For the last eight years, the world has thrilled to musical stylings of a 7-foot saxophonist in a Bigfoot suit — a fur-covered crowd-pleaser in blue Pit Viper shades who invites the world out of its tedium into a mythical world of lasers, disco balls and near-ecstatic dancing.
The artist known as Saxsquatch combines sax-heavy melodies ranging from Wham’s “Careless Whisper” to the “Star Wars” cantina theme with an irresistible beat, launching a career that landed the onetime busker from Franklin Street into the lineup at Bonaroo and Electric Forest festivals — a cryptid in the pages of Rolling Stone.
But until now, the sax-playing creature kept to his whimsical back story, staying strictly anonymous. Onstage, in interviews and everywhere else, Saxsquatch presented exclusively as a real-life Bigfoot who learned to jam in the Chapel Hill woods alongside a grandfather named Gigfoot and a sister named Bigflute, aided by a long extension cord.
But now Saxsquatch wants to pull back the curtain, stop all the guessing and let fans glimpse the man inside the mask. Meet Dean Mitchell, no longer a blurry figure in the distance…