Hayden Pedigo is a guitarist of considerable skill who hails from Amarillo, Texas. Of records, he’s made a few, and his latest is I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away, which is out on Oklahoma sky blue vinyl (with a signed print), compact disc (with a time-saving download card), and digital June 6 through Mexican Summer. Branching forth from the American Primitive school of string dazzling, Pedigo can dish out passages of sustained beauty with seeming ease. Welcoming a handful of contributors on an array of instruments to further deepen the sound, the seven tracks and a departing thank you message complete Pedigo’s Motor Trilogy with aplomb.
Some young guitarists get so impacted by the gorgeous intensity of the American Primitive that they dish out their own interpretations with sheer gusto but stick very close to the source of their inspiration. One might see them fingerpicking away on walking malls or in coffeehouses, or more likely, one won’t see them, for the necessary dexterity and the focus don’t come easily. When a straight-up contemporary American Fingerpicker debuts on record, it’s a safe bet the contents are something special.
When Hayden Pedigo’s first record Seven Years Late was released in 2013, his adeptness on guitar was easy to ascertain, and doubly impressive as the music was recorded between Pedigo’s 16th and 18th birthdays. Even more striking was how styles from outside of the American Primitive sphere were integrated into the album’s scheme.
Subsequent albums have documented a honing and expanding of Pedigo’s combination of fingerpicking and soundscapes to consistently appealing results. For an extended serving of Pedigo as guitarist, look no further than Live in Amarillo, Texas, which was released last year by Mexican Summer. “Long Pond Lily,” the opening track from I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away, is also an uncut gem of American Primitive brilliance, calm and sturdy at once.
The guitar mastery continues in the following track “All the Way Across,” but with the addition of piano and subtle synth atmospheres. The effect is a prettiness that’s distinct in the American Primitive field. In “Smoked,” the melding of Pedigo’s picking with synth and arranged strings truly blossoms, the track soaring with a fully realized interweaving.
The string arrangements in “Houndstooth” and “Hermes” stay closer to Earth but are no less beautiful, even as the primary focus across the record is Pedigo’s guitar (he plays acoustic and electric here), which is engaging throughout but especially so in “Small Touch” and in the record’s final piece, the title track, which gets an extra boost through some understated pedal steel.
The finality of the title cut isn’t exactly true, as “End Credits” is a spoken thank you to his collaborators and to the listener, with musical accompaniment. It’s a gesture that in anybody else’s hands would risk cutesiness or insincerity, but not with Pedigo, who is something of an old school Texas eccentric in the best sense of the term. There’s nothing false or secondhand about I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
