It was your typical road to becoming an acoustic folk singer-songwriter: A childhood spent studying trumpet, then a college degree in theology sandwiched between a stint in a punk rock band.

OK, so Derren Raser's path to his place in music wasn't exactly conventional. But learning to play guitar as a teenager, and then discovering the music of James Taylor, were a bit more in the norm.

And if Raser -- playing Wednesday at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach -- began writing music while studying trumpet in elementary school, the process of creating a song is pretty consistent no matter the style or instrument, he said.

"The first serious song I would really play today is a song I wrote my senior year of high school that I played at my senior talent show at my school," Raser said by phone from his San Diego home. "Someone heard it and had me on a local TV program where I came and sang that song live."

It was college that brought the Kansas City, Kan., native to San Diego. And he even went to Point Loma Nazarene University with the intention of studying music -- which he did for two years before switching to a philosophy/theology major.

While he hopes to make music his full-time career down the road, he works for a publisher of music instruction materials for classroom use -- a way, he said, of giving back to the kind of programs that first excited him about music.

"My public music education experience really fostered a love for music in me and really facilitated a lot of exploration in terms of music because of the encouragement I got from my teachers and the really robust program they had."

And how did an 8-year-old get interested in trumpet?

"They brought you in and had you play a few instruments, and if you had a natural disposition toward one, they let you play that one.

"Trumpet actually came naturally for me. My dad also played trumpet.

"I really enjoy playing it, and played it a lot in college, but I haven't played it as much since. But there have been a few occasions when someone needs a trumpet for a gig or a church needs someone for a brass ensemble. I don't have the stamina I once had."

After he got into high school, and despite his then-new admiration for James Taylor, Raser was in a punk rock band. It was there that he first began writing nonclassical music.

But it's as a singer-songwriter that he has done most of his composing, which led to the release of his first studio album last year, "King of I'll Tell You Next Week."

"When I first started writing," he said, "I kind of got this feeling (of) 'Oh, here comes a song' when something is coming. So there's a large element that is inspiration-based. It's not really like I say, 'Oh, I'm going to sit down and write a song.'

"But as I've matured as a songwriter, it's not like I can just sit around and wait for inspiration.

"As a craft, song writing requires a lot of discipline. It's a skill -- the more I use song writing, the better I become at it. And the better I am at filtering out bad lyrics.

"It's a skill that I have had to develop."

Derren Raser with Greg Laswell and Get Back Loretta

When: 9 p.m. July 25

Where: Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach

Tickets: $7

Info: (858) 481-8140

Web: bellyup.com