-diving, crowd-surfing, guitar-riffing, microphone-swinging insane energy level. Now, Cage is coming back to the old arena in Natomas for a headlining show of their own on Saturday, March 12 and they’re bringing with them three of the best rock and indie bands on the scene right now: Silversun Pickups, Foals and Bear Hands. The Spring Fling Rock AF Tour, as it’s being called, is only stopping in 15 cities, so Sacramentans are lucky as hell to have a rock-tastic bill like this coming through town. Tickets are on sale now at Ticketmaster.com and start at just $29.50, a bargain for how much talent you’ll get to see grace the stage. Come on out and jump into spring with the fling. Visit Cagetheelephant.com for more info on the night’s headliner

Unlike Supercross or motocross, where getting the holeshot (the best start out of the gate) usually equates to placing high on the podium, Endurocross is a wholly different beast. The tracks feature many obstacles not unlike a professional motocross trials event, including (but most certainly not limited to): logs, rocky terrain, large over-sized tires and virtually anything that makes finishing a race near impossible. Folks expecting riders to fly by at warp speed and triple jumps will be sorely disappointed. However, those who enjoy a race that always includes lots of action, crashes and more inconsistency than imaginable will be pleased with this spectacle. This year’s race features amateur classes in addition to veterans, an awesome women’s class and, of course, a wicked assortment of national pros. One of the coolest things you can do at this event is walk the track (for an extra cost) to experience just how daunting the course is. Bring some extra cash for T-shirts and swag since this is one event you’ll want to share in bragging rights. Tickets start at $12.50 for kids and go as high as $45 (with VIP track walk). Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the action starts promptly at 7:30 p.m. More details at Sleeptrainarena.com

94.7’s Electric Christmas (feat. Bush, Young the Giant and others)
Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2014

Wednesday, Dec. 10: The night sky overhead is becoming pea soup as I pull into the parking lot of the Sleep Train Arena (formerly PowerBalance, forever ARCO to locals). Everyone expects an apocalyptic typhoon to hit town sometime toward the end of tonight’s show, and a streak of giddiness runs through the concertgoers as they straggle toward the entrance; there are worse fates than being stranded in a storm with a collection of their favorite performers.

Joywave – Photo by Phill Mamula

Once inside the arena, I take a few moments to mill through the crowd and assess the demographic that Sacramento’s favorite alt-rock station, 94.7, has brought forth. The population here skews rather young, from college-age couples to ‘tween wolf packs far too young to enjoy the fruits of the event sponsors, Bud Light. Scattered here and there among the budding hip crowd and a handful of parents are slightly older holdouts from the KWOD era that can only have come to rock out to Bush (a prediction that reveals itself to be correct at the end of the night).

I move down into my arena seat and prepare to take in Sactown’s largest holiday rock party; the bar has been set high for this event, riding off last year’s performances by Cage the Elephant, Joan Jett and Grouplove. The second annual Electric Christmas has arguably improved the diversity of their lineup, showcasing the acoustic pop of Vance Joy and the more frenetic, multi-instrument styling of Fitz and the Tantrums.

Here we break down EC 2014 set by set, to see if 94.7 was once again able to deliver the goods.

Joywave

Upstate New York up-and-comers Joywave have made a splash of late with unconventional music videos and a spot on the Earth to Echo soundtrack (a collaboration with Big Data, also sharing the stage). Tonight they hit all the right hooks, showing a natural gift for pop song craft embellished with retro-leaning electronic production. Something about them suggested a younger, mass-appeal Hot Chip. It might have been the insane catchiness of their tracks, or the oddball appeal of frontman Daniel Armbruster (whose narrow mustache became a compulsive focal point when blown up on the Jumbotron).

Vance Joy

The proceedings quickly took a turn for the intimate with the night’s second performance. Melbourne, Australia,-native Joy repped the folk flag, particularly the brand of bouncy, coming-of-age folk-pop that has become the pre-eminent flavor in millennial music tastes. His set was marked by sincerity and professionalism, briefly turning the spacious arena into a personal venue for the singer-songwriter’s acoustic musings. Despite one small power glitch involving a ukulele during his signature hit, “Riptide,” Joy breezed through his set with grace and left his audience feeling refreshed and relaxed (perhaps too relaxed).

