ELLISVILLE – He’s a country singer, musician and songwriter and he’s about to graduate from Jones College with something maybe a little better than his associate’s degree in Music Industry & Recording Arts. As nearly 600 JC students graduate on Friday, May 3, Eli Carter’s first country song, “These White Lines” will hit the airwaves. The 20-year-old Collins native has been singing and songwriting since he was a teenager and he is on the verge of launching a career in songwriting, with the hope of a career performing in Nashville too.
“It’s going to be a pretty wild day!” said Carter. “I felt like I had to have something before I left Jones, so some friends helped me out. Daniel Baldwin played piano and sang harmony, along with Matt Taylor. We knocked it out in two nights and sent it to Matt McGuffie, our instructor and audio engineer in the Free State of Jones Recording studio on campus. He added the lead guitar to the track, fixed and mastered it in three hours and put it in distribution.”
The song, “These White Lines” could be interpreted a couple of ways, according to Carter. However, his intent was that everybody has moments of desperation, and everyone has these times of hopelessness.
“That’s kind of what the song leads with, ‘God if you can hear me now, I’m not begging for a miracle.’ You’re crying out for anything, something to help,” said Carter.
B95 Country radio station’s morning DJ, Grey Manning, loved the opportunity to be the first radio station to debut the song on Tuesday, April 30, at 8 a.m., before its official release on May 3.
“I think this is awesome to have a new artist that is local, that has a new song coming out, that’s one of the coolest things about radio. When you can play a song before anyone has heard it or before anybody else can buy it or play it. It’s pretty cool!” Manning said excitedly. “This song could be interpreted in a few different ways and that’s what makes it an incredible song.”
Carter shared that singer songwriters like Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Tyler Childers, and Jason Isbell have all influenced his, American traditional country style of music. Nonetheless, his favorite is Isbell.
“Jason Isabell’s writing is insane. I like to say I write bad Jason Isbell songs because I’m trying to imitate his writing but it kind of turns into my writing,” said Carter.
While Eli Carter has been performing live locally for the last year, his debut singing and playing the guitar was at the Okatoma Festival last May. He will return to Collins on Saturday, May 4, for another performance on the Okatoma stage at 4:30 p.m. until 5:30 p.m. His first song, “These White Lines” will be available on Spotify, Pandora, iTunes and just about anywhere you can stream music on Friday, May 3, 2024.