If you’ve been a fan of Americana Music for a while or are just starting to get into the genre, here are some wildly talented artists we think you should know. One of AmericanaMusic.com’s favorite artists is Edie Carey. Her smooth vocals, silky melodies and heartfelt, skilled songwriting chops are enough to catch yourself listening to her music for hours. Here’s our interview with her. Be sure to add her to your playlist.

Where did you grow up and where do you call home now?

I was born in Burlington, Vermont, but I grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts, just south of Boston. We lived there because my dad was an English teacher and coach at a prep school there called Nobles. I was a proud “faculty brat” and tagged along to lots of his classes and games and eventually attended Nobles as a high school student. It was there that I fell in love with music and started performing regularly in singing groups, bands and musicals. Nobles even had a castle on the campus that had a definite Hogwarts vibe. 31 years later, my family and I are now living in Colorado Springs, Colorado. My husband Matt is a community planner for the Air Force Academy and we have a daughter named Emmy (7) and a son named Luca (11).

How have the life experiences of where you lived affected your songwriting or the songs you choose to record?

In the town where I grew up I think never totally felt like I fit in. Dedham (or at least the part of town where we lived) was a very preppy, country-club scene. My dad grew up in Princeton, NJ and was of that world, but my mom grew up in Ojai in southern California and had a very different sensibility about things. I don’t think she ever felt at home in Dedham, and I’m sure I picked up on some of that. When I was in kindergarten, I was only the 2nd kid in my class to have divorced parents when it was still such a new thing in our world in the late 70’s. My parents’ divorce happened when I was only 5. I was old enough to kind of understand what was happening, but young enough that I wasn’t able to truly process it at the time. I think so many of my first songs, written in my early twenties, were my attempts to make sense of that time and what happened to my parents and our family. When you don’t have the language for something as a kid, I think art can often later become the language one uses to decode and access those feelings, emotions, unanswered questions from back when we are tiny. My song “If I Start To Cry” is a perfect illustration of that. 

What artists/songwriters have impacted or influenced your work the most? 

I listened to so much different music in the two different houses in which I grew up. My mom was more likely to put on the Grease soundtrack, or Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration” or anything by Aretha, Marvin Gaye or Al Green. My dad’s house was always filled with Carole King’s Tapestry, James Taylor, George Winston, Karla Bonoff, or Christopher Cross. I loved both musical environments, not to mention most anything the pop station had to offer: Madonna, Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, Cyndi Lauper, Prince. All of those sounds went into a big beautiful musical soup in my brain, but it wasn’t until I heard Shawn Colvin when I was 15 that I felt something shift in me. When I heard her record Steady On, I fell in love with her literate, heartfelt lyrics and her percussive guitar-playing. It wasn’t until 3 years later that I would start learning how to play guitar myself, but there was something about Shawn’s music that lit that songwriter fire in me. She was the artist who led me to listen to Ani DiFranco, Ellis Paul, Lisa Loeb, Jeff Buckley. These were the artists that made me feel so much — and also made me see that there was a way one could make a living in music; that there was something in between being a wedding singer and being Madonna.

When you perform, what do you hope is your audience’s biggest takeaway?

I think I’ve always felt or known that there is a true exchange of energy at a live show. The artist brings an energy, and so does the audience. The song written by the artist only tells half the story, however. The other half is what life experience the listener brings. Have they just lost a parent? Have they just fallen in love or out of it? Are they feeling lonely or like they want to hide? Whatever their experience, that is what they bring to the table — that is what “finishes” the song. There is nothing quite like finding your own experience mirrored in someone else’s words. It makes one feel less alone in this wretched, beautiful, never-boring experience of being human. I hope that my audience members leave a show of mine feeling a little more understood and a little less alone. 

Tell me a little bit about your latest project?

I released The Veil in June of 2022 and have been touring pretty regularly since its release. It’s been such a joy to share these songs live, the majority of which I wrote during the heart of COVID. I was home for the longest time in 20 years and while that was really hard, it was also wonderful to just be able to be in one place and do a deep dive into crafting and polishing these songs. I took up piano a few years ago, and it was so much fun (and also, at times, maddening) trying to learn how to write on a whole new instrument. These songs all have a “veil” theme, from the literal wedding veil to the very thin separation between life and death to the veil over our own eyes that becomes the blindspots we all have to the opaque space between who we are now and who we’ve been. 

What was different or unique about your approach to this last project as compared to previous ones?

I think the primary difference was that there is a theme running through all the songs, weaving them together. That through line was really new and different for me as a writer. I also think having written almost all of these songs in the depth of COVID added a layer of intensity and introspection to these songs more than in the past. We were all made to reckon with ourselves and our choices during COVID in ways we maybe never had been before and I think that leaves an indelible mark on us and on the art we make. 

Was there ever a time you felt like you wanted to quit making music? Tell us a little bit about your answer.

No. Sometimes I think there’s something wrong with me that that hasn’t ever happened! I thought it might when I became a mother, but it didn’t. If anything, it intensified my love for it because my creative hours were suddenly that much more fleeting and precious. I think COVID making it impossible to tour has made me fall even more in love with touring now because of the magical connection that happens in an audience artist-exchange — and knowing how it can be taken away very suddenly and unexpectedly.

What is your funniest or favorite “on the road” story when touring?

I wrote my song “Violently” back in 1999 while on the road with my cousin Cricket. The car broke down in Henrietta, OK on the side of Interstate 40 and it was just pouring smoke out the front of her Saab. It was an insanely hot, sticky day but we couldn’t open the windows or the doors for two long as we’d picked up a kitten in Colorado and it kept trying to get out of the car. I was allergic to the cat, and there were hordes of grasshoppers jumping in and out of the car and massive semis roaring past us in the summer heat. We sat there on the side of the road for several hours waiting for AAA to come pick us up. Oh, and the cat had peed in the car so the smell…anyway, it was a true travel low point, and it, of course, felt like a big ol’ metaphor for my love life at the time. While we waited for the tow truck to arrive, I opened my writing book and scribbled out the first few lines of what would become my song “Violently.” (I’m sure my cousin wanted to clock me for thinking about songs in that moment!). It was a shitbox of a day, but it’s one that Cricket and I will never forget (still laugh about), and one that comes alive for me every time I sing that song again.

Who or what keeps you grounded the most?

I know it’s a cliche, but my kids. They don’t care about my music or my career at all, really. I mean, sure, they want me to be happy with my job, but they also really just want me to cuddle on the couch and watch a movie with them. They want me to play games with them and play pretend and finally understand what Pokémon is about (still don’t get it). They are a constant and very helpful reminder that when I don’t get a gig I was hoping for or things don’t go well with a record, it’s all relative and it’s all ephemeral, and that the popularity contest of music does not matter.

What advice would you give artists just starting out? 

It sounds stupidly simple: write LOTS of songs — good ones and meh ones and a few great ones. Don’t write what you think folks want to hear. Write what makes you feel something. If you are telling the truth in your songs and it comes from your gut (without it being too self-indulgent), most likely you are going to find other humans who resonate deeply with what you do. Don’t worry about finding the perfect manager or agents to help you. If your songs are good and you are doing the work, those things will come in due time. If your song can shine alone without 34 layers of production on top of it, that’s the goal. Will it mean you will be wildly successful? I don’t know — but after doing this job for 23 years, I can say, at the very least, that I have a career that is truly mine and that I’m deeply proud of. I will likely never be a household name, but I get to do work that makes me feel deeply connected to myself and to others and I can’t imagine a better job than that.