Meet Brendan Abernathy: Songwriter and Performing Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Brendan Abernathy and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Brendan, what role has risk played in your life or career?

For most of my life, I always took the next right step – middle school to high school, high school to college, and in college taking the right classes and being in the right organizations. But when I was about to graduate, I felt discontent with “the next right step.” Yet what I wanted to do required risking my comfort, my reputation, and my lifestyle.

So I decided to become an artist to impact individuals and write music that made people feel seen. For the first months, I found myself walking into houses having no idea what I was doing but telling people “I play house shows,” and at times playing street music to make the $12 necessary to buy enough pizza to cover 4 meals. Instead of moving to Nasvhille or LA and taking a job with a paycheck, I couch-surfed and played shows. I had (and still have) no steady income, no guarantee of any more shows, and no promise of anything tomorrow. Because I knew, if I left myself no backup option, and made my risks as daunting as possible, I would be left with no choice but to create meaningful and experience-based art.

In a way, that remains my philosophy. If something scares me, do it. If a goal seems risky, burn the boat and make it riskier. However, now, attached with that is a bit more faith and understanding that along with taking risks, I can trust in a purpose with eternal implications.

Alright, so let’s move onto your art. What do you see as being its purpose?
I used to think my job as a songwriter was to tell my story, but last year I realized that it’s actually to find the parts of my story that everyone experiences and tell those vulnerably. Specifically, the aspects of who I am that I’m afraid to talk about, that I dread to share, because that’s what people need to feel understood in.

The importance of representing my true perspective in my art hit me last summer (2020). Like most in their 20’s, I was dealing with melancholy from a lack of direction and purpose and drowning in singleness. I wrote a song, where I claimed to be “Single and in Love,” and said I would never sing it for another human – too embarrassing and compromising to my image. Until one night in Florida, I did sing it for a friend, and that guy cried, claiming he’d never felt so seen by a lyric before.

So, I set out for Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, wrote an EP about singleness, and recorded it in LA. For the first time in my career, I feel I’ve found my voice and that it is singing a message that needs to be heard. No one is out there creating art about how it is okay to be in whatever stage of love you are in. And that’s always my goal – make people feel seen.

So I’m stoked to give a voice to all of use professionally single folks out there with that EP and its sister EP, “Love is Pain,” both out Fall 2021 (probably).

Any places to eat or things to do in Atlanta that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
In a way, I’m the worst person to ask this because I spend most of my time away from home, touring and playing shows. But in another way, that may make me the best person, because I’m usually only in Atlanta for a week myself.

A week in Georgia is always going to center around the people, so any natural hangs my friends were having, that’s where you will find me with a newcomer. Often this entails spikeball in a park or grabbing a burrito at Willy’s Mexican Grill. Nothing to break the bank but tasty to the core. I’m a big baseball guy and also a diehard Georgia fan, so trips to Truist Park and Athens are a must. In Athens, we gotta hit up Cali n’ Titos and crush a Cubano, followed by a little dinner downtown at the Place and capping it off with some Tres Leches or White Chocolate Cheesecake from Last Resort (I’m all about the food baby). If we could find our way to a lake, a little boating never hurt nobody.

I LOVE connecting people, so it would honestly depend on what my friends would be down to do.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
For me, it’s the BA show hosts. Every stop along my tour, there is a family, a fan, a friend, or a once-stranger who blows me away with kindness. All I need is a couch and a place to perform, but these people are amazing. I’ll take it to the mountaintop: my hosts are the best in the world. They often go above and beyond – emptying their beds for me to sleep on a mattress, cooking home-cooked meals, folding a towel and leaving it on the couch, and of course, bringing in their friends and communities for a night of great music.

Website: babernathy.com

Instagram: @brendanabernathy

Twitter: @sheeparedope

Facebook: @brendanleeabernathy

Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/39ETOzAilLp4bcJAUU8mmW?si=Yt5TfDaEQu2MGW8JSms-Dg Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/brendan-abernathy/1459165532

Image Credits
Stephanie Siau, Michael Banks, Connor Pickett, Mattea Black