I met Bart Budwig over glasses of whiskey before his raucous set at Pappy & Harriet’s, the storied roadside honky tonk in the California desert. A skilled sound engineer by trade and a tireless road dog at heart, he was perfectly at home sleeping out back in a tent that night and rolling out with his band at 5am the next morning, chasing the sun to his next gig. For Bart, the road is not an escape from his life in tiny Enterprise, Oregon, but a vehicle to dredge the reaches of his own psyche - the act of playing his songs night after night is catharsis through performance. He is running head-long into an exploration of humanity, loss, religion, and how to find humor in the things we struggle to talk about. - Kat Parker