Exclusive: The 52-year-old songwriter’s debut album was a cult favorite in 2023. Now, after signing with Saddle Creek, he’s gearing up to release I Hope We Can Still Be Friends.
Some secrets are best unkept. Dean Johnson, a soft-spoken, 52-year-old songwriter often seen sporting a thick mustache, fisherman beanie, and a haircut your grandfather probably had in 1977, was an aging barkeep until folks found out he could sing pretty well. When I watched Johnson perform for the first time, as he hunched over a guitar in the dim, after-hours overcast of Al’s Tavern in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood, I was attracted to the slope of romance and the mythical, almost out-of-body candor he sang with. “From your light, I turn,” his high-tenor cooed into the soupy, non-descript air. “I’m not one to learn true love.” Three minutes quickly became a tapestry of curious colors and roaming hearts. I felt braver in the company of Johnson’s honesty, and it didn’t take long for other folks to step into that closeness with me. Now, he’s sharing bills with Rilo Kiley and Kurt Vile.
Johnson grew up on Camano Island in the Puget Sound, lived in Bellingham, and moved into his brother’s house in Seattle in 2003. Three years later, he stumbled into Al’s for the first time. It was a cash-only neighborhood place with just one guy behind the bar at a time. The 25-cent pool got Johnson in the door, and he quickly became a regular, always showing up at midnight so he wouldn’t have much time to drink. “I’ve always been somebody who, once I get started, it’s hard to stop,” he laughs. That’s where he met Bill, a son-of-a-gun who’s been a fixture at Al’s for three decades now, showing up to drink every night after work—unless he’s out hunting, of course.
By 2011, Johnson was working at Al’s himself and playing electric guitar in a “neat country band” started by whiskey crooner Davidson Hart Kingsbery. Two years later, he met a newly-of-age drinker named Chris Acker, who was a songwriter and later introduced Johnson to Devin Champlin. Together, along with Sam Gelband and Charlie Meyer, Champlin and Johnson formed the Sons of Rainier. “I was doing the same thing with them that I was doing with Davidson Hart Kingbery, just playing electric guitar and doing some harmonies,” Johnson says. “Devin had never heard me play electric guitar before. He didn’t know anything about that other band. To have played electric guitar with two great songwriters incidentally was freakish. All credit to Al’s and to me being there and wasting all that time.”
It wasn’t all wasted time, though. In the fall of 2016, Johnson had a band (for the first and only time) of his own called Lowman Palace. They were invited to headline a small show in Seattle, in an effort to get people in the door to watch Jessie Antonick’s group Pony Hunt (whose song “Dream of You” rules, by the way). Antonick, at the time, had been dating Sam Doores of the Deslondes, and had been touring with Duff Thompson and Steph Green. When Doores and Thompson heard Johnson play, they invited him to come record at their studio in New Orleans, Mashed Potato Records. Despite Mashed Potato being a Southern DIY institution, he had his reservations. “I knew that doing it there would imply the pressure of doing it live,” Johnson admits, “and I didn’t want to be doing that.”
A year later, the Sons of Rainier were getting ready to record their debut album, Down in Pancake Valley, which Johnson had thought he’d only have to overdub his guitar for. “But Devin, on the spot, was like, ‘Hey, will you at least try one song live?’ I really begrudgingly said, ‘Okay.’” They ended up recording everything live, and it fundamentally altered Johnson’s approach to the method. “It was good for me to have done that,” he adds. “That probably loosened me up a little bit to go to New Orleans.” But it was Gelband and Acker who really nudged Johnson the most. Meyer and Gelband had heard Johnson’s demo tapes and volunteered to help him record them, but he ultimately kept blowing the trip off. It wasn’t until Acker and Gelband “double-teamed” Johnson at Al’s that he bought a plane ticket to New Orleans. “We went down there, and my mindset was that there was a 20% chance I’ll like what we do enough that I would put it out. I was like, ‘I’m gonna do it for the experience.’”
Johnson and his band were at Mashed Potato for “the greatest five days” of his life, playing songs in a barren living room while Esther Rose and her then-boyfriend were breaking up with each other on the other side of the wall; Doores and Thompson, who’d just finished three consecutive months of daily recording, were tired but “present, patient, and caring.” They nurtured Johnson’s songs with a soft touch. “We went for it, and I’m really glad we did,” he admits. “Otherwise, I might have never recorded an album.” Johnson tells me that, while Gelband “got in shape to be able to sing harmonies while he was playing drums,” Doores and Thompson weren’t very prepared. “They’d listened to the songs a little bit, but they didn’t prepare very much,” he elaborates. “And the songs that they played on, we rehearsed them the day of. They made their parts on the spot. It was pretty spontaneous.”
