Photo courtesy of Olivia Gehm.
By Olivia Gehm
“No matter where you are in your life, you deserve to be here,” said singer-songwriter Cat Ridgeway as she peered out into the crowd. “Subject matter aside, this song freaking rocks.”
Ridgeway plucked out a few deep, mellow notes on the guitar before slamming into the song’s heavy intro.
It’s been just over a year since Ridgeway released her first full-length album, Sprinter, and her touring schedule shows no signs of slowing down. She and her revolving-door of bandmates played the Gasparilla Music Festival in Tampa on Sunday, April 12, to an eager crowd of fans from all walks of life.
Sprinter is chock-full of substance — it’s poetic, cathartic, and speaks from experience. While Ridgeway has always prided herself on making music that sounds good, she said that this album was the first time that she truly made music that not only sounded beautiful but meant something.
“Finding that balance… I mean, it totally changed the way I view what I do,” she said.
The lead single of the album, which dropped in January of 2025 and is also titled “Sprinter,” means a great deal to Ridgeway, she said, as it deals with the sudden death of a close friend who battled with mental health. Ridgeway’s band was on the road when she learned of her friend’s passing, and she wasn’t able to take time to grieve.
“I was in show mode,” she said. “I kind of compartmentalized it.”
Fast forward to lockdown in 2020, Ridgeway found herself slowing down and felt she could finally process what had happened. With ample time to make music, Ridgeway turned her delayed grief into complex melodies and profound lyrics, which took form in the shape of her hit single.
Lyrically, the song explores two different sides of her friend: the side that was chronically slow and always running late, and the side that ended too soon.
“There’s something about that juxtaposition that was just a gut punch to me as a person,” she said. While Ridgeway was the one to write the song, she considers it belonging to her late friend.
“It’s an honor to get to share that with people,” she said. “The connection it’s brought me to people who have listened to it is insane.”
Ridgeway recalled a specific fan who gifted the band the custom bass that they played on Sunday, who told them that the record had saved her life. She said it’s those connections with fans that set this album apart from her other work.
“I feel like I tapped into what it actually means to be an artist, and not just someone who plays songs,” she said.
The songwriting process for “Sprinter” was more complex than that of her previous work, and it wasn’t the end of trying new things for Ridgeway; she used production to elevate the record even more and push the envelope of what her music could sound like.
“The sound just became its own thing, and it had its own identity,” she said. “And then all of a sudden, all the songs made sense together.”
Long before Sprinter, and shortly before the world shut down in 2020, Ridgeway was scheduled to perform on a national tour with Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Shawn Mullins. She said when the tour was first postponed, she was hopeful it would be rescheduled soon, but the longer the pandemic timeline was stretched, the less hopeful she became.
“There were times in the last six years, between now and then, where I was like, ‘God, if that had just happened, I’d be in a completely different place in my career,” Ridgeway said.
She said it was difficult not to feel robbed, but that she is glad that things happened the way they did, since she will now get to tour with Mullins starting later this month.
“At the time I would’ve toured with Shawn initially, I wouldn’t have had the record ‘Sprinter,’ and the body of work that I really believe in, and that I feel really connected to play to people,” she said. “I think I’ve gotten a lot better as a performer on stage.”
Ridgeway’s long-time bandmate and saxophonist, Christian Ryan, shares her sentiment. He said he’s seen her grow in every way: as a songwriter, vocalist, guitarist and frontperson, and that she’s been able to tap into something that’s truly herself.
“I don’t think there’s a greater thing to do as an artist than to be able to do that,” Ryan said.
Ridgeway put her frontperson talent on full display on Sunday, as her set was warmly received by the crowd, who ate, drank and relaxed by the intimate stage at Sparkman Wharf.
Her next show will take place on April 29, in Bloomington, Ill., at the first stop on Shawn Mullins’s upcoming tour.