The Jamie Wyman Band will release its debut album “Road Less Traveled” with a listening party at Slow Burn Records beginning at 6:30 p.m. Friday, July 29.

Musically spacious and complex, the Jamie Wyman Band’s songs draw from rock, folk and country influences.

The band says “Roads Less Traveled” is an album about resilience, human connection and heart.

“It’s a more gentle album. I would say it’s reflective and emotionally powerful. It has a heartbeat,” she said. “There are some upbeat songs, but we also wanted to go deeper than that too.”

It took fate and a global pandemic to bring together the members of the band in Whitefish.

Wyman started the band with Andy Belski in July 2020. The two first met in 2017 when Wyman was doing backup singing for the band Engine 99 and Belski hired them to play for a New Year’s Day party in his garage.

“The two of us started doing jam sessions,” Wyman said. Wyman and Belski’s relationship grew and they were married in October 2021.

The Jamie Wyman Band’s goal was always to perform live and, though the pandemic put the brakes on that for a while, by 2021 they were doing live performances around the Flathead.

Wyman has a background in social work. With a degree in law, she has worked for nonprofits, with sexual-assault survivors and as a child protection specialist for the state of Montana, which has served her well in advocating for those who need a voice. Realizing songwriting was actually her most powerful tool, Wyman began writing songs touching on subjects that capture unique moments in the human experience. She has studied the craft of songwriting with Liz Longley, Jim Messina, Justin Townes Earle, Susan Gibson and others.

In 2018, Wyman founded The Great Blue Song Project, a nonprofit that pairs songwriters with people coping with illness and grief. She had been looking for a way to share the gift of songwriting with others. In addition to leading the project, her song “I Didn’t Know” is featured on the project’s debut album “Paint Them All In Gold” — which they had a release party planned for in April 2020 — but the pandemic put the brakes on that as well. By then, there was already a second album in progress, recorded in collaboration with the Tri-Cities Cancer Center in Tri-Cities, Washington. But, because of the project artists’ engagement with cancer patients, the pandemic slowed that down. That album was virtually released last year. Wyman says for now her nonprofit Great Blue Song Project is dormant, however, the music is still available on major streaming platforms and YouTube.

In 2020, Wyman’s song “The Nest” was chosen as a semi-finalist in the International Songwriting Competition, one of the world's most prestigious and respected international songwriting competitions.

Since “Road Less Traveled” was recorded, the band has been back to the studio twice.

“Our focus now is on making new music,” Wyman said. “Plus I have a stockpile of original music I want to get out there.”

“We have a really awesome studio in Calgary, our new home studio, called OCL Studios,” Wyman said, adding that the band plans to release a new single every month.

“We want to keep the music flowing and get the recorded music out there,” she said.

The band recently released the single “Where the Dirt Road Ends,” lyrics written by Wyman and music by Belski, also available on all major streaming platforms.

Wyman’s voice has been compared to Grace Slick, Ann Wilson and Florence Welch. Belski draws on his love of progressive rock to write surprising bass lines, and Tovey, who joined the band in 2020, paints layers of music with his guitar pedals.

Early listeners of “Roads Less Traveled” have compared the sound to Florence and the Machine, Regina Spector, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and Brandi Carlile.

“‘Roads Less Traveled’ is about perseverance and overcoming challenges,” Wyman said. “And it’s also about hope because we’re always blazing our own paths in life.”

The album will be available for streaming on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon and all other major streaming platforms beginning July 29. CDs will be available at live events and on the band’s website at jamiewymanband.com.