Friends and Al’s regulars had been hounding him about making an album for at least eight years before he finally committed to it. Seattle folks even extended invitations to have him come record in their spaces, but he turned them all down. He felt good about the songs, some of which had been written as early as 2004—even if, when he wrote “Faraway Skies,” he didn’t play it for anybody for a while because he thought its cowboy imagery was “so cliché.” The lo-fi sound of the Mashed Potato recordings and his age, he says, left him without many expectations—as did his penchant for rarely playing gigs (“I only played shows people invited me to play; that’s the only way I got on stage”). In fact, he just felt lucky that Mama Bird Recordings, who had shown interest in his work in the early 2010s, still wanted to put out his music a decade later. But on his 50th birthday in 2023, Johnson finally released his debut album, Nothing For Me, Please.
Johnson is his own worst critic yet relatively passive in his creative habits. Unhurried, he sat on Nothing For Me, Please for four years and 11 months, allowing his friends and family to pass around a SoundCloud link and marvel at the music behind closed doors. Sometime in early 2023, Acker sent me a Dropbox folder with nine of Johnson’s songs in it, told me to give them a listen, and I was immediately floored. A month or two before “Faraway Skies” was set to debut, Johnson began to worry. “I was like, ‘Man, I wish I would have got a more hi-fidelity recording than this,’” he remembers. “I was feeling insecure about it.” But it came out and was well-received, landing in a beloved Western AF video, soundtracking a Tecovas commercial, earning a sync in Reservation Dogs, and sitting at 2 million streams on Spotify.
This great wave of Americana and country music coming out of Louisiana, Missouri, and Arkansas right now—Nick Shoulders, Dylan Earl, Willi Carlisle, etc.—has major roots in punk, metal, and gospel. Johnson calls himself an “average, casual listener” who never got very academic about music. “I didn’t really have a concept of harmonies until I was in my twenties,” he admits. The first time he ever “went head over heels for a band” was when he heard the first Violent Femmes album: “I was in seventh grade when I heard it, and I was in eighth grade when I finally had it in my possession.” His taste felt comparable to the music being generated in the Pacific Northwest in the late-‘80s and early-‘90s—he spent a lot of time listening to the Dead Kennedys, Neil Young, Pavement, and the Cure, whose music “really got in my veins.” He heard Nirvana’s Bleach at a house party in Bellingham shortly after it came out, but he’s never owned a Nirvana CD in his life.
Johnson attributes his amateur listening habits to those of his parents and the small town he came of age in. His dad, he says, was steeped in opera, but the people around him were listening to Van Halen. “I had a really ordinary music upbringing, I was lucky anybody got me a guitar. My older brother just did it out of nowhere.” Johnson taught himself chords on a cheap nylon acoustic and never had vocal training. When he was 30, he realized that his ear couldn’t hear harmonies very well. So he challenged himself to separate the Everly Brothers’ voices in their recordings and sang along to Phil’s high parts in his own “ignorant, slow-paced way.”
But it was hearing the Smiths at age 18 that set Johnson on a righteous path, thanks to Morrissey’s blend of wryness and humor. He cites one lyric in particular—“A dreaded sunny day, so let’s go where we’re wanted. And I meet you at the cemetery gates”—and you can trace the influence all the way to a song of his own, like “Nothing For Me, Please,” or “Acting School.” The way Johnson writes about heartbreak, or about getting exhausted by eternal life, helps him overcome the “relentless downer” that some of his material offers. He’s quick to call his own songcraft redundant, but only because romantic woes overlap on four or five songs from his new album, I Hope We Can Still Be Friends, which he finds only “slightly embarrassing.”
The truth is, Johnson has only had one really big heartbreak, and it was when he dated a woman from Oklahoma in the late-2000s. He wrote some of the best parts of Nothing For Me, Please—“Shouldn’t Say Mine,” “Acting School,” “True Love,” and “Possession”—about her (as well as “Before You Hit the Ground” from I Hope We Can Still Be Friends), spending a lot of time exaggerating stories of possessiveness, jealousy, and his antipathy for surrendering to those feelings. The other songs, he tells me, are “about missing somebody”—except for “Death of the Party,” which is about all of the energy vampires in his life, and “Faraway Skies,” which he penned after witnessing the homelessness in Seattle.
