On the first real sundress-and-shirtsleeves evening of the year, Glen Phillips and Willy Porter drew a standing room audience to the Stone Church. Though seats were scarce, fans lingered outside until minutes before showtime; there was a sunset demanding attention. The performers must have approved. From the first song, this perfectly balanced double bill of acoustic singer-songwriters captured every nuance of the spring-night feeling like fireflies in a jar.

Phillips, best known as the frontman for 1990s alternative rock band Toad the Wet Sprocket, was clearly the draw for most of the 30-something crowd. His audience came of age with the band’s soulful, percussive acoustic rock, and Phillips obliged them, leading off with the airy, slow-tempo Toad song “Comes a Time.” Clear tenor vocals conveyed the intensity of this meditation on risk, which Phillips used to introduce material from recent solo releases.

“I sing I’ve-been-married-a-long-time’ love songs now,” Phillips said of his newest work. The audience laughed, but listened just as attentively to the realistic, introspective newer songs as to Toad-era hits. Phillips’ unerring bass-string percussion kept things upbeat, leaving plenty of room for wind-chime-like flourishes in the upper range.

When laid-back Willy Porter took the stage, it seemed he might continue in the same earnest, introspective vein. Within minutes, though, Porter veered from the predictable, instantly winning himself a new following. Porter packed his songs with freestyle guitar stunts. Melding genres and styles, he used a combination of gadgetry and sheer inventiveness to produce a profound range of expression from a single guitar.

No intense guitar geek, though, he gleefully danced and duckwalked, told self-deprecating tales of childhood wipeouts, played multiple characters in comic song-skits, and chatted with the audience as though they were all at a backyard barbecue. Which, by the end of this warm evening of music, felt just about right.