eTown Taping with Billie Marten and Dean Johnson
About Billie Marten:
Billie loves to leave her mark on a good book, underlining important passages, scribbling ideas in the margins, folding the corners of pages into dog ears to mark her place. The 10 songs of Dog Eared, her fifth album, serve that purpose, telling the story of who she was as she wrote and recorded it, cleaving her adolescence from her adulthood in order to move forward. She is the songwriter who finds wisdom in horses and encourages self-reflection while realizing she has barely begun her own. She is the singer who makes the chorus of “Goodnight Moon” as beautiful as a lunar corona and smartly lets dissonance slip between her voice and the band around her as she watches something she loves disappear during “Crown.” Billie is a consummate singer-songwriter who has dared to push beyond the limitations of that form and made a stunning record that marks a new page, suggesting what comes next through the strength and beauty of what’s right here.
About Dean Johnson:
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.
On his uncanny ability to so clearly see and then encapsulate humanity in all its messy glory, Dean 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.”
Event Links
Tickets: https://go.evvnt.com/3450819-0
