Chewy jazz guitar from Mike Pardew

By Jake Ten Pas, Special to The Oregonian

January 14, 2010, 6:00PM

Economic troubles have played havoc with plenty of people’s lives in recent times. While horror stories abound, sometimes money troubles spur a change in direction that ends up being beneficial in the longer run.

In 2009, jazz guitarist Mike Pardew pulled just such a pivot. Fearing that his frequent trips south to practice and gig with Eugene jazz/funk/Afrobeat purveyors Eleven Eyes was putting a dangerous financial burden on Cadenza Academy, the music school he runs with his brother, Pardew decided to bail on the band.

“The commuting was such that I was putting myself at risk as a business owner,” Pardew says. “I didn’t want it to come to that decision.” And when downtown Portland restaurant Nel Centro offered him a regular gig, the offer to spend his weekends in Portland focusing on his own tunes was just too good to refuse.

The best part of playing at Nel Centro, he says, is that the owner and manager of the restaurant, which focuses on food from around the Riviera, are both jazz fans. In a world where jazz musicians are often expected to provide non-threatening aural wallpaper to aid in digestion, his employers at Nel Centro let him come in and cook up his own signature mix of tight chops, rhythmic complexity and emotional emphasis.

“At the root of it, it’s improvisation,” Pardew says of what defines jazz for him. “The most significant aspect to me is the emotional expression you get. The most captivating part as a listener is that no two performances are alike.”

He says that his gigs at Nel Centro have reminded him of the challenges of being a bandleader. He’s had to return to the jazz repertoire-based performances that he started out playing in Portland ballrooms at age 15. Now 29, he’s gone beyond recycling songs by the artists that influenced him — John Coltrane, Wes Montgomery, John Scofield — and created a sound that balances straight-forward jazz, vintage fusion and rock and Latin elements. Heavier than your average dinner combo and complex enough for the true music geek, Pardew’s music is also easily accessible to fans of classic rock and smooth jazz sounds.

After a recent performance, a listener told Pardew that, “He really enjoyed it, especially when he stopped trying to follow it and just let it carry him along.

“If I can do that even on one song a night, I’m doing my job.”

Jake Ten Pas is a Portland freelance writer

If you go
Mike Pardew Group
Where: Nel Centro, 1408 S.W. Sixth Ave.
When: 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; no cover charge
Web sites: mikepardew.com, myspace.com/mikepardewmusic