Nomadic Heart, Hometown Stage: Bartees Strange at Ottobar

 By Ali DeLambo

Image courtesy of Billboard

There’s something about Ottobar’s low ceiling stitched with string lights that makes it feel like every show is happening inside a beating heart. It’s intimate and pulsing, a perfect match for a night that felt half-homecoming, half-reckoning as Bartees Strange (Bartees Cox) took the stage in the city he’s chosen to call home. Before finding a home just outside Baltimore, Bartees had drifted through other cities,  living in both D.C. and New York, places that shaped and sharpened his nomadic spirit. His songs carry that restlessness like a pulse: an eagerness to belong somewhere and everywhere, all at once. Talking to the audience between tracks, he made it clear that while he’s lived in many places, he’s learned to find pieces of himself wherever he goes—and right now, Mount Vernon feels like the place he can relax.

The night cracked open with a riotous set from D.C. punks Ekko Astral, who brought a raw, razor-edged energy that immediately loosened the room. Mid-set, they led a snarling, joyful chant of “Fuck Elon Musk” that felt less like a political statement and more like a primal, necessary exhale. It hit differently here than it might have just a few miles south—this wasn’t polished, policy-wonk D.C. This was Baltimore, a city stitched together by social workers, bartenders, teachers, and everyday people who don’t buy into tech bro fantasies. The cultural clash of being right outside the sanitized beltway but fully in Baltimore’s textured, unvarnished reality buzzed in the room—Ekko Astral simply said out loud what everyone else was thinking.

Bartees would later describe the opening band’s set as “open face sandwich music,” a nod to the beautiful, messy intensity it unleashed.

When Bartees finally appeared—wearing a shirt repping The National, the band whose sweeping, melancholic fingerprints can sometimes be traced in his own genre-untethered sound—the room tilted forward with anticipation. He grinned widely, surveying the crowd packed shoulder to shoulder under the soft lights. “This is sick. This is really sick," he said, almost laughing, as if even he couldn't quite believe the energy humming back at him.

Throughout the night, there was a current of something deeper running just under the surface: vulnerability, maybe, or the weight of a self-imposed homecoming. “I’ve been looking forward to and fearing this show,” he admitted early on, half into the mic, half to himself. Born in Mustang, Oklahoma, Bartees is a self-declared nomad—but he spoke warmly of settling in Mount Vernon, just outside Baltimore, carving out a life amid a city known for its grit and grit-toothed beauty. There was a sense that tonight wasn't just another date on the tour; it was a conversation with a new hometown.

His set moved like a living thing, stitched together by his remarkable voice, at times raw and soaring, at others breaking apart at the edges. The way he blends indie rock, soul, punk, and folk defies easy labels, but it lands with startling clarity: music for anyone who’s ever felt caught between worlds and tried to build a bridge anyway.

Before launching into “Lie 95,” he offered a wry, understated introduction: “This song’s about the highway.” But what followed was something much bigger than asphalt and mile markers. It was a blood-letting, a meditation on movement, dislocation, and the relentless push of time. The guitars roared and ebbed like passing headlights; Bartees's voice stretched out like a map worn thin by use. It was raw and cracked open, more organic than any tidy road trip anthem—less about where you’re going, more about what you leave behind when you get there.

By the end of the night, Ottobar felt like a single, swaying organism—strangers turned comrades under the lazy sprawl of twinkle lights. It wasn't just a concert; it was a reckoning with the beauty and the terror of belonging, of standing still long enough to call a place, and a group of people, your own.

Bartees Strange didn’t just play a hometown show that night. He claimed Baltimore as his own—and let the city claim him right back.