A Guelphite is turning back the clock with his first solo album.
Ian James Bain, long a mainstay on the local music scene, is out with Where I Wanna Be, featuring 10 songs, all with an old school country feel to them, a sound he said is "definitely my wheelhouse."
The official release is Thursday.
"Everyone wants to sound like George Jones if they're a country singer. So that's been my goal, and trying to emulate those people and try to take inspiration from older music that, to me, is true to country music while not letting it completely define me," the 29-year-old singer told GuelphToday, also referencing Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings as influences on his work.
"I like to think it sounds somewhat modern, but through sort of the lens of my influence, which is a lot of older music.
"I'm not by any means trying to do a carbon copy of things that have already happened, but it's just the music I really like, so it sort of filters out that way."
Recording of the album began in August 2021, and the mastering and editing took some time.
The Guelph references are quite apparent.
For example, the music video for the title track Where I Wanna Be shows a number of local spots, from the Vienna Restaurant to the Albion Hotel.
"I love Guelph, and it's a big reason I am the person I am," Bain said.
It's the longest he's spent living in one city. Bain grew up with his dad in the military, and found himself moving around the country every couple years.
Through it, he found himself around country music a lot and got more into genres such as punk and heavy metal while living in Uxbridge.
"A few years later, I started taking guitar pretty seriously and I came to the University of Guelph to study jazz guitar and music," Bain said.
Afterwards, he found himself playing guitar in bands, most notably with the Guelph-based outlaw country band Nicolette and the Nobodies.
But in the summer of 2019, he ventured out to Golden, BC, where he worked on a ranch by day, and wrote country songs by night.
Upon his return, he kept working on things and developed his skills by frequenting open stage nights at the Commercial Tavern in nearby Maryhill.
"I never really felt comfortable singing as the lead person before, so that was a big step," Bain said. "And over the pandemic, I just kept writing. I obviously had a lot of time."
Time to write, and find his voice, his sound. And everything came right back to country, which he said felt more natural to him than any other genre he'd try out.
"Country guitar playing has its own language and its own lineage that was really fun for me to dive into," he said. "It was almost like relearning the instrument from a different perspective than what I've been doing before. It just kind of happened naturally, I suppose.
"It was one of those weird things where as soon as I started singing country music, it kind of felt like it made sense with my voice and who I am."
The album is available for download on all the major platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music.
