It's easy for musicians to fall into the standard verse-chorus-verse format when writing songs. Contemporary jazz guitarist Ken Navarro wanted to do something different on his latest album, "Pride & Joy." "I spent a lot of time on the writing of this record," Navarro said by phone from his offices in Ellicott City, Md. "A number of songs are compositionally deeper.
The title tune is a very linear composition, as opposed to circular," said Navarro, who returns to Toledo tonight for his third show in two years. A circular song, he said, starts with a verse, moves into a chorus, returns to a verse patterned after the first one, goes back to the chorus, and so on. With a linear composition, "you never cover the same ground twice, or if you do it's only at the beginning and the end of the song," he said.
Navarro also wanted to boost production quality on the new album. "It was a time-consuming process," he said. "There are a lot of little details in there, things that may go by the listener at first but are picked up on repeated listenings."

Easing the process was the fact that the studio for Navarro's label, Positive Music, is his own. He was able to slip downstairs, turn on the equipment, and get his ideas on tape with a minimum of effort and expense. "There's one song on the record, 'Here for You,' that I just kind of wrote in the studio after the album was done," he said. "I kind of had a flow going, and I put it together down there. I don't think that tune could have been written if I had had to book studio time."

Navarro quit the lucrative Los Angeles studio scene after 10 years in 1989 to move back to his home state of Maryland, where he started his "artist-friendly" label. When not working on his music, he oversees Positive Music's roster of about 20 musicians. The label has released about 35 titles so far "We've made money on everything we've put out in the last few years," Navarro said. "Now we're ready to go to the next level."

By David Yonke for The Toledo Blade, Toledo, Ohio 11/94.