Local singer to debut new album that pairs folk and jazz themes
- Ellie Ruel
- 7 hours ago
- 7 min read
Taylor Vidic’s ‘Cat and Mouse’ explores love and community; collaboration between artists
By Ellie Ruel
Juneau Independent
After a more than decade-long music career of live performances, Juneau singer Taylor Vidic is releasing her debut album “Cat and Mouse” on Friday. The record featuring a jazzier “Cat” side and folk-rock inspired “Mouse” side delves into relationships in small local communities, both recorded with two different bands at two different studios.
“Most of the songs have a tie to romance, and falling in and out of love in these small Southeast communities,” Vidic said. “And living in this very small, large state, where you are going to continue to engage with people that you have loved, even after that love has changed or shifted. The lucky ones get to learn how to continue to be in community with people after those changes have happened.”
She’s already dropped two singles from opposite sides of the album leading up to Friday’s release. “Trash Birds,” arranged by collaborator Spencer Edgers, is a jazz-inspired song featuring a string quartet and horn section. “Muse” is the oldest song on the record, which she wrote at the age of 21.
”The first single was ‘Trash Birds,’ and that is often the song that I start a live set with for whatever reason. So it felt appropriate in honoring my life, these successes,” Vidic said. “‘Muse’ is maybe slightly more accessible, in that it's a much simpler arrangement, really heavily features Josh (Fortenbery) on guitar, and the vocals are more simple, perhaps.”
Both songs highlight the duality of the album and its collaborators.
“It's a bit of a scrapbook for me, I suppose,” Vidic said. “Getting to work with people that I have been forming relationships with throughout the process of writing these songs and performing these songs in different iterations. It creates a really cool Venn diagram through lines of sorts, meshing the songs and the stories with the people that have helped to bring them to life in this new iteration.”
Vidic wrote “Trash Birds” in 2018 after moving to Seattle for a year, where she lived with a couple of people including Marshall Bovie, who plays drums on the second half of the record. “Muse” was composed about a night at the old Rendezvous bar she spent getting to know someone.
When she’s writing songs, Vidic said storytelling and lived experiences blend together in hopes of sharing emotions with the listener.
“Sometimes there's only one line in the song that is actually referencing something that I've experienced, and then it does become storytelling,” she said. “You take that one line, and you create three and a half minutes of a world, and then you get to add a melody to it that evokes subtle emotions that you wouldn't be able to access if you were just reading the words on a piece of paper.”
Vidic said sharing those emotions has made her feel more connected to the local community and found what people have in common.
“Especially when those feelings are hard and sad and scary, just to be reminded that we all feel them,” Vidic said. “We are just taking turns. Sometimes we're the ones feeling them, and sometimes we're the ones saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I've been there, too. It will be OK.’”
Building her own community of musical collaborators and mentors has been an important facet of bringing the album to life, she noted. Vidic started playing piano at age 6, and added guitar at 16 under the advice of music teacher Mary DeSmet.
When she dove into songwriting, she was introduced to Tom Locher by choir teacher Missouri Smythe, and built up a jazz repertoire by performing in Locher’s “Jazz Divas” concerts with rotating vocalists and drummers. At those concerts she met Ed Littlefield, who plays drums on the “Cat” side of the record. Vidic met Spencer Edgers, who arranged parts of “Cat and Mouse” when they both worked on boats in Seattle.
“There is a reason why I still live in Juneau as someone who grew up there, it's because the older I get the more that I think the point of all of this is community, and getting to experience love, joy, in all of its forms,” she said. “This album has been an opportunity to lean into that community, and to uplift that community and to celebrate that community. Both as a member and participant of it, but also being able to step back occasionally and look at all of these beautiful, talented people in my life, and the people that have chosen to support this project, and to be in awe of what we have all collectively been able to create.”
That support meant Vidic and a dozen collaborators traveled to Frostline Studios in Anchorage to record the jazz-centric “Cat” half of the album. Sound engineer Derek Haukaas set up three sections for rhythm, horns, and Vidic’s vocals to be recorded in isolation to let the artistry “breathe,” but connected the spaces with cameras and TVs so the artists could see each other. Some of the recording was an improvisational process for the group.
