"I was only slightly joking," Pedigo is quick to admit. I like having pressure on me."Īlongside that welcomed pressure, the guitarist went into the production of The Happiest Times with a somewhat whimsical goal: to create, in his words, the best instrumental acoustic guitar album of the past 20 years. Before that, it was all DIY labels my friends ran with no paperwork, but there are now stipulations of when I need to have records turned in. "When I signed with Mexican Summer, that was the first deal I had ever signed. That's definitely the inspiration behind the record: just being bored." Hayden goes on to credit label deadlines as another driving force to finish what he's started. All I did was just ride my bike or write music. "I had a bunch of time on my hands, and that's actually why I feel like I did really good work there because there wasn't anything to do. "It's maybe one of the most boring places on Earth and it feels like it was designed to be," he says of Buddy Holly's birthplace, where he relocated during the pandemic. The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored by Hayden Pedigo When Pedigo details the environment and state of mind in which he wrote the record-in Lubbock, the sleepy town two hours south of Amarillo in the heart of the Llano Estacado-the title feels all the more apt. Found scattered in his hotel room were notes for planned projects, one of which contained the sentence, "These last few days are amongst the happiest I've ever ignored". The title of Hayden's new album is a reference to National Lampoon co-founder and Animal House screenwriter Doug Kenney, who mysteriously died at the age of 33 in 1980 after falling off a cliff in Kauai. If I don't, I just wait until the next time I've set aside. "If I get a good idea during that time, great. "He was like, 'You schedule when you're going to write music?' But it's not like inspiration hits and then I write," Hayden clarifies. When Pedigo first explained his trusted process to Trayer Tryon, the album's producer, he was initially met with laughter. The making of his latest, The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored, was no exception. To combat this creative reluctance and promote a sense of focus, Pedigo typically goes through the motions of writing his albums by adhering to a regimented schedule. What I do is I sit down and I try to write the best album that I can, and then I will not write another piece of music until my next album." "I have a very short attention span and it's hard for me to work on stuff. "I'll start off by saying that I hate writing music," he explains to me via Zoom from the comfort of an Amarillo living room, where he is seated in front of a green Wurlitzer electric piano against a wall decked out in folk art. The official video for Hayden Pedigo's "Elsewhere", directed by Matt Muir.īe that as it may, as is the case with most polymaths, Pedigo does not presently approach the carte blanche that might come with his primary pursuit with pleasure. However, it wasn't until his chance encounter at the age of 14 with the work of fingerstyle guitarist John Fahey-that pioneer of American primitivism that Pedigo frequently namechecks as "the greatest artist to ever do it, any medium"-that he was able to overcome a sense of imposter syndrome and was provided the freedom and confidence to write for six strings. It's no small feat that he's somehow managed to juggle it all before reaching the age of 30.įirst drawn to the guitar two decades ago while growing up in Amarillo, Pedigo spent his early years on the instrument carefully studying and attempting to imitate Stevie Ray Vaughan's shredding and the slide stylings of Ry Cooder. Most notably, he ran for Amarillo City Council in 2019, as depicted in Jasmine Stodel's PBS-optioned documentary Kid Candidate two years later. Homeschooled by his truck-stop preacher father in the Texas Panhandle, he's spent the past few years walking Gucci runways along Hollywood Boulevard and collaborating with veteran avant-garde luminaries who were once members of This Heat, Faust, and Henry Cow. In our present tense, performance artist, politician, model and Mexican Summer recording artist Hayden Pedigo fits the above designation like a snakeskin boot. "A man can do all things if he will." This aphorism, attributed to the 15th century Italian artist and architect Alberti, became the tenet of what we now refer to as the Renaissance man: that rare breed of gifted guy who juggles several disparate disciplines, and who happens to be quite skilled at most (if not all) of them.
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