From her debut album, released in 1998, Edie Carey has built a career in music that has seen her gain much recognition and praise for her songwriting. She performs on a regular basis throughout North America, filling venues and playing house concerts for her growing fan base of admirers. Her previous releases have shown her to be a singer-songwriter and guitarist of enduring appeal and her songs are rich in worldly insight when it comes to matters of the human condition and our search for real meaning and lasting love. She brings together both compassion and empathy with an honesty that marks her as an artist of deep integrity. Edie’s new album, THE VEIL, recently received a European release and is currently the forerunner for my album of the year. Lonesome Highway caught up with the very eloquent and engaging Edie Carey for an enjoyable conversation that touched upon many interesting moments in her career to date.
Congratulations on the release of THE VEIL. Have you been pleased with the media reaction to the album so far?
I think that there’s always different factors that weigh into how you feel about how something has been received. There’s the fans reaction to it, and there’s the publicity reaction to it. I feel like it’s been one of the best, of the records that I’ve made, so far. I think that your fans tend to be on your team most of the time but people also like what’s familiar, so when you make something new it’s like they want to hear what’s new but they also want to just know what they know and what they feel connected to. So there’s always that seal that has to be broken for listeners who have been listening for a long time. But I have been getting very positive feedback from people who say that this record has gone up a big notch from the previous ones. I also feel that it did, in as much as Covid was such a horrible, scary time and continues to be in so many ways; it was the first time I really had space to stop and stay home for a long time. I could go and do a deep dive, to really polish these songs, rip them apart and sew them back together again. I was able to learn piano and there are four piano songs on the record. Guitar has always been my home and so, what I really hope is that people see that I put every ounce of myself into this record because I had the time and space to do that, being home and unable to tour. And I have gotten that precise feedback from people, both on the press side and on the fans side. It’s been really wonderful.
How vulnerable do you feel in the writing process. Many of these songs are very personal and although they can also be viewed as universal themes, there is the risk of being too honest. Is that a line you have to be conscious of?
If it were something that I was supposed to be conscious of, then I’ve never been particularly good about recognising it. That’s the space I always naturally go to in my writing. It’s not that I want to be overly indulgent in how personal it is, because a lot of these songs are written through other peoples’ points of view. That’s one of my favourite things about writing, taking on other people’s stories even though many of the songs are also personal. But I feel like the music that moves me the most is music that tells a really deep and honest, and sometimes, uncomfortable truth. Because music that makes you feel less alone in those vulnerable moments, what a gift that is. I know some people don’t want to listen to music like that and all they want is a celebratory sound and to have fun and dance, and I love all of that too. But I want to create music that emulates the music that makes me feel so deeply and also know that I’m not the only person that feels this way. So I have always been drawn to songs that make me feel in that way and therefore I’m naturally drawn to songs that go right to that place of vulnerability. I’ve always wished maybe I could be a little more mysterious and write lyrics where nobody really knows what’s going on. But it’s just not who I am. After I get offstage sometimes I think why did I just sing that song in front of all those people and be struck by the vulnerability of it. But then people will come up to you after the show and share their experiences and what a cool exchange that is. It’s like ‘I’ll show you my heart, if you show me yours.’
If we go back to your debut album in 1998, THE FALLING PLACES, the opening song, Margaret, begins with the lines ‘Hearing your voice was like hearing the future.’ There is a sense of wanting to break free and to live your own life in the song. As your career has grown, is there a fear of writing the same song over and over?
I’d say that maybe on a superficial level I could worry ‘am I circling the same drain again and again.’ But I don’t think that you really can because, hopefully, you’re growing and changing and evolving over time as you’re seeing the same people in your life and you’re experiencing the same situations. You’re not the same as when you were 20 or when you were 30, and I think that your perspective and your experience changes, so I feel like as long as you are evolving somewhat as a person then I don’t think that you really can write the same song twice because hopefully you are growing and learning. You have more trauma that informs your experience but you also have more wisdom that comes from that trauma that informs the experience. That song Margaret was written when I was living abroad for a year in Italy and the song references my mother in seeing the struggle that so many mothers and daughters have to face as you separate out to become your own person. Seeing the hard stuff about your parents and then seeing the hard stuff about yourself, and then becoming a mother yourself and having a lot more compassion for your parents than maybe you had when you were young.
