Carter Faith
A drive through the unincorporated community of Cherry Valley, Tenn., inspired the title of rising country singer-songwriter Carter Faith’s debut full-length. She fell in love with the name and began imagining a creative utopia with crystal sunrises at the foot of a mystical mountain, where true love always returns and “the wild things grow.”
“It just became a place in my brain that I would go to if I was done with the bullshit of reality,” Carter Faith tells the Scene. “I just wanted to create a space for people, when they listen to my music, that feels like that.”
Inspired by Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger and some of her favorite Kacey Musgraves and Lana Del Rey records, the 25-year-old sought to make “a subtle concept record” and succeeded every step of the way. Even the album cover is cinematic, with Carter Faith posed in a lace gown with dramatic bell sleeves as red theater curtains part behind her. The text reads Carter Faith in… “Cherry Valley,” evoking the title sequence of an early-1950s Hollywood film.
The artwork throughout the liner notes — in which Carter Faith appears in a different vintage outfit to evoke the characters in each song — is also a meticulous labor of love for her and two of her longtime friends, stylist Kennady Tracy and photographer Lily Nelson. The whole package is an invitation to Carter Faith’s Technicolor dreamworld, where Nancy Sinatra, Tammy Wynette torch songs and “Sex, Drugs, & Country Music” reign.
“As an artist, I think it’s really just an extension of your art — your clothes and your visuals,” she says.
Produced by Carter Faith’s longtime collaborator Tofer Brown, Cherry Valley is a triumph. The album is filled with razor-sharp songwriting, from the humor of “Grudge,” in which she calls out a petty Music City loudmouth (“I’m pretty sure that even Jesus thinks that you’re a bitch”), to the Beatles-inspired “Six String” (“You play me like a six string and wonder why I gently weep”).
Even if you set aside the release of Carter Faith’s debut album, 2025 has been a whirlwind for the North Carolina native. She was featured on Bon Iver’s Sable, Fable track “Awards Season,” an appearance that came about after the project’s frontman and central member Justin Vernon and his producer Jim-E Stack heard her 2022 song “Greener Pasture.” This summer, she became the first artist signed to songwriter Jessie Jo Dillon’s Gatsby Records, an imprint under MCA. Along the way, she befriended Oscar-winning screenwriter, actor, filmmaker and musician Billy Bob Thornton, who stars in the video for another Cherry Valley standout, the trad-country gem “Bar Star.”
“I found out [Thornton] liked my music and he wanted to write some songs with me, which is actually insane,” says Carter Faith. “Because he’s Billy Bob Thornton, and growing up in the South, it’s like, ‘That’s our God.’”
The day she connected with Thornton via text message, she penned the song “Billy Bob Thornton,” an ode to a man who’s “tough as nails, but his head’s a wreck.” The actor was an instant fan of the tune. “He was like, ‘If you ever put that song out, I have to be in the video,’” Carter Faith says. “I was like, ‘Well, I’ll put the song out if you’ll be in my video for a different song,’ and he agreed,” she explains, laughing.
A worktape version of the song has been released as a single, but it isn’t slated to appear on Cherry Valley. However, Carter Faith says Thornton also gave her some valuable acting advice. That’s something she’ll make use of when she makes her acting debut in the Netflix thriller Heartland, co-starring Jessica Chastain and John Hawkes. It’s a courageous step for someone who grew up penning songs alone in her bedroom, often too nervous to perform them in public. But if there’s one thing the past few years have taught Carter Faith, it’s that she’s braver than she realized.
“I grew up shy and introverted and scared and cautious — and small-town-minded, for lack of a better phrase. I had this dream and I came [to Nashville], but I was so scared I wouldn’t be able to do it — not even [because of] the work or the talent. But I was scared that I would be too scared. What I’ve learned about myself is I’m a lot more fearless than I give myself credit for.”
