A few songs into Live in Amarillo, Texas, Hayden Pedigo lays out a few flaws that other people see in his hometown. Out on the road, he says, he’s aware Amarillo has a reputation as a “flat, windy, hot, cold, brutal, and somewhat ugly place.” Yet the guitarist has dedicated many of his meditative pieces to what he’s called the city’s “hard-earned beauty.” He once told a local TV station that something he most appreciated about living there was the unique experience of standing in a field stretching to the horizon in every direction. “It’s almost like a small piece of infinity,” he said. His music seeks to capture that feeling, each slowly unfurling melody a chance to lose yourself in the vastness of a single moment.
Live in Amarillo, Texas, recorded in December 2023 at the theater that houses the city’s orchestra, shows Pedigo’s playing at its most expressive and expansive. The record’s six instrumental tracks—some of which stitch together multiple songs—stretch his winding compositions into otherworldly journeys that place grave importance on each phrase and pause. Opener “Carthage” (originally from 2021’s Letting Go) demonstrates the emotional weight of such an approach. Pedigo coaxes delicate, dreamy melodies from a 12-string guitar, playing softly before they fade into silence. Another guitar line drifts across the room, purposefully quiet. By the time the song builds to its more labyrinthine figures, the piece has paused a handful of times, giving even the most gently lilting melodies a sense of unease: At any moment, Pedigo might recede into the shadows and fall silent.
Pedigo presents some songs in more twisted and deliberately heavy forms than he ever has on record. In its original incarnation on Letting Go, “Rained Like Hell” was a stately acoustic piece that evoked the spiritual odysseys of Florian Fricke. The live performance is more frayed and unsettled, pulling slowly yet violently at the melodies, as if they were strapped to a rack. Pedigo has hinted at his affection for metal—he wore corpse paint in the “Letting Go” video—but this is the first time he’s conveyed it in his music. It plays like one of the frigid interludes that marked ’90s black metal albums, if any of those acts had been just a little more into the blues.
Over the years, Pedigo has developed a reputation as one of experimental music’s most irrepressible pranksters. He’s trolled local businesses, posted goofy fits on Reddit until he was invited to walk for Gucci, and launched a bid for Amarillo City Council with a surreal, distorted camcorder video (he ultimately finished second to the incumbent). Live in Amarillo, Texas bears little trace of this side of his personality. In the between-song patter captured on the record, his mood is reflective and nostalgic, fitting the sentimental renditions heard throughout the performance. Pedigo’s studio recordings consistently illustrate his skill as a guitarist, but Live in Amarillo, Texas demonstrates his greatest talent isn’t technical fireworks. A glowing emotional core presents itself in these stretched-out arrangements and stripped-down moments, something raw and real that reveals itself with every breath and halting pause.