Your next album in 2000, CALL ME HOME, has an interesting song titled Emma and I was wondering if this was another person that influenced your early development and journey?
Emma came from a dream I had about having a daughter one day and I always liked that name. It was a stream of consciousness thing that happened when we were making the record. And it felt like a perfect outro to me for the album, so it was really just a fictitious little girl.
Another song, Black Wool Dress, has an interesting lyric and the lines ‘Cause I am your mother and it should have happened to me’ got me thinking that this was a song about bereavement?
I really love writing stories in the first person through another person’s experience. This song was inspired by thoughts of a mother having to say goodbye to a child. I wrote it just a couple of days after John F Kennedy Junior died, together with his wife and her sister, in a plane crash back in 1999. I remember thinking about what the mother would have been going through after losing two daughters and a son-in-law on the same day. And trying to understand what it would be like to be that person in the middle of all that noise and people swirling around trying to comfort you, but ultimately feeling completely alone in your grief.
On the new album, THE VEIL, the final song You’re Free seems to capture that sense of a chance to be reborn, letting go and of having a clean slate?
That was inspired by a friend of mine who lived in NYC and she was moving out of her apartment. She had everything in her life packed in a van and she ran up to give the landlord back her keys, but when she came back down the van had been stolen. She literally had nothing left, everything in the world was gone and it was obviously deeply traumatic. But it ended up being this unbelievably freeing thing. She hated her job, had no regular boyfriend and she wanted to have a kid. After this happened she quit her job, she started her own business and had two children on her own. She felt so light and said that she could make anything of this. There is something so freeing about losing all your history, all the photographs from your childhood and all the things that you carry from place to place as you move in the world. It was devastating to lose it but she also felt so light. I found it so interesting how material things can really hold us down in so many ways and be emblematic of the internal things that we carry. But it could also equally be a song about a person moving on from a relationship.
Given your surname, do you have any Irish roots?
I know that my Carey family name has roots in Donegal, but also British and Scottish on my mother’s side. I have travelled in Ireland but never played there. I visited a few Irish pubs but I don’t have the chops to sit in on a traditional Irish session! I would love to go back and actually tour there, it’s something that I want to do.
Have you played much in Europe over your career?
I lived in Italy for a year and I have toured in the UK and Belgium and the Netherlands. Mostly I play in America and Canada but I’m hoping to do more touring now that my children are getting older.
Your song The Middle says that you can be funny when you talk, but too damn serious when you sing. Do you get a great outpouring from people when they see you live?
Yes, it can be very funny when people come to my shows and I sing my more serious emotional songs, and then I tell idiotic stories in between as a kind of palate cleanser before the next song that may make you weep. Also, I have long time fans who bring friends to shows and I can see their friends crying. When they come up to me afterwards and say that they didn’t expect to be doing so much weeping, I say that is the best compliment you can give me, that my song resonated and makes you feel seen and less alone with whatever feelings you may be having. I had a neighbour who came to a show and he made up all these labels and tissues that said “I ugly cried with Edie Carey” and I started giving them out at shows – it was very cute. It’s a normal reaction at my shows and it seems strange to want to elicit that but I write the songs for myself so what an incredible gift to have people join you in that moment of vulnerability. It’s such a privilege to get to meet people that way.
How do the songs come to you?
