Dean Johnson w/ Emily Hines

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With I Hope We Can Still Be Friends, his debut for Saddle Creek, Dean Johnson makes a pact with the listener: He will sing you his truth in the most heartfelt and charming way possible, if you promise to keep an open mind.

The title partly stems from the playful way the Seattle-based singer, songwriter and guitarist communes with his audiences at concerts. “I hope you’re not afraid to talk to me after the show,” he’ll say, sweetly, before launching into “Death of the Party,” the album’s seventh song. Centered on the “energy vampire” archetype — the exasperating windbag we’ve all encountered at some point — its lyrics are at once intellectually biting and unmistakably hilarious. His tender voice rings out like the ghost of Roy Orbison or a misfit Everly brother. 

“Words don’t come easily to me / I notice you don’t have that problem / It sounds to me you cannot stop them,” Johnson sings over acoustic guitar strumming, and gentle bass and drums, like the narrator in a dark comedy whose coming-of-age misadventures have made for an excellent film.

Johnson spent years tending bar at Al’s Tavern in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood. There, he encountered folks of all stripes; and regulars enthusiastically murmured about his budding musical greatness — There’s the best songwriter in town! Johnson was a kind of local lore, a long-held family secret, before the singer finally broke out in 2023 with his debut album, Nothing For Me Please, at age 50.

“‘Death of the Party’ is a great example of that,” he says of the sociological experience of bartending. “Being in that environment, lyrics did solidify. If I was working on a song, it wasn’t unusual for some new aspect of it, or a line that was too vague, to suddenly come into focus.”     

I Hope We Can Still Be Friends is essentially an anthology that bridges Johnson’s earliest days as a songwriter with his present-day outlook and abilities. There are songs that have been in his setlists for years, and others that will be new to fans. Each of its 11 tracks contains jocular social commentary or lovingly rendered affairs of the heart. The album’s songs about love and relationships offer another way to interpret its title: as a parting thought to an ex. 

Like all of Johnson’s cable-knit writing, the title is a clever banner for the album’s dual nature, the thing that binds its tragedy and comedy masks. Johnson explains that he didn’t set out to make a concept album. It’s a coincidence that about half of the album’s songs are a bit sardonic, and the other half are more lighthearted. The singer playfully refers to the former as his “mean” songs, which is why the album’s back cover is adorned with a warning that says “Beware of Dean.”

Like John Prine or Kris Kristofferson’s country-adjacent sound, devastating humor and economical profundity refracted through a barroom’s haze, the album is filled with easygoing twang, sad characters, universal truths and the absurdity of everyday life. “Carol” recounts the numb consumption and dissipating cultural attention that is besieging America. There’s a search for optimism amid meditations on dying in a plane crash in “Before You Hit the Ground.” Romance that is best forgotten steers “So Much Better” — only Johnson could weave electroconvulsive therapy into a gentle, chuckle-inducing missive on unbearable heartbreak.

I Hope We Can Still Be Friends floats in a liminal plane between timely and timeless, its minimalist instrumentation elevating Johnson’s affecting voice to new heights. Recorded at Unknown Studio in Anacortes, Washington, the record was produced by Sera Cahoone — the Seattle-based singer-songwriter Johnson describes as a “soulmate sibling.” Overdubbing took place at Seattle’s Crackle & Pop!

For the sessions, Johnson assembled a small band of friends including Abbey Blackwell (bass, backing vocals), multi-instrumentalist Sam Peterson and Cahoone (drums, backing vocals), who created a familial tone on the already intimate album. I Hope We Can Still Be Friends, with its sharp observations and stirring personal insights, holds space for both intense reflection and emotional release. You may laugh, or cry or both. In this sense, the album is powerful medicine — a way to both expose yourself to and inoculate yourself against the ugly, absurd, existential and heartbreaking. At its core rests a basic truth that is often difficult to remember or accept: Happiness wouldn’t exist without sadness as its counterpart.

On his uncanny ability to so clearly see and then encapsulate humanity in all its messy glory, Johnson offers this core memory, drawn from his childhood on Camano Island in the Puget Sound. “I was raised on a bluff,” he says. “I’m not trying to make it sound dramatic, but I did have a sweeping view.”