Chris DeLine

“I’ve been back and forth between Cleveland and Nashville a lot in the past five years,” writes Christopher Wild, emailing en route to Nashville from L.A., returning from a trip to the Mojave Desert. “Both cities feel a bit like home,” he continues, “but also a bit less than a place that I feel like I can say I live.” Wild’s eponymous debut reflects this sort of renegade spirit as filtered through classic rock influences, with the resulting 11 tracks falling well in line with a sound that migrated to Nashville through the likes of Jack White and the Black Keys. But Christopher Wild is hardly a blues-rock replica — it’s an amplified statement, making good on the prodigious claims that the guitarist’s been leveled with ever since he was a teenager.

“A lot of the songs that are on the record are ones that I’d written in high school and college days,” adds Wild (born Christopher Volante), dating some of the tracks back around the time of one of his first musical achievements, through his band the Sharp Edges in 2009. That year, in front of a panel of judges led by then-Vice President of Exhibitions and Curatorial Affairs of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Jim Henke, the group won Live Nation’s Tri-C Rock-Off, a high school battle-of-the-bands style event held at Cleveland’s House of Blues. “Chris Volante showed his virtuosity by ripping a slasher guitar and a melodic keyboard to complement his pure metal tenor,” wrote Cleveland.com’s Chuck Yarborough of the performance. “At such a young age they had more talent than a lot of people in the industry,” reflects Wild, looking back on his time in the trio. “And they were really fun guys to play shows with.”

In 2012 he was hand-picked for Belmont’s annual Best of the Best showcase, yet despite these sort of recurring music industry affirmations, Wild approached his self-released debut as a very personal matter, recording all the instruments and vocals himself. Relying on analog all the way, he began tracking the album at his parents’ house in Cleveland last August, while he finished the vocals at RCA Studio B the following month in Nashville. At this stage fellow Cleveland-to-Nashville transplant, Tommy Wiggins, stepped in, simultaneously mixing and mastering the recording live to tape. “When Chris played me the first roughs for what would become this album,” Wiggins recently posted to Facebook, “I got the exact same feeling that I did when I was 19 and heard Led Zep’s first record for the first time. Electricity and hair standing up on my arms.”

If looking to pinpoint influences, Led Zeppelin is heavily in the mix among the set of yesteryear rock homages. You might also hear the Stripes in Wild’s Lennon epitaph “The Day,” Jeff Beck through the propulsive blues of “Strawberry Lips,” or Black Sabbath, Rod Stewart, and Big Star elsewhere in the LP’s other nine cuts. But in “Home,” Wild’s record collection, personal style, and perceived place in this world all seem to collide. “I don’t know where I’m going,” wails the singer, “All I know is I don’t have a home.” Christopher Wild’s debut is ripe with familiarity, and it validates the acclaim he’s received since his youth, but more importantly the music’s helping him find his place in this world: It doesn’t really matter where Chris Volante lives because, as Christopher Wild suggests, through his music he will always have a home.

[This article was first published on villin]