Hayden Pedigo on chasing feelings, leaving Texas and the hidden meaning in his music

Well, I don’t mean to keep returning to this, but I’m a little struck by how you are done with your hometown. And I remember you ran for city council several years back; there’s actually a movie about that.

Do you think it’s just that you’ve grown and you moved on, or is it about the Panhandle or is it about Texas in general? What else would you say?

I would say leaving Amarillo, the reason why I feel like I can’t return, is Amarillo provided me endless inspiration. I think it’s a very interesting place and there’s so much you can pull from it. But it’s place that I think you can only pull so much inspiration from it until you reach a point where there’s no longer inspiration.

And it can be dark. I mean, Amarillo is an island and it can be a black hole of sorts, especially if you’re an artist or a creative person. I won’t beat around the bush. I love Amarillo, but I have to be honest about the realities of it. It is not an art or music city, and it could be very lonely there, especially for me over the years.

I always joked that, why is Paris in my Spotify monthly top cities, but Amarillo never has been? And that was always the nature of it. I pulled the inspiration from there, but I had to recognize that it was not a place conducive to making art long term.

The best thing you can do with Amarillo is take what you can from it and get out before it starts taking from you.

Well a lot of Panhandle refugees have found themselves in Austin or in Dallas. Do you think it’s the nature of the High Plains that Oklahoma City felt like a more natural fit, or was there something going on there that that especially drew that to you?

Well, I think I’ve always liked Oklahoma City. I think it’s a very, very interesting city. It’s obviously quite a bit bigger than Amarillo, so there’s more to do, but it was a change of pace. I didn’t want to be recognized at the grocery store as the guy who ran for city council. You know, that’s kind of a tough thing where it’s like, sometimes I like to be private.

But Oklahoma City is far different than Austin because Austin’s kind of obviously a strange place, it’s different than the rest of Texas. But I liked Oklahoma City because it still has the elements of Amarillo I like. There’s something very modest and low-key and plain about it. And the people feel more like Amarillo people.

I still need that kind of down-to-earth normalcy of Amarillo, and a place like Oklahoma City still provides that, where maybe a place like Austin or Dallas or Houston, they wouldn’t really provide that feeling. They’re a bit too crazy for me.

I understand what you mean. You learned recently you’re gonna be a daddy. Do you wanna talk about that at all and maybe how that changes how you view your art?

Yeah, it’s so, so wild that me and my wife – we recently returned from a six-week tour of Europe. It was a very long, long tour, but a few weeks in, we found out my wife is pregnant. Very, very exciting.

But I mean, definitely a lot of feelings. You don’t expect to find that out while on tour, especially in Europe. And it was a crazy busy tour. And you’re too busy to even have a moment to sit down and fully process this huge life-changing thing.

And, you know, I’m still on tour right now. I’m currently in the middle of a seven-week run of the U.S. and Canada. So I’ve effectively been on tour from August all the way to Dec. 6, which is the final show. So this tour is strange because I’m playing songs from three albums that represent my 20s – essentially a decade span – while now I’m in my 30s, waiting to get home to what now feels like an entirely different life, new future waiting for me.

So I’m currently in this limbo between my two different worlds, my past and my future. I’m truly in-between them while on tour. So it’s a crazy feeling – very, very strange feeling – but it’s made me kind of lean further into these songs where I’m telling stories of who I used to be and where I’m from, while looking ahead to what’s to come and all of these exciting things.

Me and my wife are over the moon, so happy, but I’m not going to lie – I’m excited to get home and sit down in silence and process this. You know, I’m 31 years old and this is the first child me and wife will have. And it’s huge. But I haven’t even had a second to process how big this is.