How did The Nice Guys get so good at getting the party started? They had some help from the old man.
It’s a delicate balance, being a father.
On the one hand, you want to nurture your children’s dreams without dictating those dreams. Ultimately, it’s their life and their decisions, but it’s still your job to help them get there. You can clear the runway, but it’s up to them to take flight.
On the other hand, as a father you also have a duty to nudge them toward those dreams worth pursuing – particularly if it’s something you’re passionate about. And if it turns out they share those passions, it’s on you to get them there.
Even if it means throwing them into the deep end and seeing how well they swim.
“I always thought music was good for kids. It helps with math, it helps with school, it helps with everything,” said Bob Myhre. “To me, (teaching them music) just made sense.”
Nick, Bob and Kevin Myhre have plunged into the deep end of the music scene on Hilton Head Island and Bluffton.
Fans of local music will recognize Myhre as the front man for Cornbred, and his sons Nick and Kevin as the front-and-center twins on guitar and bass with The Nice Guys.
“They’re both great musicians,” Myhre said of his boys. “They can do it all. They can write originals. They’re both instrumentalists. They’re a lot better than me.”
That is high praise coming from a guy who has been playing in bands since junior high school, with a group he called Pegasus. He would continue playing through college, until – ironically enough – he had kids.
“They were probably 6 years old when I got them piano lessons. At that point I hadn’t picked up a guitar in probably 10 years,” he said. “They hated it. I kind of made them do it.”
And therein lies the rub of being a father. You want your children to share in the things that bring you joy, but you never want to feel like you’re forcing anything on them. Fortunately, as much as Myhre thinks he pushed his sons into lessons, they see it differently.
“We didn’t really excel at it, … but then he got us Guitar Hero,” Kevin said. “We were super good at that, and he realized we need to play guitar.”
“It wasn’t really a thing that he forced,” Nick said. “By 14 or 15, the school we were going to didn’t have a music program so we begged our parents to put us in Hilton Head Christian Academy, which had a great program led by James Berry. We were addicted at that point.”
“Once Nick and I realized we liked playing guitar and bass it was easy to learn songs together,” Kevin said. “And after transferring to HHCA, it was like, ‘We get to play instruments in high school for an hour a day? That’s amazing.’”
Around that time, the boys started a band with their friend Bryce Warthen. Called Bluffton Noise Ordinance, it was a raucous blend of pop punk influences like Blink-182 and Green Day. It was also, oddly enough, a rare case where sons steered a father back toward his passions.
“Our dad really started to play live music again when we were doing it. I think that it kind of awoke something in him,” Nick said. “He hadn’t touched a guitar in maybe 15 years, but when we started playing, he started picking it back up again.”
Ever the supportive father, Myhre did everything in his power to help his sons pursue music, whether that meant showing them the ropes, lending them equipment, or simply honing their skills.
“He taught us to play guitar, but he made us book our own gigs. He made us pay for instruments and repairs,” Kevin said. “Obviously he helped out, but he wasn’t coddling us.”
“What I do appreciate from him is, he was not very critical but he would give us constructive criticism. He wasn’t blowing smoke up our ass growing up,” Nick said. Their dad also helped them navigate the world of gigging. “I know for a fact at some of the bars, he’d make sure the servers were tipped well. … That’s something you wouldn’t think about, but now, looking back, he was probably taking money out of his pocket to make sure they were taken care of.”
With The Neil & Bob Band, the patriarch of the Myhre family was back in the limelight. And as his own musical journey continued, he would expand from a duo to a trio with Cornbred, joined by Dr. Dave Washack on bass and Chip Larkby on drums. Likewise, Nick and Kevin would go from pop punk to party jams with The Nice Guys, joined by Davis Lentz on sax and keys and Matt Robbins on drums.
Kevin would like it to be known that the musical difference between Cornbred and The Nice Guys can be traced directly back to his mom, Michelle. “My dad likes more yacht rock. It was my mom who liked grunge, ’80s hair metal, and ’90s alternative,” he said. “She always likes to remind us, ‘Remember, it wasn’t just your dad.’”
While Mom may have built the party-rock framework of The Nice Guys, it was on a foundation that Dad laid down. It’s a solid foundation that has allowed their sons to pursue their own dreams, even if it happens to be his dream, too.
“I remember him telling me, ‘If you stick with this, you’ll thank yourself 20 years from now because you’ll have this skill,’” Kevin said. “You can always find yourself making money. We didn’t think anything of that back in the day – we just wanted to play music together.”
“It’s the best side hustle if you look at it that way too. I’m going to be playing gigs for the rest of my life. It’s something I’ll always have,” Nick said. “My dad’s the same way, and we all love the performance aspect of it and entertaining a crowd.”
