By Rachel Zarrell

Former Berklee College student Tim Blane, his band and the Boston-based group the North Lot will perform at afterHOURS with a free show Oct. 18.

Self-described as “acoustic pop,” Blane said it’s hard for him to categorize his music.

“It’s basically singer-songwriter music with some jazz and some blues,” he said.

Blane, who writes his own music, said he is inspired by artists like Ben Folds and Ryan Adams and tries to listen to as many musical genres as possible.

“You get influenced by music whether you like to or not, so the more you listen to it the more creative you’ll be,” he said.

In addition to listening to popular songwriters, Blane said he also listens to jazz music when he is searching for inspiration.

“I was at Berklee for a couple of years and I grew up playing jazz piano,” he said. “It’s more just using jazz concepts that you learn and you listen to, to try to sneak them into your pop mentality and try to get away with it.”

Dana Brown, a junior music industry major and former intern for Blane, said she got afterHOURS to sponsor Blane’s show.

Brown said Blane’s music appeals to a wide spectrum of people.

“I would say [his music is] pretty much like jazz rock, and then he has a little blues, a little rock guitar,” she said. “I think he’s just a great enough musician that he doesn’t have to appeal to just one demographic. And he’s young enough to still be really big with college students.”

Blane said he has been a musician nearly his whole life, and took up the violin and the piano before he entered kindergarten.

“I started playing violin when I was 4,” he said. “I actually let that go. It was too uncomfortable, my neck hurt. I started piano when I was 5, and I’ve been playing instruments ever since.”

Blane said he is in the writing phase for his next album, which he expects to begin recording by early next year.

“I live in Brooklyn with a buddy of mine who’s also a singer-songwriter,” Blane said. “We started working on new [songs] together, which is a new thing because I’ve never really worked with anyone else.”

When Blane was starting out, he said he only performed solo. Three years ago, he said, one of those solo shows was performed at afterHOURS, where his only travel cost was “jumping on the [T].”

Now the songwriter has his own band, including bassist Adam Olenn and drummer James Williams, and is beginning to see some of the perks, he said.

“We seem to get more and more people out as we play, and little things like getting some radio play and getting some good opening slots and that kind of thing,” he said.

Now, Blane and his band tour the country, and during the summer they opened a few shows for the band OneRepublic. In the end, Blane said he wants the audience to appreciate his music.

“Hopefully, if we’ve done our job right, then people when they leave, have at least one of our songs stuck in their head,” he said. “Then we’ve done a good job.”