Dan Abernethy

Dan Abernethy is a Seattle musician: a guitarist, singer and songwriter who also brings poetry to the stage.

He was raised in Kenmore, Washington, at the north end of Lake Washington.

In the late 1970s he played with the Seattle band One Hand Clapping. He sang and played guitar on their 1978 album Skidum, Skidum, Doo-Wah, which includes his song “Tell Me It’s Alright,” and played bottleneck guitar on the follow-up, Second Hand Clapping (1979).

He also played in the band of Isaac Scott, the blues guitarist and singer who helped build Seattle’s First Avenue club scene and was later inducted into the Washington Blues Society Hall of Fame.

In 1987, after Skip Spence left Moby Grape for the last time, Dan joined Jerry Miller, Don Stevenson, Peter Lewis and Bob Mosley for recording and touring. He played rhythm guitar on Legendary Grape (1989), the band’s last album of new songs. It first came out as a cassette credited to The Melvilles and was reissued on CD in 2003.

In 1996 he released his solo album, Walkin’ in My Shoes, an eleven-song record made under the name Pete Moss.

Today Dan plays regularly at the Salmon Bay Eagles in Ballard, the longest-running home of live music in Seattle. His sets mix blues, rock and poetry. His wife, Judy Abernethy, runs the aerie, and the two of them work as a duo: Dan on the stage, Judy keeping the room that so many Seattle musicians call home.