The punky “Epilogue,” the first single from Cat Ridgeway’s upcoming album “Sprinter,” is a shift from her earlier Americana and r&b sounds. But to the Orlando singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, it’s not a departure as much as a U-turn.
“Honestly, this is just what I’ve always really loved, and this is the first time where I’ve truly trusted myself in all my instincts,” she said. “When you go back and listen to a lot of my demos from when I was in middle school and high school, it’s kind of funny that it’s framed as a shift but to me — I really just feel like I’m coming back to myself.”
For her follow-up to 2020’s “Nice to Meet You,” Ridgeway worked with producer Mike Savino (who records as Tall Tall Trees) and had contributions from musicians including drummers Claude Coleman Jr. (Ween) and Josiah Wolf (WHY?) and sax player Adam Schatz (Sylvan Esso, Japanese Breakfast). The single was released last week, and “Sprinter” will be out in the spring.
“I’ve always been a fan of like Tegan & Sara’s early work, like ‘The Con,'” Ridgeway said of her influences. “I’ve been really into Pinegrove and Bon Iver. Indigo de Souza is a more current person, like more of the grungy side of things, or just the really well-crafted side of things.”
She said the “very neat intersection that’s been happening the last few years of those two sides” was a confidence booster that she could follow a similar path.
Self-taught besides training on trumpet in the school band, she also plays guitar, banjo, mandolin, bass, trombone, harmonica and drums. While one might expect the banjo to not make it in the transition from “Pleased to Meet You” to “Sprinter,” it did.
“Banjo is all over the record,” Ridgeway explained, “but it’s [almost] always thrown through some sort of distortion. We bang on the banjo in a couple of songs, one of them being ‘Epilogue.’ Another song has kind of Rage Against the Machine vibes, and it’s all banjo — not a single guitar on the song. It’s insane what you can get out of a banjo through an effects board.”
Ridgeway and her revolving band, The Tourists, will hit the road in a continued preview of the new album, including shows at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia on Oct. 10, Kennett Flash in nearby Kennett Square, Pa., on Oct. 11 and Groove in New York on Oct. 12.
The Northeast dates are part of Ridgeway’s strategy to grow her fanbase beyond her home region, where she has won multiple awards from Orlando Weekly. Between tours, she has played in Vail, Colo., showcasing her music to vacationers from all over the country. And she has signed a distribution deal with CEN/Sony’s The Orchard to get “Sprinter” in front of a wider audience.
The color choices for the album and single images are a product of Ridgeway’s audio-visual synesthesia — cross-wired sensory pathways in her brain allow her to see colors, shapes and textures when she hears and plays music. The colors she has picked “match what I see in my head.”
“It’s a known fact that after a synesthete has a mental image it will never change,” she said. “[For me], ‘Hotline Bling’ by Drake is green, a very specific green like the numbers on digital clocks.”
While using visual descriptions to communicate with other musicians in the studio has been “kind of a last resort,” she said it has been a guide to her: “Nine out of 10 times, if it looks bad, it sounds bad.”
Photo by Gabe Lugo
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