I think early on I would wait to be struck by the muse or have some kind of terrible break-up that would spur a lot of the songs. I write a lot of commission songs for people as another part of my income. Those are assignments that I get, maybe for a birthday or a wedding, and I have one coming up shortly for a woman on her 75th birthday that has been requested by her daughters. So right now I have all the material and photographs that I’ve been sent and I’m marinating myself in her story and the information that I’ve been given. I will set my alarm clock for 4.30 in the morning – I really love that time of the morning, sort of a liminal space between sleeping and waking, and get up and free-write for an hour. I have a whole process through which I do that and I like a deadline to work towards. Usually those song commissions don’t turn up on my records even though there a couple on THE VEIL where I asked permission to use them. For my own songs, I tend to develop thoughts if I wake up at night and I will quickly get ideas and play around on my guitar or piano until a mood comes and I can start weaving them together.
You did release an album of these commissioned songs; PAPER RINGS: 8 LOVE STORIES, in 2016.
Yes that was all commission songs but I always try to put some dark into the songs in order not to make them too saccharine. I think that mixing a hint of the dark with the light allows for the love story elements to mean that much more. My goal is to have every word reflect the stories that I have been given.
Your guitar playing is quite superb and the synergy between your vocal and guitar is quite beautiful. Did you start playing at a very young age?
This is probably the thing that I feel most self conscious about. I was always a comfortable singer and I loved to write, but so many of my peers started playing guitar when they were about ten years old. I started when I was about nineteen so I always felt very behind the ball. I’m not a dexterous player where I’m playing tons of melodic lines with my left hand, that’s not what I do. Patty Griffin is one of my favourite songwriters on the planet and she plays pretty straight-forward, simple guitar and it doesn’t matter because you believe every word she’s saying and what she’s playing supports what she’s doing really well. So I think I’ve come into my own in feeling comfortable in my guitar playing, but it’s only been in recent years that people have been saying “you’re a really good guitar player.” I still feel like I just started playing last year, but it’s been interesting to learn how to play piano in the last few years and to start a new instrument which feels so scary and nerve wracking. I’ve come to realise how at home I am with my guitar playing, so it’s funny how your perspective changes over time. I do love guitar and I’m so grateful for the way in which it allows me to write songs and grow whatever story I’m trying to tell.
All your albums have been self-released. Do you also handle all your own management and tour bookings?
Yes, and it can be a lot, but I love knowing how to do all the parts of my career, because if someone left my team then I wouldn’t be totally lost as to how to carry on. I once had a manager but when he went off to law school I just never managed to find someone else. I did consult with people over the years but I am really happy running my own ship, even though it’s only a tiny little row boat. If I want to take time off then I can, and I’ve had booking agents and they’re wonderful, but I do so many house concerts that those relationships come directly from my fans and we become friends over the years. I have a constellation of people whose homes I have played at and when I go back they have invited new friends to come and hear me play. So it’s word of mouth and I don’t really need an agent for that. I only tour one week a month at the moment, and I also play venues when I know I can fill them and I will do media and press around those. Building my fan base is always the aim and I sometimes wish I were driving a bigger boat but then I really love that I’m self-contained and in control of running it how I want it to be run. I also do all fan fund raising for my records and have done so for the last 20 years .
You have tended to use different producers across your albums. What do you find that different producers bring to your sound?
I think that after doing this for so long, I know of what my sound is and what feels authentically me. My focus is always to have the story and the voice at the centre of what is happening. I want my voice to sound like it’s singing into your ear and that it’s a very connected and intimate experience. And then that the production supports and underscores that and it’s not like a wall of sound with my voice off in the background. So a very singer- songwriter type of production. I have fans saying the they love just the voice and guitar and that they don’t care as much for the production, and I totally get that. But as an artist I love having the layers of production and I’m hearing the cello and the bass, the piano and the guitar. It feels like what I do when I’m solo and when I’m live is like a line drawing and when I make a record it’s a different animal and here are these songs fleshed out, flooded with colour, and my hope is that the songs stand alone and are strong enough in their bone structure that they work both ways. I like changing-up producers and I have always had very positive experiences when I’m working with different producers. I fell in love with Scott Wiley’s production when he produced the album 'Til The Morning: Lullabies and Songs of Comfort (2014), that I recorded with Sarah Sample. He also produced The Veil and I had such a great time working with him.
Interview by Paul McGee