Growing up in Carroll County provided the kind of experience Bill Gentry might not have had in another community. It gave him a grounding in values and ideals he still believes in today.

“I think it was also a community founded in the basic, traditional American values,” Gentry said. “I think for anybody growing up there it gives you a good, strong foundation of American right and wrong, the things to do and not to do in life.”

Although he’s had to split his time between Georgia and Nashville for the last couple of years as he’s worked on his music career, Gentry considers himself a resident of Carrollton. He owns a house in town and intends to keep it.

And it is in Nashville that Gentry’s homegrown talent resulted in a CD, “Countrified!” — its first single, “I Want What You Want,” should be reaching the airwaves soon.

Gentry might be a rising star in country music, but he knows his roots.

With three brothers and two sisters, Gentry had a large family to socialize with and family remains an integral part of his life. It was his sister, Mimi Gentry, he turned to when he wanted to do a concert in Carrollton and needed someone to organize it.

Family is very important to Gentry, said his mother, Tommie Freeman. His father, a Presbyterian minister, died when Gentry was just 2 years old.

“I would say, all his life he’s wanted to know his daddy and what his daddy was like,” she said. “When he turned 18 ... I asked people to write to Bill and to tell him stories about his daddy, and so he got a lot of letters, and he treasures those.”

He’s close to his step-father of 30 years, Wilson Freeman, whom he calls Pop. Wilson Freeman served in the military, and at each show that Gentry plays he dedicates a song to Pop, all veterans as well as a gospel song in honor of his father.

Tommie Freeman has visited some rough venues to see her son perform.

“His momma wanted to go see him,” said Tommie Freeman. “We didn’t go often, but we would go see him. The smoke and everything made it real difficult because my family’s allergic to smoke and a lot of other things. So that made it even more difficult to go, but we’d take our Claritin and go on.”

About six years ago, Gentry founded Wild Bill’s in Atlanta, a “honky-tonk” he knew his mother would be comfortable in when she came to see him sing.

While he was growing up, Gentry took up the guitar after his sister got one and grew tired of it. His first guitar was just a cheap model that he soon wanted to replace, his mother said. She took him to a pawn shop where he found a better guitar, but it was expensive. He was adamant, though, that this was the guitar he wanted.

“I told him, ‘Well, we have to go to the bank, we’ll go to the bank and get a loan,’” she said. “He made his payments and worked to raise the money to pay off that loan.”

Gentry sang in several church choirs and in 4-H competitions over the years. Any place he could perform.

“I think most people knew me by music,” Gentry said. “I was in every talent show that you could possibly be in in Carrollton from pretty much the fifth grade on, maybe even the fourth grade on.”

In high school, he started a band. In a very short-lived agreement, the band rented a room in a dress shop on Adamson Square to practice.

“We had rented out the basement and quickly got evicted after we cranked up the amplifiers a few times too early in the day,” Gentry said.

Gentry attended Georgia State University in Atlanta after graduating from Carrollton High School, but because of a job offer left the school just a few credits shy of his degree in marketing. He tried his hand at a variety of careers, including starting a data processing company, but he always came back to music.

And that has led to “Countrified!” and the single “I Want What You Want,” which the Web site billgentrynation.com describes as “a rocking celebration of the traditional country life. It is driven by a Duane Allman-inspired slide guitar, yet one of the dominant instruments is a banjo straight out of Earl Scruggs.”

Gentry spent months with famed Nashville producer Garth Fundis sifting through hundreds of songs from Nashville’s top writers. The goal, according to billgentrynation, was to find great songs that Gentry could believe he’d written, songs that reflected his experiences and values.

Gentry’s mom believes one of the reasons he started Wild Bill’s was because after 11 years of performing and trying to get to Nashville, the club allowed him to bring Nashville to him by singing with the artists he brought to the club.

“It’s who I was made to be,” Gentry said. “I tried my hand at a career in business. I worked for Sen. Sam Nunn as an intern for a while and really tried out a lot of things that I thought I might be interested in. The only place that I found happiness in is music and being on stage.”