Interview & Show Review: Nat Myers with Molly Brandt at Riverside Music Series in Rochester MN
The Kentucky blues artist talked with us about his history and hopes for the future before his knockout show at Mayo Park.
Nat Myers. Photo credit: Rosei Skipper.
When a friend sent me a video of Nat Myers a couple months ago, I was frankly astonished that I hadn’t come across his music earlier: prewar country blues so authentic it’s only the absence of pops and scratches that prove it’s not actually from that era. And the song I first heard was “Yellow Peril,” confronting anti-Asian bigotry in the age of COVID—I was so beyond sold.
The fact that he was playing an early-August show in Rochester Minnesota, a couple hours’ drive from Minneapolis, with one of my personal favorites Molly Brandt, only sweetened the deal.
I spoke to Myers ahead of his appearance at the free, outdoor Riverside Music Series (another recent discovery for me, though it’s been around for 30 years) to learn more of his fascinating backstory.
It begins in rural Kentucky, where his parents raised him after brief stints in Kansas and Tennessee. “It’s like there’s this tug and pull,” he says, speaking of his experience growing up there with a South Korean-born mother and white father. “The smell of kimchi and a rice cooker are very distinct parts of my childhood. But my name is Nathan Andrew Myers; you might as well just slap me on a $20 bill. I grew up in a predominantly white part of Kentucky, not really recognizing that people looked at me as different, so when the other kids started talking nonsense or doing the casual racist thing that kids do, that threw me for a loop.”
That sense of living in two cultures simultaneously re-emerged in his teen years in terms of his musical tastes: “A lot of my friends growing up didn’t really know the complete me,” he says. “I got these tattoos because when I was 18, everybody around me had tattoos and it was cool. Listening to pop-punk went hand in hand with that. I didn’t really talk about the blues much with others.” At home, though, he’d listen to his father’s prewar country-blues records. “It took me a second to come around to what music I actually appreciate … becoming my old man, I suppose.”
Myers also picked up the guitar when he was 13. “The only thing I’ve ever been interested in playing is blues music, particularly the kind that I play,” he says. While he’s self-taught, he says, “I was very much influenced by YouTube, where there’s a community of folk and country blues folks. Weenie Campbell are some of the most hardcore when it comes to preservation and learning the songs, ensuring the correct lyrical content. They were very prolific on YouTube about 10 years ago with putting out country blues covers. So I have a lot of teachers, but it’s very much in that 21st-century way.”
He also explored the art form of poetry, which was his major in college. Although he’s a published poet, writing and practicing blues music takes up most of his creativity these days. “It’s drastically different—‘writing’ is an understatement for what goes into making music, as opposed to writing a poem. Bringing an instrument into the equation creates constraints, which I enjoy.” But his poetry background still informs his creative process: “I had really good teachers that taught me how you need to create a reflex. This has instilled in me a certain ease with songwriting. I have no qualms about pressing record or writing it down real quick when I get a passing idea.”
Although Kentucky has always been his home base, Myers’ knowledge of the current blues scene really began in New York City. “A few years ago I was very close with the thriving folk community there,” he says. He often played at Brooklyn’s Jalopy Theatre and busked on the streets. “I’m blown away by the blues community and kind of ashamed of not realizing earlier what a diverse and growing, already firmly established community that folk, country blues, and blues music has across the country. New York was my first introduction to that.”
A big breakthrough came a couple years ago when Myers caught the ear of Dan Auerbach, who took him under his wing and recorded an album on his Easy Eye Sound label. The album’s title track, “Yellow Peril,” delved into the anti-Asian sentiment that’s always been a part of the U.S. but reared its head even more during COVID. “There was a very clear through line to me about the Asian American experience and the virus being weaponized, COVID being anthropomorphized and personified, referred to as the China virus or kung flu,” he explains.
Myers sometimes questions the extent to which music can effect change: “I want to write more protest songs, but where exactly does my own personal vainglory intersect with actually making an impact on the situation?” But he still thinks it’s important to try: “That’s the point of music, bringing a greater awareness to something.”
Prewar blues might seem an unlikely vehicle for this kind of storytelling, but not to Myers. “People don't much look at blues music as a narrative form, but it’s very deeply rooted in the narrative,” he says. “I think there’s a deep purveyance of history through the music.”
Nat Myers. Photo credit: Rosei Skipper.
The Minnesota connection
Myers has actually played in Minnesota once before, and it was a splashy debut for an up-and-comer: He played the First Avenue mainroom in 2023, opening for G. Love.
“Being able to play First Avenue was pretty wild,” he says. “Its reputation precedes itself. When I was in England I met this musician, Jack Trouble. He’d never been to the States before, and I asked him, ‘Where do you want to go when you come?’ And he was like, ‘Minneapolis, because Prince, man. I want to see First Avenue.’