But we write about what we know, I tell Johnson. He laughs, saying, “I could write five albums on wasted time and laziness, but nobody wants to hear that.” I disagree, to which he counters with a proverb about his “relative vegetableness.” “I’ve been around way too many incredibly productive and great-at-living-life people lately. The contrast with me is so big that it really does get to me. I am happy for the people that live life really well and with relentless learning and experience pursuits. That’s the way to enjoy a human brain. I guess I just have let cowardice control my life.” Johnson is too meek for his own good sometimes. What he calls “cowardice” is simply habitual listening. He’s an observer—somebody who takes his time processing the conversations happening around him. It’s why he has so much damn music up his sleeve.
Johnson and his collaborators (Sera Cahoone, Abbey Blackwell, Sam Peterson, and Aaron Khawaja) holed up in Unknown Studio in Anacortes, Washington, recording 14 tracks—including “Blue Moon,” the standalone single that inaugurated his recent signing with the Saddle Creek label—live, no longer resisting the method he’d once so vehemently oppposed. Cahoone, who helped Johnson with management and booking responsibilities once Nothing For Me, Please began taking off, replaced Gelband on harmonies, singing underneath Johnson. She became a comfort for him, as they forged a “goofball sibling” relationship with each other after his tour opening for Jenny Lewis in 2023. The result is a bigger, more widescreen-sounding set of songs. The warmth of Mashed Potato’s lo-fi antics linger in spirit, yet Johnson’s absurd, tragic, and lovesick poems sound bright and full in their new, full-band clothes.
And I Hope We Can Still Be Friends, like its predecessor, spans multiple decades. The first song Johnson ever wrote is here (“A Long Goodbye,” in 2004), as are the two that arrived soon after (“The Man in the Booth,” “Death of the Party”). But the album isn’t all old-hat. “Hang Youie,” “Carol,” “Shake Me,” and “Perfect Stranger” are newer—and I mean that relatively. A “new” song for Dean Johnson could have been written in 2015. “Before You Hit the Ground,” which he began writing in 2009, wasn’t finished until the 2020s. Like Nothing For Me, Please, I Hope We Can Still Be Friends is a short story collection littered with embellished anecdotes, fly-on-the-wall observations, and mixtures of sardonic and sprite refractions. And, like all good folk music, I Hope We Can Still Be Friends is another introduction in a life of greetings. In the music, Johnson is speaking to an old lover, exiting loud rooms, and fantasizing about death; he expels messages about overconsumption and finds comedy in electroconvulsive therapy. The phrases he finds are full of clever details (“I’ve broken the phone not to hear it ring”) and blisters of fundamental truths about moving on (“If I passed you on the street, I would not recognize your face”) or seeking refuge in familiar tastes (“Crash my gates with all your weight, tear me out of bed with some disaster”).
“Before You Hit the Ground” has an especially great trick to it, as Johnson sings about Buddy Holly but ends the song with a lyric from “That’ll Be the Day.” It feels dependable yet spectacular, Johnson’s ability to make timeless music a stepping stone for his own stories (he quotes the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” at the end of “Death of the Party” and Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” at the beginning of “Winter Song,” too). But doing a folk interpolation wasn’t always the plan. Originally, “Before You Hit the Ground” was going to feature references to “all dead people,” namely Holly, John Lennon, and Sam Cooke. The outro, which finds Johnson imagining dying in a plane crash, closing his eyes, and praying he’ll wake from a dream, came to him recently, as did the “You sent me down with some fallen stars” lyric. After taking 19 years to write, record, and release Nothing For Me, Please, Johnson is already mapping out the follow-ups to I Hope We Can Still Be Friends. “I have so many compositions—from fresh ones to old ones—that are really dear to me and I really need to finalize words for them and commit to lyrics,” he says. “I think my next three albums will be, by far, the most exciting things for me that I’ve ever done. I really want to get into a recording life as soon as I can. I’m fucking 52 and I am changing.”
