I've Missed You All These Years

There’s a moment halfway through I’ve Missed You All These Years, the fifth record from Seattle songwriter and producer Sera Cahoone, that captures the album’s mix of collective joy and resilient wisdom. Backed by the gentle lilt of a pedal steel and keyboard on “Pulling Up Roots,” she declares, “I’m alright/ After all this time.” 

It’s a lyric that feels like a deep exhale, one that reflects the transformative journey to Cahoone’s boldest and brightest album. The daughter of a dynamite salesman raised in the Colorado foothills, Cahoone picked up drumming at just 11 years old. Within a year, she was sitting in on sessions at local dive bars. Her earliest musical memories are of listening to soft rock and country, sounds that “took over my soul” in early adulthood, she says. After relocating to the Pacific Northwest in 1998, Cahoone became a fixture in the Seattle music scene, drumming with cult Seattle slowcore legends Carissa’s Wierd. After their split in 2003, she joined fellow Carrisa’s Wierd alum in Band of Horses, including playing on their certified Gold 2006 album Everything All the Time. 

That same year, Cahoone released her first solo record, a self-titled debut that established her as a singular songwriter and gifted guitarist. Cahoone soon signed to Sub Pop, where she released her 2008 record Only as the Day Is Long and 2012’s Deer Creek Canyon, which drew comparisons to Gillian Welch and Jenny Lewis. After self-releasing the rollicking and raucous From Where I Started in 2017, Cahoone returns to Sup Pop for I’ve Missed You All These Years. “I signed when I was pretty young, and I felt like a bit of an imposter,” Cahoone says. “Coming back to Sub Pop, I feel like I just fit in, and they understand me. I feel a lot stronger in myself.” 

Cahoone began writing the songs on I’ve Missed You All These Years almost as soon as she finished her last album. Retreating to a cabin in the forest in 2018, she began crafting melodies without lyrics, just using her guitar. “Being in a remote location got me to slow down and be in the trees,” Cahoone says. There, she put together the first pieces of what would later become the soft sway of “Not How I Hoped,” the barroom swing of “Pulling Up Roots,” and the galloping rhythm of “Horse Runnin.’” 

The eight years that shaped this album were full of profound changes for Cahoone: She lost her best friend, her father, and her dog all within a short time period. “My father had Parkinson’s, and he died during the pandemic, so I didn’t get to be with him,” she recalls. The experience inspired the lyrics on the gossamer, finger-picked gem “Supposed To Be”: “And I’m still living here/ And I’m so much older/ You’re always on my mind/ And I miss my father.” It’s a powerful reflection of the way grief and love can coexist, the way memories keep us tethered to the ones we love. “Writing songs helps me get through difficult periods,” Cahoone says. “These people live in you. They come out in your lyrics, and they're with you all the time.” 

In the time since her last record, Cahoone dedicated her time to developing her skills as a producer and drummer, including producing three records for friends Dean Johnson and Margo Cilker. “I learned a lot from producing about letting go and being open to new possibilities,” Cahoone explains. “I realized that I have to trust my intuition. Finding that strength in myself and trying to get the best out of other musicians has just made me a better musician and communicator. It’s helped me get out of my own sadness through getting into somebody else's sadness.”

Sera’s album continued to take shape at a cabin in Leavenworth, Washington, where Cahoone spent time writing and recording demos, then later at Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville, returning to the same space she created Deer Creek Canyon to track her new crop of songs. 

“The way it was recorded was just beautiful,” Cahoone adds. It was a collaborative effort from generations of friends and fellow musicians. “I've been playing with my band for a long time, and I wanted to bring them in. For this record, I brought in pretty much everyone that I've played with off and on for years,” she says. This meant including Alex Guy on strings, Jeff Fielder on guitar and banjo, Daniel Walker on keys, Jason Kardong on steel, Keith Lowe on upright bass, Jonas Haskins on bass, and Aaron O’Neil on the drums. John Askew, who engineered records Cahoone had recently produced, oversaw production. “I just wanted to do it right, I wanted it to just sound gorgeous, and I wanted to do it collectively with the people I love.” 

Fittingly, I’ve Missed You All These Years, the sixth album from Sera Cahoone, captures the sound of ecstatic collaboration, the closest thing to being a fly on the wall in a room full of exceptionally talented friends. You can hear it in the hum of an accordion on “Tangled Nights,” the sigh of a pedal steel on “Not How I Had Hoped,” the breezy falsetto on “Say Something.” It’s a record about finding comfort in community; about rediscovering yourself by connecting with the people you love. 

There are bittersweet moments on I’ve Missed You All These Years, as on the reflective and winsome “Not How I Had Hoped,” which culminates with the heartbreaking refrain, “Oh god I love you still/ But this isn’t how I hoped.” Here, Cahoone’s vocals are more striking than ever, a honeyed croon conveying so many emotions in one note. “I just kept singing it, and it just felt so good,” Cahoone says of that line. “I had to sit with that for a little while because I realized nothing else would work there. That one just kind of came out of my soul.” But this record is emphatically not about the darkness; it’s about what happens after the storm clears, the moment when you begin to come back into your own body after a dark, dissociative winter. “It’s about remembering who you are and who you love,” she says. “It’s about not taking people for granted.”

This sense of lightness is evident throughout the album, from the carefree piano and electric guitar that rev to life on “Say Something” to the rippling acoustic melodies on the wistful and tender “No One Like You.” Cahoone has a knack for rendering intricate portraits in her lyrics, which she describes as “somewhat autobiographical”: “Hits Right” takes us into the mind of a pensive barfly; “Horse Runnin’” colors a romantic interest with all the eccentric details of a classic rom-com. “Something Good” casts the album in a warm glow as it ends, capturing new love via a slow morning spent drinking coffee in the living room. 

On her sixth record, Sera Cahoone is in full command of her powers. In its nuanced melodies and its complex emotions, in its ability to hold loss and connection in the same hand, I’ve Missed You All These Years is triumphant, a celebration of life rooted in the knowledge of its fleeting nature. The product of a lifetime spent performing and producing music, the album crosses between blues, folk, pop, and country, evoking Loretta Lynn in one song and Lucinda Williams in the next. It’s a testament to the strength that creativity and community brings, a portrait of an artist who knows herself completely. “I want people to feel what I felt and put themselves in the way I felt back then,” Cahoone says. “I want them to think, ‘If she made it through, I can too.’”