After 41 years with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and one tour with Fleetwood Mac, guitarist Mike Campbell has pent-up patter. He unspooled it Monday night at the packed Fine Line club in Minneapolis.

The frontman of Mike Campbell & the Dirty Knobs was chattier than your next door neighbor after you've been gone for the winter. Chatty in a good way, though, talking about his songs, guitars, famous musician pals, exercises to make you feel good, the pandemic and his $500 per diem with Fleetwood Mac. Really?

His engaging chattiness, delightful casualness and incredible generosity of spirit and musicianship made for an unexpectedly special night with a bigtime rock star in an intimate setting.

Although Campbell's hobby band Dirty Knobs has done occasional gigs in Los Angeles for nearly two decades, the quartet was scheduled to kick off its first national tour at the Fine Line on March 10, 2020 after releasing its debut album, "Wreckless Abandon." But the pandemic postponed that show and gave the Knobs time to cut a second record, "External Combustion," which dropped this month.

Three weeks into the tour, Campbell has found his footing as a frontman, singing with passion, comfort and unmistakably Pettyesque phrasing. Lyrics may not be his strong suit ("you left a hole in my heart big enough to drive a truck through" he sang in "State of Mind") but his guitar spoke with eloquence, brio and fervor.

Totally unpretentious and unguarded, Campbell, 72, answered unsolicited questions from fans and even accommodated a request for a 1982 Petty tune, "Between Two Worlds," that he wasn't sure that he still knew (he skipped a few lyrics) — and the tight, well schooled Dirty Knobs (bassist Lance Morrison, drummer Matt Laug and guitarist Jason Sinay) for sure didn't know.

The set included several selections from each of the Knobs' albums (the crowd loved "Lightning Boogie," "Electric Gypsy" and "Don't Knock the Boogie") as well as a jangly cover of the Byrds' "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better" and, of course, a few Tom Petty & Heartbreakers favorites including "Southern Accents" and "Refugee," which, Campbell pointed out, still resonates 40 years after it was written.

The high point was an epic treatment of Petty's "You Got Lucky," which segued into a guitar instrumental version of Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon" with mini-side trips into "Powderfinger," "Goldfinger" and "Eleanor Rigby." It was the kind of spontaneity that can happen at a club gig long before closing time.

The Knobs were having so much fun that instead of doing their usual finale of the Petty classic "Runnin' Down a Dream," they shifted into full bar-band mode for Chuck Berry's "Little Queenie" followed by a medley of "Road Runner," "Who Do You Love" and "I'm So Glad."

It was hard to tell who was having a better time — the musicians or the fans. After a Springsteenian two hours and 40 minutes of pure rock 'n' roll joy, it was glad all over.