Hayden Pedigo | Arts + Literature Laboratory | Madison Contemporary Arts Center

Hayden Pedigo

Arts + Literature Laboratory welcomes performance artist, politician, model, and instrumental acoustic guitarist Hayden Pedigo on Saturday, July 8 at 7:00pm. Tickets are $10 ($5 student/ALL member) in advance online at https://haydenpedigo.bpt.me, or $15 at the door for everyone. Doors open 6:30pm.

Hayden Pedigo's music draws from and expands upon the "American Primitive" style developed in the 1950s by guitarist John Fahey, which itself expanded upon the fingerpicking of traditional country and blues guitar. Pedigo’s particular brand of barb comes in a variety of shapes: the carousel of internet personas that prod and jest (one day a 1970s car salesman, the next perhaps a Burger King attendant or gogo-booted knight); beautiful yet uneasy technicolor album artworks that place him incongruously corpse-painted at a gas station or glowing in ultraviolet on the parking lot of a flaming Walmart; or, in the music itself, pauses which verge on the uncomfortably long while the well-mannered audience member shuffles in their seat, trying to work out whether to clap yet or not.

At their most profound, Pedigo’s spacious, pristine soundscapes communicate an essential truth about the pursuit of artistic perfection. Creating his album The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored was, he surmises, a process akin to “the dog chasing the mail truck – what do you do when you catch it?”

Hayden Pedigo has lived many lives, having been homeschooled in Amarillo, Texas by his truck-stop preacher father; run for Amarillo City Council in 2019, aged 25—as documented by Jasmine Stodel’s SXSW-premiering, PBS-acquired film Kid Candidate—and struck up pen-friendships and collaborative partnerships with the likes of Terry Allen, Charles Hayward (This Heat), Werner “Zappi” Diermaier (Faust), and Tim Heidecker. A move south from Amarillo to Lubbock in 2020 put a spark to the powder keg of his creativity. “It’s even more flat, desolate, windy and dirty – like being on Mars,” Pedigo observes. “It’s pushed me to create more because there’s not really much to distract.” The move produced not only The Happiest Times and its predecessor Letting Go, but also an Internet presence that showcases a panoply of ever-more... Read More

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Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.

Our galleries are open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday noon to 5pm, and other programs take place throughout the week. Please check the events calendar and education section for details.

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