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Article published Jan 19, 2007 Kevin Abernathy: East Tennessee prodigal son comes into his own
By Steve Wildsmith of The Daily Times Staff
It took a while for Kevin Abernathy to get back to East Tennessee, but his travels seem to have served him well.
The Madisonville native, who performs tonight at Brackins Blues Bar in downtown Maryville, infuses his songs with an emotional depth and an eye for detail that the self-awareness of travel and wandering often bring. And now that he's back home, he's putting a couple of decades worth of observations and collected stories to music.
"I graduated high school in 1982 and moved out West, and now I'm back in Knoxville via Atlanta and Nashville," Abernathy told The Daily Times this week. "I came back because I wanted to just have a quiet place to craft my songs and get my own deal and my own style going. I've always been a guitar player who co-wrote, and in all the bands I was in, I didn't sing that much.
"I just finally thought, 'I'm going to move back to Knoxville, sit on my porch and write songs for a little bit and maybe put a band together.' And all that's been happening in the past two years."
The result is "Better Days," an album of material that dates back to the mid-1990s, when Abernathy first wrote some of the songs. They've been collecting dust for years, awaiting the proper opportunity for a public debut, and now that Abernathy's doing his own thing they fit his individual style more than they did those of his previous bands.
"There's that old saying that most lead guitar players want to be the front guy, and it's kind of true I guess," he said. "I just know that if you're going to do anything you want done, you've got to do it yourself. I've spent a lot of time playing writers' nights, just me and my guitar, because I came from a metal and a hard rock background, and I wanted to apply my folky lyrics to that kind of a setting."
Abernathy rock 'n' roll genesis came about when an older cousin, visiting from Florida, played him Peter Frampton's "Frampton Comes Alive." Rock 'n' roll became his passion; when he received a video game for Christmas instead of the guitar he originally asked for, he traded it for a six-string and his first amp. Locking himself in his bedroom after school every day, he taught himself Van Halen and Jeff Beck solos and fall asleep cradling his guitar.
After landing in California's Bay Area, he hooked up with the pop-rock outfit One and did the "starving artist" scene for a while — couch-surfing, sleeping in cars and never really putting down roots; as long as he had his guitar, however, he was content. After moving back to the Volunteer State, he did a stint in the East Tennessee hair metal outfit Shag Nasty before winding up in the Shapeshifters, a Nashville band that would land opening spots for Southern Culture on the Skids, Billy Joe Shaver, Webb Wilder and Junior Brown.
With those experiences to draw upon, he's crafted a delightfully spellbinding album in "Better Days." Abernathy blends rock 'n' roll chords and lyrically engaging story-songs with the dexterity of early Bruce Springsteen; his delivery and cadence, combined with the mix of ballads and rockers cooked up in a soup of country and blues laid over a rock 'n' roll foundation, make it easy to imagine that if Lucinda Williams had been born a guy, she might very well have turned out sounding like Abernathy.
Two of the standout tracks — the lead-off "Last I Heard," about an old acquaintance's troubles and life on the lam, and "Brother," a bittersweet reminiscence of a rough-and-tumble childhood and the friendship it forged between two hell-raising siblings — are typical of Abernathy's storytelling style. They draw on his strength — an eye for the little details of the human experience and how people react to them.
"I write about the human emotion," Abernathy said. "I'm not really a political writer or anything like that; I still believe people are more interested in what's inside somebody, and I just try to go with that aspect of a song I wish I were in tune sometimes to politics, but I just write a lot about the average Joe. I've got a small family, and I write a lot about how things change when you have a family.
"It's interesting to put a family situation into a rock song, but it seems to really work well for me. For whatever reason, I find it easy. The way I do it, I come up with an idea, and then I keep it in my head, and if it's worth putting to paper, I almost have it all written in my head before I write anything down. I carry it around in my head, and if I don't remember anything about the idea or come up with any lyrics, then it's not worth pursuing."
Because many of the songs on "Better Days" were written a decade or more ago, Abernathy already has all the material written for his next CD. He can't wait to get back into the studio, he said, and in the meantime, he's playing around the area and sharing his observations and experiences with a growing audience who hear truth in what he sings about.
"When I write, I don't really start with a title; I don't sit down to write with five titles in mind and come up with a song for each of them," he said. "I just can't do it like that. I go with the idea and look at the big picture. I start out with one line that usually pertains to my life or something and take it from there.
"I'm a storyteller, and I just try to look for unique stories and something I can latch onto and ride until it all comes together in a song."