Road ready: Retired Simmons science teacher makes waves in Nashville

Robert Abernathy said if you had told him 16 years ago when he was just starting his teaching career at Simmons Middle School that this year he’d be getting on a bus for a country music tour, he never would’ve believed you.

But Kevin Erwin, who taught and coached with him at Simmons and later became his principal, said he’s not surprised in the least.

“He’s honestly one of those people you want to hate because he’s so good at everything,” joked Erwin, now principal of Shades Mountain Elementary School. “He’s truly a Renaissance man with a knack for doing everything well — a great athlete, a great science teacher, a great communicator, a great artist. But the thing that really makes him lovable is he downplays all that.”

Abernathy plays right into Erwin’s last description — he says the story here isn’t that he’s good; it’s that he’s “old.”

“I’m turning 50 this year,” Abernathy said.

Abernathy started playing with a gospel group in the early ’90s when he was almost out of high school. Then after his band won first place at the Nashville Starbound Competition at the Grand Ole Opry House in 1995, “things kind of fizzled out.

“In 2009, I started playing again and started writing songs. Some were good, but some were pretty bad,” Abernathy said.

But he began learning how to write songs with other people, and that changed the way he wrote, he said. Over the years, he was the front man for a country/rock band called Shotglass, and he started playing solo acoustic shows at local restaurants such as Margarita Grill and Beef O’Brady’s.

“We weren’t trying to make it big,” he said of him and his band. “We were just enjoying playing shows here and there and writing songs. When people come up to you and tell you they enjoy it, that was always my gratification.’”

He got another level of motivation to pursue his music when he was awarded Alabama Country Music Artist of the Year in 2018. But that still wasn’t enough to make him feel like he could chase his dream.

The “big moment that began to change it all” happened in 2019 as he was playing an original show at Tin Roof in Birmingham.

“Someone was there who does the bookings for all of the Tin Roofs in Birmingham and Nashville, and he invited me to have my own show in Nashville on Lower Broadway,” Abernathy said. “That was a huge honor.”

He began playing on Lower Broadway once a week, and along the way he had three No. 1 hits on Indie Radio — “Water to Whiskey,” co-written with Billy McDowell; “Heaven Has a Radio,” co-written with Paul Cofer; and “Big Bass Problem,” co-written with Durand Robinson.

After the end of the 2021-22 school year, Abernathy retired from his teaching job in Hoover, and he and his wife, Augusta, packed up and moved to Nashville to chase his dream. In November, he signed with a record label.

He’s still playing shows in Nashville, but he has expanded past that and now has a U.S. and European tour in the works and a deal with AT&T to livestream shows from the tour. He’s also got a new brand deal with Myrká Whisky and was just nominated for Modern Country Vocalist of the Year, Modern Country Artist of the Year and Male Entertainer of the Year for the Josie Awards (given out by the independent music industry).

“These are dreams I’ve never pursued until I hit this old age,” Abernathy said. “It’s been an interesting ride. I’m going to do it while I can.”

Erwin said he and others walked with Abernathy through the journey of playing at local restaurants as he put in the hours to learn how to be the musician and entertainer he is now, and they’re proud of what he’s achieved.

“He’s just really talented at a lot of different things and could probably still get out there and throw a baseball 100 miles an hour or coach state championship wrestlers,” Erwin said. “He could’ve gone in a lot of different directions. But as his music career grew, there were days he would need to miss work because he was playing something in California or Texas, and when that happened, you kind of knew that arc was changing.”

Erwin said as Abernathy has taught, raised a family and played music at the same time, he has juggled all the parts of his life beautifully.

“God only gives us 24 hours, and somehow he manages to make the most out of his 24 hours. He squeezes more into it than I do,” Erwin said. “He is a great husband and great dad, and he was a great science teacher and coach. And now he’s being recognized as a great musician, too.”

For more information or show dates, visit robertabernathy.com.