Dean Johnson comes from a different generation. He looks like Sam Elliott but sings like Vince Gill, arriving to us as the closest thing we have to Jim Croce or Sweet Baby James-era James Taylor. He wraps a gentleness around every note; his language is the one I adore most. Songs like “Shake Me,” “Perfect Stranger,” and “A Long Goodbye” make a breakup go down sweeter; songs like “Painted Smile,” “Hang Youie,” and “Death of the Party” pull laughter from the southernmost part of your gut. When smarter men invented tube amps and guitar pickups, they were figuring out the best sound that’s ever been heard. But there’s something about Johnson’s music that is more muscular and innovative than simply using nascent gear built to last. He writes in good faith, doling out memories of being lucky in love or plum out of it completely, in pastorals of cowboys and vampires. It’s all so kind, getting to listen to a memory you can cry to and laugh at. “People are trying to be heard and want to get famous,” Johnson says. “You’re trying to write timeless songs and, hopefully, you not only have a good blend of sensibilities and uniqueness while finding your way through what you think is beautiful, but that you have some deep sincerity with what you’re doing.”
Listen to “Before You Hit the Ground” and check out Dean Johnson’s upcoming tour dates below.
Matt Mitchell is Paste’s music editor, reporting from their home in Northeast Ohio.
Dean Johnson’s Upcoming Tour Dates: 6/28 – Spokane, WA – Knitting Factory Concert House % 6/29 – Boise, ID – Knitting Factory Concert House % 7/16 – Manchester, VT – Billsville # 7/17 – Brattleboro, VT – The Stone Church # 7/18 – Portland, ME – SPACE # 7/19 – North Haven, ME – Crabtree Sessions # 7/20 – Exeter, NH – The Word Barn # 7/21 – Woodstock, NY – Bearsville Theater # 7/23 – Nelsonville, OH – Creekside Stage # 7/24 – Kalamazoo, MI – Bell’s Eccentric Cafe # 7/25 – Berwyn, IL – Fitzgeralds # 7/26 – Spring Green, WI – The Shitty Barn (sold out) 7/27 – Madison, WI – The Bur Oak # 7/31 – Bellingham, WA – Structures Brewing (w. Vincent Neil Emerson) 8/2 – Orcas Island, WA – Dylanfest 8/8 – Colorado Springs, CO – Lulu’s Downtown 8/9 – Lyons, CO – Rocky Mountain Folks Festival 9/4 – Salt Lake City, UT – Red Butte Garden ^ 9/5 – Boise, ID – Morrison Center (sold out) ^ 9/6 – Carnation, WA – Remlinger Farms ^ 9/7 – Troutdale, OR – Edgefield ^ 9/8 – New York, NY – Central Park Summerstage * 9/10 – Washington, DC – Anthem * 9/11 – McKees Rock, PA – Roxian Theatre * 9/14 – Grand Rapids, MI – Meijer Gardens Summer Series * 9/16 – St. Paul, MN – Palace Theatre * 9/17 – La Vista, NE – The Astro Amphitheater * 9/18 – St. Louis, MO – Old Rock House (solo) 9/20 – Washington, DC – Songbyrd Music House (solo) 9/21 – Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s (solo) 9/23 – Cambridge, MA – Club Passim (solo) 9/26 – Boonton, NJ – Boonton Coffee Co. (solo) 9/27 – Northampton, MA – The Iron Horse (solo) 9/28 – Providence, RI – Alchemy (solo) 9/29 – Brooklyn, NY – Baby’s All Right (solo) 11/6 – Salt Lake City, UT – The State Room 11/8 – Fort Collins, CO – The Armory 11/9 – Boulder, CO – Fox Theater 11/11 – Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater 11/12 – Santa Fe, NM – Meow Wolf 11/14 – Phoenix, AZ – Valley Bar 11/15 – Tucson, AZ – Club Congress 11/16 – Jacumba Hot Springs, CA – The Old Bath House 11/17 – Los Angeles, CA – Lodge Room 11/18 – San Francisco, CA – The Chapel 12/5 – Austin, TX – 29th St. Ballroom @ (solo) 12/6 – Dallas, TX – The Kessler Theater @ (solo) 12/7 – Houston, TX – Heights Theater @ (solo) 12/9 – New Orleans, LA – Chickie Wah Wah @ (solo) 12/10 – Birmingham, AL – Woodlawn Theatre @ (solo) 12/11 – Atlanta, GA – Center Stage (Vinyl) @ (solo) 12/12 – Durham, NC – The Pinhook @ (solo) 12/13 – Asheville, NC – AyurPrana Listening Room @ (solo) 12/14 – Charlotte, NC – Neighborhood Theatre @ (solo) % = supporting Kurt Vile # = w/ Erin Rae ^ = supporting Gregory Alan Isakov * = supporting Rilo Kiley @ = w/ Esther Rose
