Sure it's regional stereotyping, but when you hear a musician is from Prince Edward Island there are some expectations that the region will manifest itself in the sound.

Fiddles are probably the biggest, and you probably also imagine some pint-raising pub songs as well.

What you probably don't expect is the rural roots music that's featured on 25-year-old singer-songwriter Nathan Wiley's acclaimed debut Bottom Dollar.

"I think it's in there, but it's in a different way than most P.E.I. artists express it," Wiley says of his Maritime roots. "I can hear the Island in there, but then I can hear Vancouver (where he lived for several years) -- I hear a lot of places, really."

And a lot of different styles, too.

Wiley, who opens for Sarah Slean tonight at the U of C's Rozsa Centre, mixes up different roots music styles to come up with something that at times has a gothic country folk rock feel to it.

There are echoes of Blue Rodeo to what he does, but his diverse influences, such as Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Nick Lowe, also poke through on Bottom Dollar, which he wrote, produced and played many of the instruments on.

"I listened to so much different stuff growing up that I just really wanted to put a record together that was a big stew of different musical genres ...," he says. "I wanted the songs to work together but at the same time for every one that comes on to be different."

For that reason, Wiley appears to be set on a course for a career standing just outside of the mainstream -- which is fine by him.

He's found a regular home on campus radio not to mention CBC, thanks to winning a Definitely Not The Opera contest as well as being a finalist in a CBC television songwriter search.

"I was raised on CBC and my family are all big CBC people so it's great to have their support," Wiley says. "I really don't feel that the record is a commercial radio record so it's nice to have something like CBC."