Things are a little different this year. Instead of breaking down the two-day Ann Arbor Folk Festival — which takes place Friday, January 25 and Saturday, January 26 — lineup into a progressive night and a classic night, both evenings will be a balancing act of vintage, contemporary, country, indie and Americana styles of folk. “We really are looking at the festival as a whole, trying to build variety throughout both nights,” says Marketing Director Barb Chaffer Authier. “As time goes on, you will probably see more of a mix, as many of the older, more traditional artists as no longer with us. But more artists can resonate on either night.” TCP caught up with Saturday night’s headliner The Head and The Heart to let frontman Josiah Johnson explain the band’s remarkable trajectory, the Mumfordization of pop music and how AAFF ticket-holders might be the first to hear new material.
You guys blew up fast! Is there a formula to your quick rise to success?
I think it would be ridiculous not to note some luck in timing, in terms of folk music. Folk was always there, and had its moments, but I think now its got this mainstream resurgence. So a lot of the success we’ve had is playing that kind of music and realizing there’s this whole movement going on around it at the same time.
So you sense a shift in mainstream music towards the indie-folk/rock sound?
Yeah, I don’t think we would have been played on the radio nearly as much if Mumford (Mumford and Sons) hadn’t cracked that code somehow. Right around the time we were releasing our album they got played on the radio and we were like “Damn it they beat us to it!” But it has ultimately been really helpful for us and for bands like The Luminiers—they just got some Grammy shit going on! Which is rad.
You’ve been touring nonstop since forming. Do you notice anything different about Midwest audiences compared to crowds near your home in the Pacific Northwest?
The big thing I notice is when we play places like New York or Los Angeles or Nashville, where it’s a necessity that every band plays there all the time. People are so jaded there because they can go see an awesome show seven days a week. So one show isn’t as big of a deal or event. I get the sense in the Midwest that no matter how many times a band tours through they are a little more stoked for it because they sometimes get passed over. The energy in the Midwest—there’s definitely something there you don’t get from some really huge market on the coasts.
Recently you contributed to a holiday album with acts like The Shins, fun. and Paul McCartney for Starbucks. Is that a hipster ironic thing to like, or do people genuinely love Christmas songs?
I think people genuinely love holiday songs. When we recorded this song we didn’t want to record it in a standard way. We wanted to record something that sounds like what we do, but you can’t entirely take it away from the feeling of what a Christmas song is like. I think that people get into the holidays and get sentimental and those songs genuinely set the mood. Obviously, they can just as easily listen to old classics, but they choose to listen to these new bands’ take on it. So there’s a little bit of hipsterism in it for sure, but people genuinely get into the mood of Christmas.
So when will fans get to hear some new tunes? Are you guys working on an album?
Yes! The last month and a half we’ve hunkered down in our practice space and we’ve taken songs we’ve written the last couple of years, arranged them and we’re writing some new ones. I think we’re like halfway to two-thirds there. We’re gonna do some recording in January, write some more and finish up in early spring. I’m not sure when it’ll be out. The goal is to play several of them (new songs) when we’re in Ann Arbor and that’ll be nice for us to hear the songs outside of our basement practice space.
