Sarah Buxton has a lot on her plate right now. She's getting a new duo project with Jedd Hughes off the ground, writing songs for an upcoming reboot of the movie "Footloose" and traveling across the country with the first Country Throwdown. Being a part of a new tour is lot like sailing uncharted waters. However, Buxton knows that when you love what you're doing, it's always worth every mile.

"I just believe in it so much," she says. "When you really believe in the intrinsic values of something, it makes everything worth it. I have to believe in something at a root level to really go for it, and I really believe in this."

Buxton is happy to be on the tour, but it could always be better. "Obviously, I would love to have a full band on the main stage," she admits. "That would be at the top of my list of things that I would ever want to change about this whole thing. But to be out here with such amazing people and to seal these friendships, has probably been my favorite part."

Jedd Hughes and Buxton are not just touring partners on this Country Throwdown maiden voyage; they're also collaborators for the brand new duet partnership, Buxton Hughes. It didn't take long for Buxton and Hughes to discover how these singers could make beautiful music together.

"Jedd and I met four years ago when Jedd was on Capitol and my fiancé, Tom (Bukovac), was producing a record on him," Buxton explains. "And they asked me to come in and sing backgrounds. It was just a pre-production meeting where Jedd came over with an acoustic and asked us two to start singing. And we immediately had a very strong vocal musical connection. And I'm all about vocals, growing up in choir. I love singing harmonies so much more than singing by myself. Always have. We immediately were like, ‘Oh! This sucks! Because I have my record deal and you have your record deal. Wouldn't it be awesome if someday we could just start a band?'"

Good things do often come to those who wait.

"We'd always say that," Buxton continues, continuing to think back on those pre-partnership days, "and then finally something just changed in me around the time I made that Outside My Window video. I just stopped caring about doing things in the right order and making sure everybody is on board. I realized it's important for me to be on board."

Bob Dylan once sang, "If you somebody you can trust/Trust yourself." Similarly, Buxton discovered a newfound self-reliance streak right about the time Buxton Hughes was solidified. And now, in the same way Buxton believes deeply in Country Throwdown, this independent-minded artist is fully ‘on board' with the Buxton Hughes partnership.

"I know that what Jedd and I are doing is creative," she explains, "and I know that it's cool and that it's working for me. I just know yet whether or not it's going to sell millions and billions of records. I hope it does. I just feel so strongly that this is where I'm supposed to be."

While it's good to find a singer you can harmonize with, it's even better when you connect with a harmonizing writing partner, too. "We wrote a lot together," recalls Buxton. "About two months before Christmas, we wrote about 60 songs, I think. We really hammered down and got into it. I love writing with him. He's really fun to write with. (And) a great guitar player."

You have to wonder if Hughes sometimes considers, in the back of his mind, Buxton's previous duet successes. After all, she's had high profile chart songs with both Keith Urban (Stupid Boy) and Dierks Bentley (Sweet & Wild). But to hear her tell it, Hughes deserves to right up there with commercial country's top male performers.

"I know good music, and I know good singers," Buxton comments. "I know good musicians and songwriters. I've been in Nashville for almost 13 years, and Jedd is as good as anybody I've ever worked with. He's super talented and he's so young."

Nevertheless, working with (for?) Urban and Bentley was completely different from collaborating on an equal, peer-to-peer basis with Hughes. "It's different when you go in with someone who's already very established because I'm lower on the totem pole, as far as commerciality right now; as far as what's playing on the radio goes," says Buxton. "So I'm coming in going, ‘Okay, what would you like me to do?' And they say, ‘We want you to do this.' And then they'll piece it together however they want. But with Jedd, it's more like we're coming at it as equals."

"With Keith, if I am on the fence about it, and Keith goes, ‘Oh, great!' I'm more likely be, like, ‘Cool'" I just want him to be happy."

However, Buxton would be lying if she said she never gets impatient about reaching the commercial levels of the Bentleys and Urbans of our music world.

