Something funny happens to punk rockers when they get a little older. They grow kinda tired of always being so pissed all the time. They get weary of screaming into the microphone so desperately and pumping their fist up at the cosmos with such reactionary indignity. They just calm down a little. And in some incomprehensible rite of passage, they start playing folk music.

But is it really so incomprehensible? After one of the most seminally cool Monday nights I’ve spent in a real long while watching Chuck Ragan from Hot Water Music, Tim Barry from Avail, Ben Nichols from Lucero, and “Kevin Seconds” from Seven Seconds rock out acoustic-style for the Portland stop of the “Folk-Punk Revival Tour,” I’m not so sure anymore. The show began with said roster of legendary punks and some other close friends lighting up the freakin’ place with some almighty acoustic rockouts, followed by each performer doing a solo set.

I really didn’t know what to expect heading into this. I’m down for “folk,” but the term “revival tour” always sort of scares me off. However, the entire show was exquisite and powerful. Slide guitars, fiddles, all-out acoustic rockouts. Stories about broken hearts and broken arms and jailbreaks. An absolutely rapt crowd spilling beers and shouting encouragement in a casual, public house kinda setting. So awesome.

I found myself a little tipsy, pushed up front to rest my elbows on the stage, and accidentally fell in love with Lucero’s Ben Nichols as he sat on that stool and poured his heart out into the room. Yeah, love that gravelly voice and those stories. But he’d “been drinking” too, and eventually had a hard time undertaking the basic duties of a stage performer, like singing lyrics and such. “There’s a lot of words in that song,” he slurred at one point.

        Anyhow, it ended up with a bunch of friends on stage sweating, swearing, and rocking. And the whole folk-versus-punk question? It didn’t even come into play. After all, nothing’s more punk than Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash, and folk music has always been protest music. But what it came down to is that without a single drum beat all night, the punk spirit was definitely alive and well.