Downtown Minneapolis was surprisingly quiet Thursday night, perhaps a needed reprieve for a community that filled its streets by the thousands to protest the presence of their own government. 7th Street Entry was also a little subdued, but that was only because my arrival was early as more and more people casually filtered through the door.

Nat Myers took the stage and for the first three songs he had issues with his acoustic guitar, then a borrowed electric, and finally Conor O’Reilly of DUG handed him his steel guitar, which as the fairy tale goes was “Just right.”

Myers is an interesting character with an interesting life. He is Korean American, as his dad met his mom when he was stationed in Korea with the US Army. Myers describes himself as “A young Asian cat playing old Black music.” And not any music, acoustic blues from the 1920’s and 30’s. Some call it front-porch blues, and that’s what it felt like when he started playing: that you were transported to another time and place with a deft touch of a steel guitar and a voice that sounds like it was slowly aged in a whisky barrel or more specifically bourbon, considering Myers was raised in Northern Kentucky.

With technical difficulties out of the way, Myers started to cook on his borrowed guitar. So much so that many in the audience couldn’t help dancing. Sipping a little Guinness in between songs from his debut album Yellow Peril he mentioned that he was recovering from some health issues, which was an understatement.

The year before Myers went into urgent care for what he thought was pneumonia. Instead, he found out he had advanced cancer (sarcoma) and was only given a few weeks to live. Luckily, he looked for a second opinion, and after surgeries and chemo, he recently started touring again by accepting an invite to open for DUG in Ireland, which explained why he was sipping on a Guinness.

If you are a fan of the blues or sitting on a porch and listening to great music, you won’t be disappointed checking out Myers if he rolls into your town. There was one point in his set when singing “Duck n’ Dodge” he sounded like he was reaching all the way back to the primordial pulse of the Mississippi Delta.

Nat Myers

After a brief intermission, O’Reilly stepped on stage with his steel guitar and partner in crime, Jonny Pickett on banjo. We caught DUG last November at the Pantages Theatre opening for The Wood Brothers, writing:

O’Reilly and Pickett have an unusual origin story in how they ended up as a duo playing a hybrid of Americana and Irish folk music outside an American franchise [Burger King] in a country that neither are from. O’Reilly is from Scotland and has lived in New York. Pickett is from California. As a duo they work well together, not only in their musical sound, but also in their temperament as they are both low-key and pretty affable. And funny.

Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that musicians who delve in Americana or folk music tend to be the funniest musicians I’ve seen, and O’Reilly and Pickett had the audience laughing between songs from the debut album Have at It and also new songs from a sophomore album set to be released in December.

There were great stories like O’Reilly talking about needing to interview his grandpa who was a watchmaker in Dublin for a school presentation and Pickett talking about throwing some merch into the audience and hitting a guy square in the face with the bill of the cap. The kicker was they ran into the same guy at the airport on a flight to Australia. Pickett had to ask. “Do you still have our DIG DUG cap?”

But I don’t want to take away the reason people came to 7th Street Entry on a Thursday night. The music, mostly Americana with some Irish folk, all with a joyous touch from two gentlemen who know how to have fun.

O’Reilly joked that it was their intention to slowly evolve into a heavy metal band and Pickett asked the crowd to form a Wall of Death for “God’s a Dancer.” The crowd obliged, but there was no thrashing or slamming into each other. Mostly, one guy moved about through the open circle.

DUG was impressed. “That was a nice Can Can,” joked Pickett.