Feels Like Home

He doesn't live in Las Vegas anymore, but Las Vegas still lives in him.

Ryan Pardey grew up here, the son of a poker player, and he has that hustle in him, that anything-is-possible idealism born of a city of dreams and nightmares.

Hearing the 31-year-old singer-songwriter and prime mover behind indie rock changelings Halloween Town reflect on his upbringing, a kind of wistful pride tinges his voice, like someone who was raised to turn nothing into something, sand into gold.

"We were always kind of creative in how we survived and made our way through the world," Pardey says from the parking lot of the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, shortly before boarding a train to San Diego, where he's been living off and on since leaving Vegas awhile back. "You kind of do it on your own, in your own way, the way only Las Vegans could. You feel like you can do whatever you want."

This spirit is very much alive in Pardey's tunes, wizened and pastoral, equally stark and textured, with Pardey's voice by turns pretty, pliant and pained over a shifting backdrop of acoustic longing and dusky keys.

It's an uninhibited, free-ranging kind of sound, one that's meant to be as devoid of rigid genre designations as the desert is of fences.

Pardey is set to hit the studio this week to begin tracking what he hopes to be Halloween Town's full-length debut, which follows the release of a 7-inch/CD package featuring a pair of songs issued last year.

It's been a long time coming for Pardey, who began penning plays and short stories as a kid and went to the Las Vegas Academy for acting before eventually grounding his writing talents in songs at the age of 15.

He became a fixture in the local music scene for a time and was associated with The Killers, for whom he worked, living with bassist Mark Stoermer, appearing in the band's video for the yuletide "Don't Shoot Me Santa," and opening one of their shows at the Mandalay Bay Events Center.

These days, however, Pardey is focused on striking out on his own.

"It's tough to kind of put your own dreams on layaway and live through someone else's dream," Pardey says of his time working with Vegas' most famous band. "I started to maybe lose my own identity a bit, after a while. I had to remove myself from both a good paying job and an exciting life and force myself back into being creative, which means struggle. I forced myself to quit, and all of a sudden I had all these songs, just ready to be written."

Since then, Pardey has left his hometown, living in Southern California, and, after performing at the massive South By Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas, this past March, he stayed there for a few months, playing acoustic gigs in small venues and in peoples' living rooms.

Speaking with Pardey, though, it's clear that he still has a lot of love for Vegas.

"When I walk through the El Cortez, I want to do cartwheels," he says with a chuckle. "But then, ask me 12 hours later, at 8 a.m., I might have a different answer for you."

This time, though, Pardey's back in town for a serious cause, playing a benefit show for Arbo De Vivo, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping the impoverished the world over that's currently focusing its efforts on Haiti after the devastating earthquake that ravaged the nation earlier in the year.

Pardey became more aware of the country's struggles after his brother, Rod, took a humanitarian trip there.

"I'm just like everybody else, I was not paying attention to what's going on just across the water," Pardey says. "Once my brother came back with all these stories and pictures, I wanted to get onboard and help out. The situation there is just so heartbreaking, It's easy just to kind of tune it out, with so many things in the world going wrong. But it seems like Arbo De Vivo's mantra of teaching the Haitians to fish and take care of themselves and self-sustain is more a of a long-term relief program."

At the show, Pardey hopes to play a few new songs, noting that he has several albums worth of material ready to go.

That's the thing about heralding from a city like this: There's never a shortage of tales to tell.

"It's definitely given me plenty of material to write from, being from where we're from and coming up the way I did in particular," Pardey says of growing up here. "I think that's a big part of Halloween Town regardless of where I'll call home. I think the heart of it usually finds its way back to Vegas."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.