Hayden Pedigo Shares Title Track From 'I'll Be Waving As You Drive Away

05-08-2025

(MS) Texas-born and Oklahoma City-based fingerstyle guitarist Hayden Pedigo recently announced his remarkable and genre-defying new album I'll Be Waving As You Drive Away, out June 6th via Mexican Summer. Following the album's first single "Long Pond Lily," the album's title track "I'll Be Waving As You Drive Away" is out today, alongside a Townes Van Zandt-inspired music video. Influenced by 1950s Chet Atkins/Merle Travis picking, Hayden says the bright song feels "startling sincere" and the "least like-me" song on the album. He also thinks it's one of the best he's ever written.

"The title is based on a 1978 episode of Little House on The Prairie that still crushes me to this day (look up the synopsis if you have never seen it. Actually, just go watch the episode if you can). It's a lot different than anything I have ever written before. It has this almost Chet Atkins/Merle Travis bounce to it that I've never before on a song. It's pulling from the classic 1950s chord progressions that I'm a sucker for. It's like Merle Travis's version of 'I'll See You in My Dreams' flipped on its head. The opening chord clusters are kind of the Wizard of Oz moment where the screen turns to color and it kind of brings the sense of wonder and mystery I really love. It ends the album on the purest/sweetest note possible and feels like the absolute perfect way to end this record."

Since the release of his 2023 record, The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored, Hayden Pedigo earned widespread critical acclaim, performed a stunning NPR Tiny Desk Concert, toured non-stop with the likes of Jenny Lewis, Devendra Banhart and Hiss Golden Messenger, and more. He then decamped on a 20,000-acre ranch at an artist residency in Wyoming to write his new album, which he'd later record in Ojai, California with Scott Hirsch. The resulting album, I'll Be Waving As You Drive Away, is the final installment of what Pedigo has dubbed 'The Motor Trilogy' - his three latest solo albums, tied together by their vehicular Jonathan Phillips artwork. An innovator of the instrumental genre, challenger of the stereotypical, and son of a truck-stop preacher, Pedigo has crafted an intentionally maximalist, genre-resistant work of warped instrumental Americana on this release, which he calls "a micro-dose psychedelic album...as if somebody had cut up a tab of LSD and put on a Fahey record."

Pedigo will bring I'll Be Waving As You Drive Away on the road this year - first opening for Ichiko Aoba starting next week, followed by a string of just-announced album release shows in Austin, New York, and Los Angeles, and a UK/EU tour this fall.