"It does get frustrating sometimes," Buxton admits. "But it's just like anybody else's job. I'm lucky enough to have a job where I'm passionate about it. I would be doing this whether I was going to be making money in the future or not because I love it so much. And that's the part of it that always shines at the end of the night. I can have a frustrating day where my sound was terrible, and I blew out my voice so I couldn't hear myself. And I'm just, like, Uuuhhh! Well, at the end of the day I go, ‘Would I have wanted to take back that show, and that opportunity to play for my fans?' Hell no! But I'm just trying to be a lot smarter about what I say ‘yes' to in the future because I feel like I've helped a lot of people out in a lot of ways, and I'm ready to be helped out. I am ready to just focus on me, so I think that's what I want to do for the rest of the year."

Buxton looked like she was finally going break through to the mainstream with her recent Lyric Street deal. The Disney label released "Almost My Record" EP in 2007 with That Kind of Day and waited until this year for a full-length CD.

But when that label closed down earlier this year, she was left without a record deal. Nevertheless, she seems to have come to terms with this bad break.

"I was having a hard time anyway over there, but I loved all of them as people," she says. "I just never knew if we were the right match because I don't know what I could have done to work any harder. And I couldn't figure out what the missing link was. With every business deal, you sign with high hopes, and I don't think all of ‘em pan out."

Buxton just presses on, never looking back, and performing as much as she can - and especially writing songs. She's recently been working with Julianne Hough, in fact. "I have four songs on her new record, actually," Buxton says.

Buxton is also writing songs for the Footloose remake. "You don't know," she says. "Footloose could be the next Grease." Did Buxton even like the original film? "I haven't seen it." Uh, that's not entirely true. "Well, I mean I saw it when I was really little, but I can barely remember it."

But can Buxton relate to its story? Was she raised in a strict home, for instance, where she wasn't allowed to dance? "Oh no!" she responds. "They (her parents) were strict in other ways, but there was lots of dancing and lots of laughing."

Buxton may not have grown up in an overly restrictive/conservative small town, but Kansas is a long way – at least culturally speaking – from Nashville. And making that move out of state move was certainly tough on her parents.

"They were so tore up about it," she recalls. "They were so sad, but I was so ready. I was just so ready to get out of there. There was nothing; not one single cell in my body that wanted to stay around and hang out with the same people. I was ready to explore. I'd always been Sarah Buxton from Lawrence, Kansas, and that girl. You run and run from yourself, but you're still the same person. I'm still the same girl that I was then. I just wanted to grow, and I wanted to explore without people going, ‘Why is she in a rock band?' ‘Why does she have her nose pierced?' I wanted to be a wild kid for a second. And my dad really supported that. My mom was a little, like, ‘What's up with your hair?' Why have you not done your hair?' My mom was a little, like, on that side of it. My dad was just, like, ‘It's great! Let her explore because she's an artist.'"

And yes, there may well have been reason for Lawrence, Kansas folks to ask why she was in a rock band because she was once a part of an honest to goodness Southern rock band called Stoik Oak.

"I was," she admits, "and it was awesome!" That association might have been looked down upon by mainstream country a few years ago. But of late, country music has fully embraced its Southern rock heritage, whether some folks approve of this move or not.

"When I first started listening to Southern rock, it wasn't until way late, late in my life," Buxton details. "It was probably about 16 or 17 when I first started hearing classic rock and Southern rock, and I was, like, ‘Wow, I was born at the wrong time. Where was I?' I don't think modern rock music is filling those holes."

When the topic of Southern rock comes up, it reminds Buxton of just how restrictive the country music business has become of late. And that brings her down a bit. "As far as my songwriting goes, I've always been more into writing roots-y types of music," says Buxton, thinking back on those pre-country rocking days, "whether it's Southern rock, country or the blues. I've never really been into writing really thought-out, huge compositions and all that kind of stuff. It's never really appealed to me. I really think that that the whole industry – everyone included – could stand to loosen up a little bit about what they think has to happen for a song to be a hit. I just think it's made everything really boring."

Buxton may be from the plains of Lawrence, Kansas, but she is footloose, fancy free, and always anything but boring. She's out on the road, and ready, willing, and able to throw down.