Kevin Abernathy Band Breaks Free!

After swapping metal licks on the west coast in San Francisco and haunting singer/songwriter nights in Nashville, Kevin returned home to the hills of East Tennessee where he sat on the porch of his South Knoxville home penning songs of his own brand of music he calls “arena-cana”.

Kevin released his first CD, Better Days, in 2006 to little notice. The following year, though, with bassist Jeff "Geezer" Simms and drummer Jeffery "Free J Supreme" Warren on board, he released Rock-n-Roll Fiasco" The album and the group’s shows established the Kevin Abernathy Band as one of the best and most individualistic acts in the South. A Beautiful Thing followed in 2009 and earned similar accolades.

From the first few notes of the Kevin Abernathy Band’s new album Scrap Metal Blues you know this isn’t part of any trend or fad.

The guitar is the sort that takes you back to when a song felt like it could save your life, keep you sane or at least trigger so many happy endorphins in your head that it didn’t matter that you weren’t old enough to buy a beer or a bottle of cheap wine.

But there’s something different, too. This is blistering rock combined with smart, thoughtful lyrics and hooks that ring around your head for days.
It’s a disc populated with songs from that John Prine school of songwriting. The narrator of the title track is a guy who traded his heavy metal dreams for a life of hauling metal to the scrap yard and dreaming of the old days. Think you haven’t seen this guy driving through your town with his truck loaded down with junk?

And there are gothic tales of casualties from families in dysfunction. "Brother" is told from the perspective of a friend who watched his buddy’s inevitable self-destruction. In "Spirit," a teenager concludes that the only way to save his sister is patricide. Kevin doesn’t treat these as cheap Lifetime movie plots. He delivers them with skill and subtlety, but drives them home with guitar that shakes your insides.

Elsewhere on the disc there are tales of dangerous women, true love and boys aching to break free of the small towns and attitudes that hold them prisoner.
On Scrap Metal Blues, Kevin sounds like he’s truly broken free.