Kate Butler has always been a supporter of the local music scene. Growing up in Saint John, N.B., she volunteered to work the door and merch tables at all-ages punk shows. She also wrote articles for local magazines on both local shows and bands and the ones passing through.
Butler earned a degree in media studies at St. Thomas University and continued her writing by submitting pieces to The Aquinian. She has continued to increase her role in the music community in Fredericton and throughout New Brunswick and can still be found working doors for concerts at The Capital Complex. Butler is also working as the communications manager for Shivering Songs.
Butler’s newest contribution to the local music scene is her record label, She Said Feck! Records. The label’s name comes from a line in Almost Famous, a 2000 film by writer-director and journalist Cameron Crowe, who Butler is a big fan of. The label will cover all bases of artist management including distribution, marketing and festival and grant applications.
“I really wanted to do my own thing and it was an easy way for me to leverage what I was doing and leverage the music and the work that the folks up here at home were doing,” said Butler.
Butler said her overall goal is to help the progression of the artists she works with.
“I’ve noticed that a lot of people are reaching out saying ‘I’m here and I need to go there’, so that is my main goal, to help musicians move forward, whatever that goal is for them,” said Butler.
In the long run Butler hopes to help artists across the Maritimes, but for now she is focusing on New Brunswick artists.
“We have so much great music right here at home in New Brunswick and I don’t think we are necessarily good at prompting ourselves in the best way, so this is a way for me to do that,” said Butler.
She Said Feck! Records will hold its official launch party on March 2 at the Capital Complex in Fredericton with subsequent launch shows on March 3 at Moncton’s Tide and Boar Gastropub and March 31 at Pepper’s Pub in Saint John. The shows will be headlined by the first two bands to join the label’s roster: The Tortoise, The Hare and the Millionaire and CHIPS, who will release their new single “Modern Days” on the label on Feb. 27.
“She is a music fan at heart, so that always makes the biggest difference,” said Luke Bailey, guitarist for CHIPS. “If you’re in the music industry and you have a love for the craft and the music then that really drives your passion to do what you do and I definitely see that in Kate. It’s awesome having someone like that on the team who’s not just behind the scenes on a computer writing emails but actually is going to all the shows and loves just being apart of the music scene in general.”
