“Accidental Poet,” one of Edie Carey’s earliest songs, describes a particularly eloquent friend of hers, but could just as easily refer to Carey herself and the circuitous, serendipitous route that led her to become one of the country’s most notable songwriters. Somehow all of the seemingly unrelated turns – from her intention to become a doctor, to a tiny music venue in the basement of a Morningside Heights chapel, to a year spent in Italy – managed to steer her towards music.
Born in Burlington, Vermont and raised in the Boston suburbs by her English teacher father, social worker mother, and poet stepmother, Carey couldn’t help but learn to love words. But her ear for music would not become apparent until age eight, when, in the back seat of her babysitter’s green Cadillac, she belted out an impassioned rendition of “Up Where We Belong.” She began studying voice soon after and became involved in singing groups and musicals. A true child of the 80’s, she donned lace and sequins, worshiped Madonna and Michael Jackson, and dreamed of appearing on Ed McMahon’s Star Search. However, as much as she loved performing, Carey was unaware that there was any middle ground between rough bar gigs and being Madonna, and never considered music a real career possibility. She made plans to major in English with pre-med classes at Barnard College in New York City. However, during her freshman year, two pivotal discoveries knocked those plans right off course: the Postcrypt Coffeehouse and the Italian language.
In the Postcrypt, an intimate music venue in the basement of St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University, Carey watched performers like Jeff Buckley, Ani DiFranco, Ellis Paul and Lisa Loeb perform unplugged to rapt, candlelit audiences and was floored by the power of their songwriting. Around the same time, she had begun studying Italian. Her passion for the language eventually led her to spend a year abroad in Bologna where she taught herself to play the guitar.
Every Tuesday in Bologna, Carey set herself up in a corner of the city's main piazza and shakily played every Bonnie Raitt, Shawn Colvin, and Rickie Lee Jones song she knew, occasionally throwing in a few of her own tunes, some of which would later land on her 1998 debut album, The Falling Places. Her experience busking on the streets of Italy helped build her confidence and encouraged her to begin performing on campus when she returned to Barnard where she started to build a student following. She made her first album in 1997, working days at Worth Magazine and recording during the wee hours of the night.
After the release of The Falling Places in 1998, she began venturing outside of New York City to play neighboring east coast cities, and gradually expanded throughout the United States, then Canada and Europe. While her debut album was a sparsely-produced contemporary folk record, Call Me Home, Carey’s 2000 follow-up, was, by comparison, an all-out pop record -- a tribute to her early musical inspirations. With its release, Carey achieved a childhood dream of appearing on television with Ed McMahon when, in 2001, she competed on Ed McMahon’s Next Big Star.
For the last 20 years, Carey has been working as a full-time performing songwriter, touring rigorously to promote her award-winning records, which now include Come Close, her 2002 live CD, When I Was Made (2004), Another Kind of Fire (2006), itsgonnabegreat (a 2008 collaboration with Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Rose Cousins), 2010′s Bring The Sea, 2014’s award-winning ’Til The Morning: Lullabies and Songs of Comfort (a duo album with Sarah Sample), and most recently, paper rings: 8 love stories, her 2016 collection of love songs commissioned by her fans. Looking back, Carey has to wonder if she’s accidentally ended up exactly where she was supposed to be. "Carey may have started out wanting to be a doctor but she found her true calling in music. Her pop-folk songs are smart tales of love, life and longing."
-Chicago Sun-Times
Carey became a mother to son Luca in 2012 and daughter Emmy in 2016. She and her family are based in Colorado. She tours extensively across the US and Canada and is currently writing material for an upcoming album to be released in early 2021.
