There's a timeless quality to the Head and the Heart. I can recall the first time hearing "Rivers and Roads," a standout track from the group's 2009 self-titled debut LP and feeling like it was both fresh and a remembered relic from the past. It was as easy to imagine the sweeping indie folk epic about friends moving away being sung around a fire on a wagon trail headed west as it was envisioning your college buddies group singing it over a round of cheap beer after graduating in 2010.
The Head and the Heart's rise is a piece of Seattle music lore, packing folks into Ballard's Conor Byrne Pub and selling 10,000+ CDs on their own before eventually signing with Sub Pop. The group has continued to ascend over the years, growing more eclectic as time has passed. The band's 2022 album Every Shade of Blue is a testament to that, with bigger, lusher pop sounds that sound quite distant from the group's bare-bones roots without losing sight of the emotional core of the tH&tH's collective songwriting spirit.
Before the group swings into town for a co-headlining show alongside the brilliant, sardonic indie rock of Father John Misty, we caught up with the Head and the Heart singer, songwriter, guitarist, and violinist Charity Rose Thielen (who's also married to singer/guitarist Matt Gervais, who replaced original co-lead vocalist Josiah Johnson when he left tH&tH) to chat about what she likes about co-headlining tours, the strangeness of time and sandwiches with honey.
INLANDER: What's the general state of the Head and the Heart? How y'all fairing these days?
THIELEN: The first tour we did this year — co-headlining with the Revivalists — was honestly one of the most positive tours I've experienced in this band. There was a very positive communal, collaborative spirit that you can't really anticipate when you don't really know a band before you tour with them. And there was just a very wonderful dynamic that was a gift and a pleasant surprise. I just feel like we'll be building upon that going into the near future.
There's a newness with Matthew and myself — we brought another child into the world, and we brought them on tour. [laughs] So that inspired a level of shifts in mentality. I think everyone was inspired to be a little healthier and on better behavior. Which, when you're in a touring band for the long haul, that only benefits everybody. The mega-dosing of having a new child and the mega-dosing of tour is not necessarily a match made in heaven, but there have been really, really positive byproducts for the general vibe of everyone. It's been hard and rewarding at the same time.
It's funny — prepping for our chat I was like, "Well, it feels like Every Shade of Blue came out three or four years ago..." only to look it up and remember it was a 2022 album. COVID has turned my brain to mush. Anyway, what are your feelings and relations to the songs on Every Shade of Blue now that you've had a chance to play them live?
That's a great lead-in, because it is interesting how it has felt like the pacing and rate of time has changed post the time stoppage of COVID. So it does feel like it's been a long time, even though it's kind of been on par with our other [album] cycles.
It's been incredible to be able to play the songs live, of course, especially being so isolated as we were working on it. We finished it during peak pandemic. So it's been incredible just to see how they sit and react during the exchange of a concert. It's been cool to play newer markets and expand who we've been playing for during this last run, and coming up here. I'm really excited to play [the songs] for Spokane because it's in our home state, and I feel like we have so much support in that greater area, so it'll be really special to be able to perform them live for the first time there.
For lack of a better phrase [laughs], there's a lot of different shades on this album. We've never made a concept album. We've arguably never really made an intentionally cohesive album — it's been cohesive for how variable and how different the writers and the personalities are in the band. So it's been cool to kind of see the songs from Every Shade of Blue come together and create a pattern live. I love playing the title track live. It's a very inviting and beautiful power ballad.
Do you have any favorite aspects of the newer songs now that you've had time with them?
Going into the second year, the second round of the cycle for the album, we've added more from our older canon. We've been a bit more specific about the songs from Every Shade of Blue versus playing the majority of it. We're spreading out our canon throughout the set a little bit more, and so it's been cool to kind of popcorn in various songs, take some out from the album and replace them with other ones. There are just so many different types of songs on this album.
"GTFU" has been a really fun surprise, even for us, and we've been throwing it in the encore sometimes. It kind of lights an excitement in us and the audience.
What are you looking forward to about this co-headlining tour with Father John Misty? You both have those Sub Pop roots, and it feels like a fun, musically contrasting peanut-butter-and-jelly combo.
I think that's our internal approach as a band — we are like peanut butter and jelly, maybe with some honey added in there. As a fan, co-headlining tours are a really cool thing. With the Revivalists and with Father John Misty, there's a spectrum of music that resonates with our band. We have a general openness to a wide breadth of interest and inspiration. And so it's pretty great that we can do these back-to-back tours with very different flavors.
I don't know what to expect as far as the tour goes, but there's a lot of connections like Sub Pop. Our bassist Chris played with [Father John's prior project] J. Tillman back in the Seattle days. And, at least speaking for Matty and myself, we're big fans of his records. So there's definitely a lot of overlap. There's a kinship there, but our careers have been also very unique in their own respective ways. Different yet similar enough to be exciting.
When you reflect back on the little Seattle indie folk boom that happened — with y'all, Fleet Foxes, Band of Horses, etc. — how do you feel about your role in it and its ongoing musical legacy?
I'm inspired by it. We're lucky to have been part of a wave. Folk music has just been a huge guide in my world, and so I think it's great to be in a group with some of my favorite bands. But it's also really incredible happenstance, in the fact that we also sound very different from those bands, yet we are part of this kind of expansive group, part of this wave of time. We couldn't have predicted it being a wave, really.
We still very much see ourselves as a Seattle band. Every boat rose in that wave. And it's not as dog-eat-dog as other scenes throughout the country. There was a perfect storm for that moment. ♦
The Head and the Heart, Father John Misty, Miya Folick • Sun, Aug 6 at 6 pm • $50-$65 • All ages • Spokane Pavilion • 574 N. Howard St. • spokanepavilion.com