Evan Bartels

Evan Bartels’ To Make You Cry is a sparse, cinematic six-song EP recorded in a handmade cabin outside Nashville. With little more than acoustic guitar and vocals, Bartels crafts haunting portraits of unseen lives, personal sacrifice, and spiritual reckoning. Driven by stark honesty and emotional depth, the EP offers intimate glimpses into raw human experience—what Bartels calls songs “you perhaps shouldn’t be hearing.”

The first single, “Lula,” tells the story of a woman who lives and dies on her own terms. Written in 2017 but released now for its perfect fit, it sets the tone for the EP’s human-centered narrative. Other tracks, like “Montana” and “Death of a Good Man,” reflect on trauma, loneliness, and survival, while the second half of the record turns inward—exploring Bartels’ own mortality and the impact of his choices on his family.

Raised in the small town of Tobias, Nebraska, Bartels was encouraged by his father to pursue music from a young age. His journey—from gigs in backyard sheds to cross-country tours—has shaped his storytelling style, rich with hard-earned insight. The EP was recorded live over two days with no metronome, pitch correction, or overdubs, and later embellished with subtle touches of bass and pedal steel by Paul DeFiglia and Russ Pahl.

Inspired by literary icons like Bukowski and Hemingway, Bartels isn’t afraid of life’s uncomfortable truths. “If you want to make songs into art,” he says, “you give that pain a voice.” Ultimately, To Make You Cry isn’t just a collection of songs—it’s a meditation on the beauty, tragedy, and unresolved edges of real life. “Sometimes there is no resolution,” he says. “That doesn’t mean the story doesn’t need to be told.”