Musical influences come from many places. For Jackson Dreyer, a Nashville-based easy-listening soul artist, those influences include Stevie Wonder, John Mayer and spending his summers in Coeur d’Alene as a kid.

He even wrote a song about the last one. The track, “Coeur d’Alene,” is featured on Dreyer’s debut record, which released Aug. 3.

“What really makes it sound like it does is how all the instruments come together and how it constantly adds layers,” Dreyer said in an interview with The Press. “It just keeps building and building, and it always felt right to build it that way, because all these memories and emotions (of growing up) kept building and building, and that’s what Coeur d’Alene means to me.”

Dreyer grew up in the Chicago area, but both his parents spent their formidable years in Coeur d’Alene.

“Both of them went to Coeur d’Alene High School; they were high school sweethearts,” Dreyer said. “She was a Vandal, and he was a Coug. Both sets of grandparents lived there… and every summer until I turned 17 we would go for like two weeks. That became a home away from home.”

These trips were major events, as Dreyer and his siblings got to spend time with his large extended family.

“We used to call it cousin camp. I had 13 cousins, and I think there was maybe a six year gap between all of us,” he said. ‘We were all super good friends. We would go horseback riding, jump off cliffs, just every summer it was this huge delegation of us.”

He even ran his first red light in Coeur d’Alene, accidentally.

“I just got my license, and my grandpa had this ‘84 Jeep Wrangler, and he said, ‘The Wrangler is yours for the trip,’” Dreyer said. “We were coming around the corner on Sherman… the Wrangler had no windows and doors, and my cousin Matty was in the passenger seat. We were having fun blasting the radio, and sure enough there was this Dodge Ram...”

It was a close call, but thankfully no collision.

“I said, well, there’s my first red. We were a little shaken,” he said.

The song “Coeur d’Alene” doesn’t focus on Dreyer’s questionable teenage driving skills. Instead it paints a picture of what locals already know. He describes mountains that “go on for miles that are like memories of simpler times.” On the chorus, he reminisces, “I miss the nights we spent out on the lake. Those town lights reflecting on the waves.”

From a songwriting standpoint, Dreyer said he was lucky he visited Coeur d’Alene and not another area town.

“Coeur d’Alene, on the lake - it just flows off the tongue. If you say Coeur d’Alene it has that rhythm,” Dreyer said. “Spokane is nice, Hayden is nice… but that was totally God’s doing having Coeur d’Alene be such a lyrical name.”

Dreyer, 22, didn’t always see himself as a singer. He went to Belmont University in Nashville to study guitar.

“I just wanted to be a guitarist like Santana,” he said. “Nashville is such a songwriting town, and the country songwriting community is so close knit. People will write two songs a day, every day. So I started writing some country music.”

His music would eventually evolve closer to the influences of his youth, which is a more melodic/soul sound in the vein of John Mayer, Michael Buble and Jason Mraz. But much of his songwriting continues to be rooted in what makes country music special.

“What country does is tell stories, and if I hadn’t been writing country songs and with country writers, ‘Coeur d’Alene’ wouldn’t have happened,” Dreyer said. “Not every song needs to be a story, but ‘Coeur d’Alene’ needed to be.”

Dreyer, as well as many of his friends and collaborators in Nashville, aren’t just focused on making music. As an independent artist, he’s marketing himself, booking his own shows, recording and producing his own tracks and reaching out to fans via social media.

“The crazy thing about being an artist is there are so many no’s,” he said. “People are constantly saying no, and sometimes you have to make the yeses for yourself.”

His efforts have included a live-in-studio video series, “The Cozy Sessions,” late last year, followed by this month’s release of a “more summer-themed” studio album. The first and second singles, “Can’t Fake It” and “For Me,” preceded the full release this summer.

Dreyer said the song “Coeur d’Alene” wasn’t originally meant to be part of the album, but it eventually found its way on as he kept adding layers to the song. The message, however, endured every incarnation.

“I wrote this song for my family and my friends, and what that place means to me,” Dreyer said.

Listen to “Coeur d’Alene” here: https://youtu.be/dv1FBPTEvms

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For music and more about Jackson Dreyer, visit www.JacksonDreyer.com or follow him on Instagram (@jacksondreyer) and Facebook.com/JacksonDreyerMusic