Potential New Boyfriend at Midway Saloon, St Paul (July 10, 2025)

The Midway Saloon in St. Paul hosts an outdoor “patio concert series” in the summer and classic country & western band Potential New Boyfriend was performing on a not too warm Thursday evening.

Potential New Boyfriend arrived as a quintet (vocals, guitar, fiddle, bass, and steel guitar) and focused on Western swing and country music from the mid 20th century. First time guest singer Anne Elizabeth Brown nailed the warm up / sound check with a snippet of Patsy Cline’s Fall to Pieces (regular singer Jaclyn Smith was out of town). After a quick introduction and reporting of upcoming events, the band took over and started with a pair of Bob Wills songs, the first an instrumental, and the second with bandleader Nick Martin singing. A quick joke from Martin about the solidity of the dance floor (concrete patio) led into another instrumental, Panhandle Rag, and the band was hitting their stride. Brown finally came to stage, singing Walking After Midnight, made famous as a cover by Cline. The band really worked across the country and swing genres, but also early rock & roll (though with a countrified twist), such as Bill Haley’s Shake, Rattle, and Roll. Brown stepped away again as the band went into another instrumental featuring Martin’s pretty great fiddle playing.

Our third lead vocalist of the evening (Matt Lange), also had him switch to banjo for a John Prine original. A little confusion on the next song (Lange demurred on another banjo song), led to a Hank Williams song, with a great fiddle intro. Martin is passable as a singer, but quite a delight as fiddle player and the band leaned into the music. Brown returned for another Williams song, Your Cheatin’ Heart, and she had that perfect mix of twang and soulful singing. As it was Brown’s first time with the band, perhaps it wasn’t a surprise that the band often switched back to Lange as vocalist or largely instrumental songs. New Potential Boyfriend finished the first set on Crazy, again letting Brown’s vocals shine.

The second set continued the theme, with Blue Moon getting things kicked off. We also got the full version of Fall to Pieces, and was excellent as expected. Back into the instrumentals, the fiddle took center stage again. The band gave way to Lange for another great instrumental and continued with Martin taking lead vocals. It was pretty smooth transitions across the songs, as they easily traded focus to different players. New Potential Boyfriend continued to impress on that front, as we got our fourth(!) lead singer for the evening, as guitarist Tom Weaver took vocals on the Hank Williams classic, Mind Your Own Business. As the crowd responded on the refrain, it was clear how much the band and audience were having fun. Brown returned with a song outside their normal repertoire, taking the lead on the Bonnie Raitt classic Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About, a perfectly adjacent song for the band. Getting close to the end, they gave steel guitarist Lange the lead on the song Steel Guitar Rag. A Gene Autry song was a late entry and a fun and silly number. Bringing Brown up to finish things, we got another Cline killer of She’s Got You, a perfect song for the band. Finishing on a deep cut Dolly Parton song of the same name, Potential New Boyfriend had found a niche of early country and swing for a receptive audience.

I spoke with Martin after the show. Noting that it isn’t music that people are hearing a lot today, he did state thwt there are many people who really know it, which created the niche. Growing up listening to Cline and others, Martin never thought he would play that, but when he started a band, he found other people who love it as well. The band has centered their sets around Bob Wills and Patsy Cline and then expand in different directions from there. They are starting to think about originals, which doesn’t seem too large of a step from the original instrumentation they are doing for a lot of the songs they play today. They are playing more concerts this summer, and we’ll be on the lookout for them.