“Accidental Poet,” one of Edie Carey’s earliest songs, describes a particularly eloquent friend, but could just as easily refer to Carey herself and the circuitous and 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 in Italy – managed to steer her towards music. Born in Burlington, Vermont and raised in the Boston suburbs by her English teacher father, therapist mother, and poet stepmother, Carey couldn’t help but learn to love words. But her ear for music would not become apparent until age five, when, in the back seat of her babysitter’s green Cadillac, she belted out an impassioned child’s rendition of “Up Where We Belong.” From age nine, after beginning voice lessons, she became involved in singing groups and musicals. A true child of the 80’s, she dressed in lace and sequins, worshiped Debbie Gibson, 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 singing at weddings and being Madonna, and never considered music a real career possibility. So, 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 candlelit and rapt audiences and was floored by the power of their songwriting. Around the same time, she had begun studying and falling in love with the almost melodic Italian language. That passion for learning Italian eventually led her to spend a year abroad in Bologna where she taught herself to play the guitar. In Italy, Carey set herself up in a corner of Bologna’s main piazza and shakily played every Bonnie Raitt, Shawn Colvin, and Rickie Lee Jones song she knew, nervously throwing in a few of her own tunes, some of which would later land on her 1998 debut album, The Falling Places. Her experience abroad gave her a newfound 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 until the wee hours each 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 the UK. While the debut was a very sparsely-produced acoustic contemporary folk album, Call Me Home, Carey’s follow-up in 2000, was by comparison an all-out pop record, a tribute to her early pop inspirations. With its release, the “accidents” continued, and Carey unexpectedly found herself achieving her childhood dream of appearing on television with Ed McMahon when, in 2001, she competed on Ed McMahon’s Next Big Star. For the last fifteen years, Carey has been working as a full-time performing songwriter, touring rigorously to promote all of her independently self-released records, which now include Come Close, her 2002 live CD, When I Was Made (2004), Another Kind of Fire (2006), itsgonnabegreat (2008) (a collaboration with award-winning singer-songwriter Rose Cousins), 2010′s Bring The Sea, and the latest addition to her growing catalog, ’Til The Morning: Lullabies and Songs of Comfort, a duo album with her close friend Sarah Sample. Looking back, Carey has to wonder if she’s accidentally ended up exactly where she was supposed to be.