“I basically just invited all of my favorite Alaskan jazz musicians into a room,” Vidic said. “At times, we were playing Spencer's arrangements, and the song ‘Cat and Mouse’ is recorded twice on the record with both bands, and on the ‘Cat’ half, there was no arrangement for that song. We were just in the studio, and I said, ‘Cool, can we make this jazzy?’ And so Ed puts a jazzy beat on it, and Chazz Gist of Ketchikan throws down some tasty upright bass, and Spencer's throwing his sax slicks on – and I got to practice taking my melody, and turning it into a jazz song through my vocal choices.”
The “Mouse” half was recorded just outside of Seattle at Sage Arts Studio, a small recording space with a reverb panel that allegedly was used by Frank Sinatra.
“I've got vocals on the record that I'd like to think have been sprinkled with a little bit of Frank Sinatra magic,” Vidic joked.
Recording took two days in September 2025 for the “Mouse” half, and three in April 2025 for the “Cat” half. Vidic polished the vocals during satellite sessions in a home recording studio and with Juneau-based Jboe Audio.
Vidic gave a preview of her album during an early release show at Perseverance Theatre earlier this month.
“Traditionally, one would do their album release shows and release their album at the same time,” Vidic said. “So it was fun to say, ‘Hey, if you are in the room tonight, you get to hear an album, and then you have to wait two more weeks to hear it again.’”
The setlist was a way for her to introduce the order of songs that would be on the album, and added a 3D element to the record for the weekend. Vidic is excited the songs will take on life beyond a live performance now.
“It's already been so silly and exciting to say to people ‘Oh, no, you can find me on Spotify if you want to right now,’” she said. “I feel like a little kid getting to say that because so many of my friends have been on Spotify, and then when I travel to play music, now I can say, ‘You can find me on the Internet.’ It's real. I don't just play live. I am a recorded artist.”
The album is financially supported through a 2022 Rasmuson Artist Award and funds from a Kickstarter in early 2025. But Vidic said support from the songwriter group called The Muskeg Collective and a blossoming music industry in Juneau kept her motivated through the process of creating “Cat and Mouse.” Vidic pointed towards local musicians as inspiration: Annie Bartholomew’s “Sisters of White Chapel,” Josh Fortenbery’s two albums, and The Heists' planned album release this year.
“More of us are starting to do it, and we see and feel that it is possible, which is sometimes a challenge when you live in a place the size of Juneau: knowing how big you are allowed to dream,” Vidic said.
The mechanics of getting to an album release is less glamorous than performing or recording, Vidic added. She said it’s more of a full-time job, which means time spent in spreadsheets and on social media.
“It looks like a fair amount of stress, but that is to be expected, when you care about something and want to do a good job,” she said. “You gotta put yourself on the internet. You need people to, if you want people to listen to your stuff, they need to remember that you exist. And that is sometimes uncomfortable.”
As an artist, she said her work is a balancing act of multiple skills and jobs. Right now, she performs and produces arts events, and when her album drops her record will be another way to support herself.
“Cat and Mouse” will be available as a CD, cassette tape and vinyl record. Vidic said supporting forms of physical media ensures more profits go to artists than streaming services. She’s currently most excited about the vinyl.
“When you get tracks mastered, that's the last step in creating the final sound, there's a different master for vinyl than there is for digital CD,” Vidic said. ”You can hear the difference. It's been really fun and interesting to learn that, along with all the other stuff that I've been learning over the last year. But there is, like, a quality to vinyl audio that is so interesting, and there's an added level of work, and maybe some of it's placebo, because it's that big piece of plastic. There's a coziness to the concept of it all.”
The album will physically be available at Downtown Disc. “Cat and Mouse” is set to officially drop on Friday on most music streaming services.
• Contact Ellie Ruel at ellie.ruel@juneauindependent.com.
