HELLO BIRDIE: Busch once performed for the Underground Lettuce Baron of Los Angeles. : Michael T. Regan

"So this train drops me off at Venice Beach," she says. "And I had to wander around from door-to-door looking for a guy named Dennis the Lettuce Baron …"

It's one of her current favorites, a recounting of three days in Los Angeles last summer. Busch had a few sunsets to kill before meeting up with her friend and touring partner Emily Zeitlyn (of The Weeds) and wasn't certain where she'd stay. A woman she'd talked music with on the flight mentioned an acquaintance, Dennis, with crash space on the coast.

Catch one: Dennis was actually the woman's ex-boyfriend.

Catch two: The details were sketchy, but he was somehow involved in the California underground produce trade.

Catch three: The whole situation just felt kinda creepy and absurd.

In between bites of a tofu lunch on Penn's campus, Busch giggles. She must have told this one a hundred times by now, but it hasn't lost any charm for her.

And once she tracked down the elusive Dennis, she had to—get this—take out her guitar and audition. You know, play some songs before he decided she could stay. But her confident voice and commanding music convinced him; he gave her a set of keys and free roam of the place. Three days later, she met up with Zeitlyn and took off on her first real tour. But she still keeps in touch with both lettuce baron and ex-baroness.

What was my question again?

Oh, right. I was asking about Birdie Busch's newfound deal with Bar/None Records. The eclectic label, which reissued her self-released The Ways We Try this spring, is one of the bigger indies currently out there, but she's relatively modest about how the deal began.

"We played a couple shows in Hoboken that they came out to," she says. "Other than that, I don't know. I think it was that they listened to the record and liked [it]."

She laughs, remembers gigs at the tiny Fire, and adds "It's definitely not a thing like, "This girl Birdie is packing clubs in Philadelphia, we gotta get on this.'"

Her real name is Emily, by the way. There's a story behind that, too. One that goes back to her post-college waitressing days and has nothing to do with songbirds or music.

"My mom bought me a beret with metal studs on the top of it. And I told her, "Mom, I don't think I can wear this when I'm waitressing.' So she said, "Oh, nonsense. Ladies wear hats inside.' It was one of those mom things, where you can tell she's absolutely serious, she's not just trying to be funny. So I wore it. And my friend Christian would joke that my name was Birdie, that it was my French alter ego from the '50s."

All this detail, all these tangents. Can you tell that Busch, now 26, was a creative-writing major?

She grew up in Collingswood, N.J., and attended the University of Miami—a period marked by immersion in canonized poetry, which she loved, and some writing of her own, which she was happy enough with. But as much as it honed her skill, it left her feeling empty.

"It would drive me nuts that I could write something like a poem or short story and no one would read it," she says.

But then there was music. Her instrumental-major friends played in jazz combos and she would regularly get out and support their gigs. But, "I was envious of the amount of fun I saw them having. I never felt as a spectator that I was experiencing the same thing."

A couple years later, Busch sat in her South Philadelphia bedroom, translating poem sketches into songs, forcing herself to learn guitar while singing lyrics about PGW cutting her off.

"I said, "I don't care how long I'm gonna sound like a seagull trapped in a paper bag, I'm just gonna keep trying to do this.'"

Fortunately it didn't take long. By the following fall, she fell into The Fire's open-mic scene, where she met future tourmate Zeitlyn and eventual producer Devin Greenwood. Quickly, Mondays became the centerpiece of her week after six days of serving tables. She played to and fed off of the group's energy, and to this day she tends to perform wearing a huge smile.

The writing background gave Busch an edge at open mics. Rather than lovelorn paeans common in songwriters her age, the music that became The Ways We Try presents listeners with richly descriptive vignettes, snapshots of life. The sweetly funky ragtime of "Gigi" describes a childhood visit to her grandmother's house. The delicate piano closer "Room in the City" channels a rainy European side street where two young lovers are lost in their daydreams.

Busch fancies herself a universal writer, but much of her music, for now, seems to take the youthful perspective, ripe with themes of discovering a place and purpose in the world.

On "Keys to the Car," she sings "I have a mattress, sits on the floor/ Not gonna get a bed till I'm sure I ain't going nowhere."

Similarly, the excellent "Drunk By Noon" narrates a litany of images encountered on her travels in Mexico after graduating. Don't get her started; she can rattle off stories for hours about the people she met, the things she saw, the way three months south of the border changed her perspective on America. "Drunk By Noon" covers a lot of ground in its three-and-a-half minutes—the mariachi players, the cafes, the dancing—ultimately reaching a resolution: "There isn't a place I belong except in my thoughts/ Where nothing's being sold and nothing bought/ And the quietest battles are being fought." It's an uncynical sentiment that befits her upbeat outlook.

Birdie Busch is confident, already looking forward to getting back in the studio to record new songs for her next Bar/None release. Yep, she's already planning album number two.

She shrugs and explains songs on Ways are between two and three years old, written about things she was experiencing at that time in her life.

She's done a lot since then.

She has more stories to tell.

Birdie Busch plays the Appel Farm Arts & Music Festival, Sat., June 3, 11:30 a.m.-8:30 p.m., $32-$38, with Richard Thompson, Fountains of Wayne, Toad The Wet Sprocket, Duncan Sheik, The Klezmatics and more, Appel Farm Arts and Music Center, 457 Shirley Road, Elmer, N.J., 800-394-1211, www.appelfarm.org. Birdie Busch will also play Sat. June 10, 7 p.m., $8, with Redbeard and Cowmuddy, The Fire, 412 W. Girard Ave., 267-671-9298, www.iourecords.com/thefire.