MYour name is Edie Carey, and I’ve been writing, performing and creating for as long as I can remember. I started my solo career as a musician while in college. Postcrypt Coffeehouse in the basement of St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University in New York is where I’ve watched artists like Jeff Buckley, Ani DiFranco, Ellis Paul and Lisa Loeb perform unplugged in front of an audience captivated by candlelight and I was overwhelmed by the power of their composition. Inspired, I picked up a guitar and started busking while studying abroad in Bologna, Italy. Shortly after, I released my first album Falling places.
Fast forward twenty years, ten albums, and many cities later, I still write, perform, and create from my current home of Colorado Springs. My eleventh solo album The veil will be released on June 3.
“Clever stories of love, life, and longing…” – Chicago Sun-Times
Tell us about the inspiration behind your new music.
I wrote the album title track “The Veil” in January 2020, a week after my kids and I were in a serious car accident and about two months before COVID shut down the world. In a verse of this song, the veil refers to the thin shroud of security we want to believe we have between us and danger, and how disturbing it is when that shroud is suddenly torn apart. I soon noticed other forms the veil theme took in songs I had already written and those I was writing as the pandemic continued: the wedding veil and the intricacies of a marriage, the painfully thin barrier between life and death, the blind spots that keep us from seeing ourselves clearly and seeing others, and the opaque space between who we are now and who we have been. The “thread” of the veil runs through each song on the disc.
What was the process of writing and recording the songs?
I wrote a few of these songs in 2015, but the rest were written just before and during the pandemic. I was home for a long time for the first time in a very long time and suddenly had a lot more space to write. Once the songs were ready, I headed to Provo, UT in November 2021 to record them for two weeks with my producer Scott Wiley and his amazing team of musicians at his June Audio studio. Few people know (I had no idea) how much phenomenal music comes out of UT, and specifically Provo. Imagine Dragons, Neon Trees and The Killers are just a few bands that emerged from this scene. I benefited directly from being in the midst of such brilliant musicians. There’s nothing quite like the magic of seeing your “line-drawn” songs awash in so much color and feeling.
What do you hope your fans/listeners take away when they listen to your music?
I want listeners to see themselves in the songs, to feel understood, and to remember that we are not alone in this amazing/terrible/beautiful/exhausting experience of being human.
When did you first learn the guitar and what attracted you to this instrument?
I was a nanny for a newborn during the summer when I was 18 and she slept a lot. I thought it would be a good time to finally learn to play an instrument. I think I was drawn to the guitar simply because that’s what the people whose music I liked played. It was portable and seemed like the right tool to finally be able to marry the lyrics I was writing and my singing voice. I taught myself with chord books for the Indigo Girls, Bonnie Raitt and Shawn Colvin and practiced playing with their albums.
Speaking of instruments, what brand(s) do you play and why?
I’ve been playing my Martin 000-16 since I bought it in 1997. It’s a smaller body guitar and yet it has this huge resonance and volume for its size. I tend to like darker sounding guitars and this one is warm and vibrant. It cracked on a United flight a few years ago (12 inches long / ¾ inch wide) and luthier Michael Miller here in Colorado Springs made it sound better than before the crash. I’m probably too emotionally attached to this guitar, but it’s been everywhere with me for the past 25 years.
What are some of your musical influences?
I listened to (and made up LOTS of embarrassing dances) a lot of 80s pop growing up, but my dad listened to a ton of singer-songwriters: James Taylor, Carole King, Karla Bonoff, and early Bruce Springsteen. I was becoming imbued with this music simply because he regularly played them at home. But it wasn’t until I heard Shawn Colvin when I was 15 that I became totally obsessed with folk singer-songwriters. I lived overseas in Italy my freshman year of college and went to watch the Crash Test Dummies play in a tiny little village and they had this then totally unknown opener named Sarah McLachlan. I listened to it non-stop thereafter and started writing my own songs that year. I think of Bonnie Raitt, Aretha Franklin, Ani DiFranco, The Indigo Girls, Jonatha Brooke and her duo The Story (with Jennifer Kimball) as my unwitting voice and songwriting teachers.
Will you be touring to support your new music?
Yes, I am starting release shows for my album on June 2 here in my hometown of Colorado Springs and release shows will continue through spring 2023. My tour schedule can be found at http://www.ediecarey.com/tour. Many more TBA shows coming soon!
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