Big Data

The character of this group asserted itself in charismatic frontman Alan Wilkis (the only permanent member), a high concept (the creeping surveillance of the Internet age) and a talented revolving cast of musicians that managed to complete Wilkis’ vision with their ominous yet party-friendly grooves. Two highlights of the night went to Big Data for the crowd-pleasing single “Dangerous” (featuring Joywave’s Daniel Armbruster) and a high quality cover version of Hall and Oates’ classic “Private Eyes,” its paranoid themes played up for theatrical effect.

Fitz and the Tantrums

Energy levels spiked somewhere in the middle of Tantrums’ set, their eclectic vibe meshing with every key demographic in the audience. As far as pop acts go, this one had it all, from new wave covers (Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams”), baritone sax solos and dirty dancing from front-people Noelle Scaggs and Michael Fitzpatrick. The showmanship on stage primed the audience for a mid-set command for everyone to “get low.” It wasn’t too difficult to get people to comply.

Young the Giant

Judging from the intermittent displays of crowd tweets on the Jumbotron, the majority of concertgoers were amped for the penultimate group, whose plaintive, anthemic brand of indie rock had one super-fan behind me belting every lyric. Although the choruses of “My Body” and “Cough Syrup” were undeniably infectious, this set found itself in uncomfortable territory between the comedown from Fitz and the Tantrums’ show-stopping performance and the gradual buildup to the night’s finale.

Bush

There was an unmistakable changing of the guard at the end of 2014’s Electric Christmas, the crowd in front of the stage becoming densely concentrated while the outer limits of the stands emptied out. Much of this shifting seemed fabricated along generational lines and two distinct interpretations of “alternative.” As the younger, pop-crazed fans appeared to make their way toward the exits, a large minority remained, one who attested to a more abrasive, riff-heavy time for alternative airwaves. In this respect, Bush did not disappoint, introducing old fans to material from their new album Man on the Run while rewarding the grunge-specific pleasure-centers of the brain with buzz anthems “Glycerine” and “Machinehead.” It was the alt way to end the night.

Cage the Elephant’s Matthew Shultz Faces His Fears on Melophobia

Chances are, you’ve heard of Cage the Elephant. After all, that’s not the sort of band name you really forget. And in the five years since the their debut album, conveniently also titled Cage the Elephant, the band has certainly done their best to make their music equally hard to forget, hitting a palatable sweet spot between the trendy ‘70s revival blues of bands like The Black Keys and harder edged Janes Addiction-style psych rock. And it’s been a winning formula so far, forging a string of hits—“Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked,” and “Back Against the Wall,” from their first record; “Shake Me Down,” from 2011’s Thank You Happy Birthday and the latest, “Come a Little Closer,” the first single off their recently released third album Melophobia—and catapulting them from their sleepy college town roots in Bowling Green, Ky., to being bona fide rock ‘n’ roll titans. From Letterman to the MTV Video Music Awards, to arena tours with The Foo Fighters, to video game trailers, to pretty much any rock radio station on the dial: even if you haven’t heard of Cage the Elephant, if you’ve been alive the last five years, you’ve at least heard Cage the Elephant.

For his part, frontman Matthew Shultz seems to be both a reluctant, and an ideal, rock star, demure but confidently cool. In light of the band’s relatively successful first two records, the title of their third effort, Melophobia, the fear of music, would seem to suggest that the band was perhaps feeling the pressure of following success with more success. But speaking by phone from his home in Kentucky ahead of a string of radio shows (including headlining Radio 94.7’s Electric Christmas, Dec. 4 at Sacramento’s Sleep Train Arena), Shultz said the only thing that he and his Cage the Elephant band mates feared when writing and recording the songs on markedly more eclectic Melophobia, was fear itself.

