Beloved artist, impromptu politician, model and fingerstyling guitarist Hayden Pedigo has announced his sprawling and cinematic new album. The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored, Pedigo’s sixth studio album and second for Mexican Summer, will be out on June 30th. A kaleidoscopic son of cowboy country sprung from the sky and soil of the Texas panhandle, Pedigo can often be found wearing chain mail or a pinstripe suit or at least ten gallons of hat. But while his many personas provide comic relief, he takes his craft seriously. Case in point: he aimed to create “the best instrumental acoustic guitar album of the past twenty years,” and more than hit his mark.

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Pedigo recently announced a Summer U.S. tour with Jenny Lewis, and has shared The Happiest Times’ lead single “Elsewhere.” Featuring looping guitar trills and lapping pedal steel, “Elsewhere” is the stunning centerpiece of the album. The song is accompanied by a Matt Muir-directed short film capturing the beauty of small-town Texas and the search for something more, while also providing a glimpse into the many sides of Pedigo. “Muir created this entire world that absolutely nailed all of the characters and personas I’ve depicted on the Internet while tying together my artistic influences from over the years,” says Pedigo. “In a way, I feel like this song and the music video encapsulate everything I’ve been working towards over the past ten years of releasing music. It turned into this beautiful celebration of music, comedy, and film.”

Inspired by the tragicomedic legacy of National Lampoon co-founder Doug Kenney (in whose notes the line ‘These last few days are amongst the happiest I’ve ever ignored’ was found following his mysterious and untimely death), The Happiest Times features Hayden Pedigo on 6 and 12 string guitars, plus producer Trayer Tryon (Hundred Waters, Moses Sumney) on synths and bass, Luke Schneider (Margo Price, Orville Peck) on pedal steel, and Robert Edmondson on electric bass and piano. Citing a “rigid relationship with guitar” in which he has only slices of time to adequately express himself (“I have a five minute window to do something meaningful, and if it doesn’t come within five minutes, then it goes back in the case”), Pedigo wrote each song separately, start to finish,  one by one. When an album’s worth of songs had been written, he undertook an intense regime of rehearsal, playing and replaying The Happiest Times on a loop, testing his technical ability, always striving for tighter, purer and more concise iterations.

In June 2022, Pedigo transported the limbered-up record to Pulp Arts in Gainesville, Florida, where the relentless practice paid off: he played the core acoustic compositions in track order, beginning to end, and by the evening of the first day, realized he’d essentially nailed the record in one go. Though canonical works of comedy and music show their influence—the mournful beauty of Nick Drake, the puckish abandon of John Fahey—Pedigo by no means places their creators on pedestals; if anything pulling them from their plinths, smashing the alabasters, pocketing some pieces, gluing others back together upside down, or leaving them floating free.

If the rolling strings of his last album Letting Go planted and germinated seeds, then The Happiest Times sees Hayden grow flowers, admire their ruffles, and take newly sharpened scissors to the stems; turmoil and perfectionism and the gods of chaos driving the hand that holds the shears. “I want to create something very melodic, and then put it behind a barbed wire fence,” Hayden reflects. “If you’re gonna get this pretty thing, then you might get cut up trying to get to it.”

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 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?”

Photo Courtesy: D’Angelo Isaac