Cochranite Aaron Kenny spent several years touring across the country in a rock band but he's flipped a switch and is discovering his love for country music.

"For a lot of my young life I used to tour around Canada in a hard rock band as a singer and bass player and then about 10 years ago I relocated to Calgary for work once my Rockstar ambitions kind of dried up. And I guess as a result of moving to Calgary. I started writing country music, I kind of found a new genre that I was very interested in and started writing some horrible songs and then over the last few years I kind of feel like I'm kind of getting my stride and I've started recording some music in my basement and putting it on Spotify and now I'm just trying to kind of get myself out there a little bit especially in Cochrane because it's my local hometown now."

Kenny writes and records all of his music. 

"I actually write everything acoustically but I have a neat little studio in my basement so I actually do all of my instruments in my music right now. So I'm doing the drums and the bass and the singing and the banjo and the guitar, just kind of putting things together now so that when I do get a band I've got some competent demos I can send, so we can all learn the songs and start playing them." 

The 47-year-old looks to artists like Sturgill Simpson and others for inspiration. 

"My absolute favourite artist and probably like a lot of people is Chris Stapleton I really really like his style of writing and his voice just absolutely floors me. And that's what's been neat about getting into the country genre because I was so entrenched in the hard rock world it's like all the country music that's been available for all these years is all new to me so it's just like a smorgasbord for my senses, it's really, really cool."

Kenny has several songs available on Spotify.

"I think I'm probably up to about nine or 10 songs right now. I've been writing quite a bit and I kind of tend to throw the ones up that I think are a little better onto Spotify just to get a little bit of feedback." 

He's hoping to team up with other local artists and start playing some music around town. 

"I would like to form a band, and to start to play my music live and, and also by forming a band I would assume that I would also have some songwriting collaborators that could help me maybe going forward with writing some better songs, that's my main ambition."

For more information and to contact Kenny he has a Facebook page @aaronkennycountrymusic