It’s been about a month since Melophobia came out. How has it been, being on the record release cycle for the third time now?
I think that with each record that you release, there are new things that arise. Hopefully as your band evolves, the way you present your music and creative works also evolve. But it’s been really cool to see how we’re three records in and people are still responding. So I guess that’s a good thing, right?

You guys have worked with the same producer, Jay Joyce, for all three of your records now. Is that just a case of “if it’s not broke, why fix it?”
From the very first moment we met Jay, he was one of those kindred spirits and it felt right from the very beginning. He’s never been one to shy away from confrontation, but he’s not a confrontational person. He has an incredible ability to pull things out of you. You know going into the studio that the songs are probably gonna change quite a bit when you’re in there, because if he feels that something isn’t up to par, he’ll tell you, which is one of the beautiful things, one of the things that will drive you crazy. But it always produces good things. He pushes us real hard, but we get along. So we continue to work with him.

The title of the new record, Melophobia, translates to “fear of music.” Was that just a cool word, or is there a deeper meaning to that?
Well for us it’s not so much of a fear of music, as in an actual fear of music as it is a fear of creating music to fabricate, or to create some kind of image of self. Sometimes we build these images of how we like to be perceived and that takes over the creative process rather than just trying to communicate an honest thought or feeling. So it was more like a fear of fear-based writing, writing with all kinds of fears and safeguards to create an image rather than to communicate a thought, if that makes any sense at all.

Was there any pressure, writing these songs or in the studio to try to live up to the success of your first two records?
The pressure didn’t come so much externally as it did internally. With each record you get to learn some things along the way and hope to be able to apply them to the creative process. I think for us it was just that we wanted to become better communicators, definitely didn’t want to be so directly externally influenced as we had been in the past. So there was a little bit of pressure, externally, but most of it came from within ourselves. Just to make a record that we loved and that the people would love. But it wasn’t really dictated by the past success of the band or anything like that.

Was it a fear of sort of wearing your influences on your sleeve?
It wasn’t so much a fear of wearing our influences on our sleeve, as much as it was just being so directly influenced in general. And I think that all goes back to fear-based writing, too, because as we were talking about earlier, as human being we’re working tirelessly to create images of ourselves and project those images, and so that limits your creative works. As human beings we tend to lean towards things that we see have already become socially accepted as cool or artistic or poetic, and so we start writing poetry for poetry’s sake or making art for art’s sake or creating things to sound intellectual, rather than trying to communicate an honest thought or feeling. So it was really a battle against fear-based writing or fear-based creation; trying to get back to the root of songwriting or any creative work for that matter, which is communication, to communicate a thought or a feeling or a freedom or a moment of joy or happiness or whatever it is, but just to communicate freely and honestly. And in doing that, I think you do shed some of those influences, or they’re probably not as noticeable, because you’re just drawing from the things that have woven themselves into your heart rather than catering toward cool.

Do you think that your past successes sort of gave you more of an opportunity to do things the way you wanted this time around, maybe more so than on the first two records?
I think that if we were a band back in the ‘80s or the ‘90s when the music industry was thriving that probably would be the case, but the way things are going you can’t really say that anyone today is completely established, unshakable or unremovable. Because everything moves so fast. For us, it wasn’t a comfortable thing. It took a lot of convincing ourselves just to go for it and to chase after this theory. But I think you have to take chances. I think the greatest accomplishments are made by taking very huge risks.

So what’s next for you guys, what’s the next risk you’ll take?
I don’t know, I hope that we continue to push this forward. For me, it’s learning all along the way, and hopefully becoming better communicators, and understanding more of what that means. Music has always been a communal thing, to share thoughts and feelings. When you speak to people, you have to speak from your heart, but it’s best if you speak their language. If that makes any sense… It’s just trying to learn how to speak to people, to communicate, and to do it honestly.

Don’t be scared… Check out Cage the Elephant as part of Radio 94.7’s Electric Christmas at the Sleep Train Arena on Dec. 4, 2013. Also performing? Glad you asked: Alt-J, Grouplove, Capital Cities, The Features and MS MR. Check out Sleeptrainarena.com for more info and ticketing information.