Dean Johnson performs Bumbershoot’s Mural Stage Sunday, September 1.
by Alexa Peters
For the higher a part of 10 years, Dean Johnson was one in every of Seattle music’s best-kept secrets and techniques. I first heard him sing in 2016, throughout a time in my life once I’d make nearly nightly outings to Ballard to sloppily two-step at Conor Byrne, seize a late-night snack from Horny Alley Puffy Tacos (might it relaxation in peace), or catch a present at Tractor Tavern.
Often known as a member of Davidson Hart Kingsbery and Sons of Rainier (and because the mustachioed bartender on the legendary Wallingford bar, Al’s Tavern), Johnson’s story-driven songs had been fabled in Ballard’s close-knit and rootsy music neighborhood. He didn’t have any skilled recordings of his materials, however should you had been fortunate, you may catch him open for a pal’s set at Conor Byrne or play a couple of impromptu songs at a home get together. Afterward, you had been warned by these already within the know, you wouldn’t be the identical. I wasn’t.
Now, a a lot wider viewers is swooning for this troubadour’s poeticism and lonesome croon. Since he launched his debut, Nothing for Me, Please, on his fiftieth birthday final 12 months, Johnson has develop into a visual and celebrated new voice in Americana music.
The album, out on Mama Chicken Information, has been featured on the influential reside music video channel Western AF and obtained glowing write-ups in The Seattle Instances, Paste, and No Melancholy. The primary observe, “Faraway Skies,” even appeared on Season 3 of the favored Hulu present, Reservation Canines. With this reception, Johnson has toured and carried out extra this 12 months than another time in his life, and he’s not completed but—he’s enjoying Bumbershoot on Sunday, September 1.
Johnson units you comfortable together with his form, mild-mannered demeanor. He says he’s nonetheless processing what the album’s success means. “I really feel like it’s a fairly unusual factor to have a primary album come out whenever you’re 50 years previous, and simply beginning to tour at such a late age,” he says. “It is such an unusual factor, I am concurrently embarrassed and completely happy about it. I am curious to see what occurs.”
Regardless of this late-in-life debut, music has been part of Johnson’s life since his childhood in Camano Island. All of it started when his older brother gave him a nylon string guitar when Johnson was 14. Straightaway, Johnson took to “tinkering”, he says. “Fairly than enjoying different folks’s songs, I principally simply composed little issues that sounded good to me.”
Offbeat, pre-grunge bands just like the Younger Contemporary Fellows—and the full-fledged grunge that got here a couple of years later—left an impression on Johnson, as did teams like Violent Femmes, with their “darkish and aggressive people leanings.” However Johnson’s the primary to say that his early listening wasn’t all edgy and underground: “For a way I’ve turned out musically, I’ve to present a variety of credit score to the Beatles and Bob Dylan and Neil Younger.”
At the moment, Johnson’s songwriting begins together with his relationship to the guitar. Like assembly with a “pal,” he’ll sit down with it and discover some enjoyable patterns to play. “The momentum will occur as soon as I get some chord development that’s thrilling, after which that’ll normally get me by means of ending an entire composition that feels satisfying,” he says.
<a href=”https://deanjohnsongs.bandcamp.com/album/nothing-for-me-please”>Nothing for Me, Please by Dean Johnson</a>
Johnson wrote his first full music by his late twenties. Round that very same time, in 2003, he moved in together with his brother in Wallingford and found Al’s Tavern. The enduring bar shortly turned his common hang-out and, ultimately, his office.
The intimate little dive has performed a pivotal function in Johnson’s musical rise. For one, a lot of the bittersweet songs on the debut poured out following Johnson’s “first large heartbreak,” a breakup he had at 36 with a lady he’d met at Al’s.
Al’s can be the place Johnson met songwriter Chris Acker, after serving him drinks on the bar for his twenty-first birthday. Acker would ultimately join Johnson with the remainder of the blokes in Sons of Rainier—Devin Champlin, Sam Gelband, and Charlie Meyer—with whom Johnson continues to play as we speak. (Gelband and Meyer additionally seem on Nothing for Me, Please.) And after the discharge of Nothing for Me, Please, Acker would do Johnson one other stable by connecting him with Mike Vanata, the director and lead editor at Western AF, a channel that posts reside acoustic periods and area recordings of songwriters.
The channel has gained main momentum as a tastemaker in Americana music since its founding in 2007. Over the previous two years, Johnson has recorded 4 movies with Western AF, which he credit with a big a part of his success (it did lead on to Johnson’s Paste Journal evaluation) and his traction with audiences outdoors of the US. All of Johnson’s Western AF movies have 1000’s of likes on YouTube.
“If I would by no means been on Western AF, , I would not have any video that had been seen greater than 5,000 instances.”
At the moment, Johnson’s now not pouring photographs at Al’s; he took the plunge into doing music full-time. He has toured as a supporting act for Jenny Lewis, Jeffrey Martin, and the indie-folk group the Cactus Blossoms, performed a showcase at Nashville’s Americana Fest, carried out units at Pacific Northwest music festivals Timber! and Pickathon, and appeared at main nationwide festivals Bonnaroo and Hopscotch. It’s all been unimaginable, he says, however his look on the Roskilde Competition in Denmark in early July stands out.
“We had been enjoying at 12:30 pm on the final day of the competition—I used to be anticipating 100 folks on the most. It turned out to be 1,200 folks. It was like I used to be a serious, extra identified, artist doing a headline present as a result of the viewers was lifeless silent through the songs, and they’d applaud for thus lengthy that we might be laughing.”
Johnson and his band is likely to be laughing once more come Labor Day weekend, once they play for largely native audiences at Bumbershoot. Johnson, who’s attended the competition since he was a teen, says this seems like a full-circle second.
“I’ve fairly sturdy Bumbershoot recollections, , tromping round there with your mates and making an attempt to determine who you are going to go watch,” he says. “I am actually excited.”
Dean Johnson performs Bumbershoot’s Mural Stage Sunday, September 1, at 5:15 pm.
