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.”
nearly half of that time on the road performing her own music and as a touring bassist with Greg
Freeman, Lutalo, and Liz Cooper. While she thrives in transit, back home she is anchored by
“Trash Mountain,” a pink house surrounded by other artists and creatives situated on a
decommissioned landfill site at the back of Burlington’s Old North End. Here, Seabird has found
belonging, friendship, and inspiration. It’s a place that hosts artists, puts on shows, and has
been passed along in her friend group for the better part of the decade. It’s a symbol of
transition and stability: something always evolving and growing but never losing its soul. It's only
fitting that Seabird named her new album Trash Mountain, as it also contains its namesake's
qualities. Over nine delicate but sturdy tracks of intimate folk rock, she pares her songwriting
down to its most resonant essentials. It’s an album of unwelcome exits and uncertain futures,
but there’s resiliency and hope at its core. It is Seabird’s most confident and immediate effort to
date.
Where Seabird’s previous records—2024’s Alas, and 2021’s Beside Myself—were written over
the course of a year, Trash Mountain practically poured out of Seabird: three months of
songwriting in spring 2024, followed by four days of tracking with Kevin Copeland (Hannah
Frances, Lightning Bug, Allegra Krieger) in his Southern Vermont studio in the summer. The
condensed timeline allowed her to be present and process how differently her life looks now
compared to a few years ago. She’s coped with transforming relationships and grief, as well as
music’s awkward shift from a no-pressure, casual thing to do with friends to a career. Though
working in environmental politics and community organizing brought her to Vermont from
Pennsylvania, her disillusionment with systemic change led her to become a full-time musician.
It’s a transition that requires deep self-reflection. “Songwriting is meditation for me, “she says.
“It’s the way I work through things and make sense of the world. Being on tour so much I've
been writing more just to understand what's happening around me."
Lead single "Trash Mountain (1pm)” came about the day Seabird returned to Burlington after a
month on tour, which included 15 shows in a week at SXSW. “Coming home is not always easy
for me,” she laughs. “Sometimes I feel like I am a way better version of myself when I'm in the
chaos on the road. When I get home, I tend to spiral.” Written on a walk outside her house, she
channeled being overwhelmed into a perceptive look at coming down. Over woozy slide guitar
and harmonica, Seabird muses, “How are we supposed to remember things / When everything
is coming and going?” She doesn’t let herself succumb to her anxieties, finding peace and
gratitude for being “on the edge of town / where when I’m home I rest my head.”
While the grief that enveloped her last effort Alas,, which dealt with her best friend’s suicide, still
lingers, it’s settled into healing and reflection on Trash Mountain. On “It was like you were
coming to wake us back up,” Seabird vividly paints a brief moment of seeing a person outside
her house who bears an uncanny resemblance to her dearly deceased. Rather than mourning,
she finds comfort and healing in the vision. “In the past, I used to come to songwriting when I
was in crisis,” admits Seabird. “Only recently have I come to songwriting when I am feeling other
things beyond emergency and disruption."
The album’s arrangements are markedly sparse and intentional, a shift from the layered Alas,
and Beside Myself, allowing Seabird’s writing to soar and stand starkly centered. Only three
songs feature her longtime touring band in guitarist Freeman, bassist Nina Cates (Robber
Robber), and drummer Zack James (Dari Bay, Robber Robber). On the stunning “How far
away,” she’s backed only by a piano played by Sam Atallah which makes for elegiac catharsis.
“I've finally accepted that I'm a singer-songwriter,” she says with a shrug. “Not everything has to
be some big rock song.” Seabird cites Elliott Smith, Neil Young, and Leonard Cohen as
influences on Trash Mountain, and much like the latter, her evocative, emotionally potent lyrics
find her looking for cracks in the darkness where light comes in, sometimes literally. Take the
album’s other title track, “Trash Mountain (1am),” where she sings of a nocturnal stroll: “We walk
these streets we’ve come to know / memories live on in them after the snow / is all melted and
gone / garbage covers the ground / and you pull a flower from the weeds and you spin me
around.” Sometimes all you need is a loved one to show you how to find beauty in the mess.
Trash Mountain boasts a profound grace and openness. On the buoyant “Sweepstake,” she
cherishes memories with dear friends and optimistically looks towards the future, singing,
“Where are we going is a question I save for halfway / Tonight the kingdom and tomorrow the
milky way.” The song captures the carefree feelings of making art with your best friends,
nostalgically mining the boundless creativity and possibility of her early music life in Vermont.
Life can change in an instant, but Seabird knows that there’s power in grasping onto the purest
moments of connection.
Seabird’s best friend would often joke that “the world is trash,” a welcome dose of dark humor
as the sentiment rings more true with each passing year. It’s with this resilient spirit that Trash
Mountain finds its optimistic, life-affirming center. It’s an album that understands and accepts
that highs and lows are inescapable and that the only way through is with small acts of kindness
and other people. It’s a tribute to home, chosen families, and taking life as it comes. “I don’t
have hope for the oppressive systems that abandon us, but I do have hope in people,” says
Seabird. “Sure, the world is really messed up, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make something
beautiful out of the garbage. We might as well make something beautiful out of what we have
got.”