“G Love took me to some of the best places,” Myers adds. “He didn’t just spoil me; he really showed me what a tour musician should be doing and the kind of venues that you hope to play in the future.”
Myers took that stage, as he would soon do in Rochester, as a solo act with just his acoustic and resonator guitars. It’s his main mode, though he’s considering other possibilities: “I was on the road with Reverend Payton’s Big Damn Band, and he kind of changed my perspective with his appreciation for the band collaborative process. Seeing the rapport between them and just how big they can make the country blues sound in a traditional way was really impressive to me.”
Myers says he’d likely move away from his solo identity if he did form a band, because it bugs him how other bandmembers don’t always get as much acknowledgement by fans. “People around the merch table or at the shows tend toward what they know, as opposed to recognizing the full value and effort it takes to get everybody going.”
It’s one of several things he wants to take time to assess once this run of shows winds down, Myers shares. “What does James Joyce say; ‘silence, exile and cunning’ will be my arms? I kind of want to sit still for a second and figure out what lane I want to occupy. A lot of performers I’m appearing with, and a lot of the appreciation for my music, have been from the country scene. My goal over the next year and a half is to swim more within the blues community.”
Luckily for this country music fan, he’s still swimming with us too at the moment, sharing his Rochester bill with emerging Minnesota artist Molly Brandt. Although her brand of modern Americana, alt-country fused with indie rock, is very different from Myers’ uber-traditional country blues, it was a match made in heaven as I headed to Mayo Park under cloudy skies for my first taste of the Riverside Music Series.
Molly Brandt. Photo credit: Rosei Skipper.
Despite Brandt’s four-piece band, the stage at this outdoor venue looked immense. Like the park itself, there was plenty of space to spread out; it took me a while to realize how substantial the crowd was because they were scattered in groups around a wide area. It was Brandt’s first time playing in Rochester and a chance to present her music to hundreds of potential new fans.
She seized the opportunity, displaying a broad range of the styles that her sound encompasses, from the bouncy two-step of “Eagles 34” to the slow, dreamy “Bluff Country Paradise” to the high-octane indie rock of “Nicotine.” Her knack for vivid story songs was also on display with “Daughter of the Oil Tycoon” and “Mr. Texas.” I was hoping for (and got) one of her most dazzling songs, the slow-building but immensely powerful “Old Northern Woman.”
As an avid fan, it was a pleasure to stand in the midst of a crowd knowing most of them were being treated to their first glimpse of Molly Brandt. With a second album coming out in early October, preceded by a stream of singles, I’m looking forward to watching her star continue to rise.
Nat Myers. Photo credit: Rosei Skipper.
If the stage looked vast with her band on it, the sight of Nat Myers setting up for a solo seated show was even more striking. As soon as he began playing, though, he dominated not only the stage but the huge park in front of him, ripping into one of his authentic country-blues songs that set the mood for a very different, but just as electrifying, collection of music.
His disarming down-home charm established an immediate rapport with the crowd. “I always say Minnesota is Charlie Parr country, but I’m gonna start saying it’s Molly Brandt country too,” he said at one point, eliciting cheers for our regional country-blues hero as well as the opener. (If he couldn’t tell he was in Charlie Parr country before, it became obvious at the roar that arose when this talented [and left-handed!] guitarist set down his acoustic and picked up a resonator, slipping a slide onto his finger.)
He shared some anecdotes about his upbringing and musical influences, including his deep admiration of prewar artists (“In my mind RJ’s got nothing on Memphis Minnie,” he said of one of his biggest idols.) He touched on some of the cultural dissonance both he and his mother experienced living in Kentucky but mostly let “Yellow Peril” speak for itself—and it did, getting some of the biggest applause of his whole fiery set.
The rain that had threatened us all evening finally began right as his last song of the night was ending, but it didn’t dampen the crowd’s enthusiasm. Hopefully between the First Ave mainroom and this experience, Myers will be encouraged to keep Minnesota on his itinerary for his next tour! The Riverside Music Series in Rochester Minnesota is a recent discovery for me, and one that I’ll have on my radar from now on. The same goes for Nat Myers.
Show Gallery: Nat Myers & Molly Brandt at Riverside Music Series
All photos courtesy of Rosei Skipper
ABOUT THE AUTHOR & PHOTOGRAPHER
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Carol Roth is the primary writer, social media manager, podcast producer and event-calendar updater for Adventures in Americana. By day she’s a marketing writer/brand strategist. In addition to playing guitar and songwriting, she writes self-proclaimed “trashy” novels under the pseudonym T.A. Berkeley.
Rosei Skipper is a photographer, arts lover, wayward psychiatrist, fairly good gardener and excellent cat parent based in Rochester, Minnesota. She grew up in Oregon but fell in love with the Midwest in 2010. She loves live music, snail mail, going on walks and making stickers. She can also be found working for Rochester Public Music and sharing all things art with The Rochester Posse.
