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?”