The Head and the Heart revisit their Sub Pop debut at Remlinger Farms

Call it kismet or a bit of silver-lining good fortune. The universe had a way of lining things up for The Head and the Heart.

The hometown folk rockers intended to commemorate the 10th anniversary of their self-titled debut, a certified Seattle classic that Sub Pop blasted to the rest of the world in 2011 after it took the city by storm. The pandemic put those plans on ice while the bandmates - now scattered between Washington, California and Virginia - focused on new music with the pandemic-hatched "Every Shade of Blue" and last year's "Aperture."

With the round-enough 15th anniversary this year, THATH hit the road playing the album in full, starting with a February special occasion gig at Benaroya Hall backed by the estimable Seattle Symphony. Hot on the heels of "Aperture" - a course-correcting record that saw THATH return to collaborative, full-band songwriting in line with its early days - the timing of the turn-back-the-clock tour feels natural.

"It's caused so much reflection for us internally as a band, which has been really interesting and beautiful," said violinist/singer Charity Rose Thielen of their first album-anniversary push. "(It) also informed our present-day period as a band. … ‘Aperture' to me really hearkens back to a lot of that process of the first record. It felt like those two things aligned over the course of the last year. It just felt like the right moment to be reflective."

Thielen and her bandmates, including her husband and singer/multi-instrumentalist Matty Gervais, will be in reflective mode this weekend as the tour (which is heavy on old-days storytelling) hits Remlinger Farms for two nights July 10-11. THATH will also drop by their Easy Street stomping grounds Thursday for a sold-out in-store performance to release a "Live at Neumos" album recorded in early 2011, right as the Ballard-formed band rocket launched to indie stardom.

Ahead of their hometown swing, we caught up with the West Seattle couple to discuss the anniversary tour, their Seattle Symphony team-up and touring with another local luminary, Brandi Carlile. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What's it like for you playing the album in full night after night?

Thielen: Matty articulates this onstage, the idea that "Rivers and Roads" started in this practice space in Georgetown. Then we debuted it to the rest of the band in a parking garage in Tacoma. How that song has made its way all across the world in different spaces and now we're playing it 15 years later in these unique circumstances and venues with these people. It's such a powerful arc that I think is really healthy and inspiring to be reminded of the beginning.

Have any songs changed meaning for you over the years? Any you see in a new light playing them 15 years later?

Gervais: Some of the subject matter and material is coming from a first-person perspective about things that nobody in the band had yet experienced. In particular, "Honey Come Home" is going through this divorce scenario. Like a husband and wife talking to each other, there's the presence of these kids that the narrator of the song is concerned about. You can feel all these underlying emotional currents and things that no one had yet experienced. And now almost everybody in the band is a parent and has experienced how that changes your relationship to your spouse and the new responsibilities you have to take on, and how that shifts your life and your life's purpose and it can be rocky. For me, that song has a much more palpable experiential connection than ever before.

Thielen: I think about Heaven Go Easy on Me. It kind of goes back to the name of the band and this reflective motto of "don't follow your head but follow your heart." That is so much the basis of how this band originated. We were all choosing to leave schooling or work and following this irrational intuition - or seemingly irrational intuition - in order to follow the band. That free foolishness is what led to us being able to do this. So that's definitely a grounding moment, singing out those lyrics, because we typically haven't incorporated that song in the last many years.

Have there been any reactions to the lesser played songs that surprised you?

Gervais: My memory goes to when we played with the Seattle Symphony and we played "Rivers and Roads" fourth and it felt like this really epic moment. When a night is firing on all four cylinders, everyone in the audience and the band feels like this is all of our song. We're all experiencing it in our own way and it means different things to everybody. But at the core, it's very uniting to everyone in the room. With the symphony backing it up, it had this cinematic, triumphant but also cathartic feeling.

Thielen: A weight to it.

Gervais: Exactly. It was this standing ovation moment four songs in and it felt like, "OK, it's all downhill from here. Now we just get to have fun."

How did the Benaroya show come about?

Gervais: One of our longtime friends who's a mover-shaker and a talented musician and composer in Seattle, Andrew Joslyn, is now with the Seattle Symphony. He and I had actually been talking about it for years.

Thielen: It's been in talks for a long time with the band to collaborate, and timing wise it just hasn't made sense.

Gervais: It finally lined up and it also happened to coincide with Andrew becoming (head of popular programming at) the Seattle Symphony. He made the incredible scores. It's almost like reimagining the songs completely. He's adding new melodies and different things that make it feel cinematic, epic and just heightens every little detail and emotion of the songs.

Thielen: As a string instrumentalist and growing up playing in orchestras - my mother's a retired orchestra teacher and violinist/violist, and she was there for the rehearsal - it just hit me in a different personal way. Growing up classically trained yet being in this folk band and merging those two things in that collaboration created a reaction for me internally that I had never really experienced. It was really beautiful.

What was it like touring with Brandi Carlile?

Gervais: That was the biggest childhood-dream-come-true type of situation. There's something to an arena show that's just iconic and otherworldly. And thanks to Brandi for having us along on this tour, we got to play in some of the most iconic places in the country - Madison Square Garden and the Forum in L.A. It was like stepping into way bigger shoes than I think we've ever felt like we were capable of filling in the past. The icing on the cake was getting to see Brandi and her wonderful band of amazing human beings and musicians completely annihilate it every night.

Thielen: In some ways, I fear the lack of intimacy. There's the iconography of the experience on the one hand. But also, this band started out playing anywhere and everywhere. And I loved how whenever there wasn't a stage, it didn't feel like there was a separation between us and the audience. There's a lack of intimacy that can happen in such a large space. And I think as performers, we finally could understand how to conceptualize ourselves in that kind of space.

Another Seattle sweetheart, Dean Johnson, was added to your Remlinger Farms shows. What's your relationship with Dean and what about his music do you appreciate?

Thielen: Oh, he's one of the greatest lyricists and writers. We've been friends with him for years.

Gervais: You got to have the record on hand. (Pulls out a copy of Johnson's "I Hope We Can Still Be Friends.") Do you remember the bar Underwood Stables? It was a speakeasy-type bar in Fremont. One night, after a show - this is the night I met Dean Johnson - a handful of people are hanging out at this bar after it's closed. Everyone there was a songwriter, so everyone was taking turns playing a song in front of the five other people that were there just sitting at the bar. I got to see Dean play "Faraway Skies" in that setting. It just blew my mind. He's such a gentle, wonderful spirit.

What do you remember about that Neumos show in 2011?

Gervais: 5-hour Energy (laughs).

Thielen: Matty wasn't in the band yet, but his band played that show opening for The Head and the Heart. … That's really when we met, so that was a history-making show for us personally. But the band, that night there was such an energy, such a young naiveté for the band, and just uncertainty of what was happening.

Gervais: I can say this because I wasn't in the band yet. Anybody who was in the know at the time and watching the ascendance of the band, that was like when the tornado was starting to get bigger and bigger and blow up into a hurricane - not that that's how tornadoes or hurricanes work (laughs). But it was amazing to watch that from an outsider's perspective and feel that kinetic energy. I think Dave Matthews was there. It was all these things where you're like, "Oh my God, what's happening?!" The experience felt bigger than that room, and everyone there knew it was going to be something much bigger.

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This story was originally published July 8, 2026 at 5:04 PM.