The Head And The Heart Close Out The 2023 BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn Season

The fine folks over at BRIC managed to produce another wonderful season of concerts at the Lena Horne Bandshell in Prospect Park this year and to top it all off, they had none other than The Head And The Heart close things out last week. Despite an afternoon spiced with on and off rain showers, the crowds were not detered even as the rain persisted albeit rather softly throughout the early parts of the evenings festivities.

The night started off with opening act Izzy Heltai putting forth quite an enjoyable and energetic set of folky americana material. I confess that I’d never heard of, much less was I remotely familiar with any of Izzy’s material but I must say that this was one of those cases where I was most pleasantly surprised and pleased by an unknown opening act’s set. If you enjoy sad songs perfomed in a folky style with a decent smattering of humor sprinkled throughout, I highly suggest you give Mr. Heltai a spin.

Izzy Heltai

The Head and The Heart took to the stage shortly after 9 PM and it took no time at all for the crowd to errupt with approval. Starting off with “Every Shade Of Blue” the title track off of the band’s most recent offering, the song was performed with just lead singer Josiah Johnson on stage with his acoustic guitar. It was, of course quite a terrific sight to see Josiah back on stage with the band since his hiatus from Head And The Heart in 2015 to deal with substance abuse issues as well as mental health problems.

With the rest of the band joining Josiah on stage, it soon became apparent that the group was facing this show much like a long distance runner approaches a marathon. Its all about the pacing and like all any good marathoner worth their salt, The Head And The Heart set a tone to their set that moved forward with a precision and a purpose that had the crowd at the bandshell resting on each and every note. Song after song built upon the momentum and the mood created by its predecessor. And because of this the night had that feel that the band was building a musical Jenga tower where the strength of each newly added block (in this case, song) was only as strong as the one to which it was being added to.

One particular highlight for me (not to mention the majority of those in attendance) came about midway through the evening. The opening guitar chord followed by the quintisential bass line gave it away right away and we knew at ince that we were getting treated to “10,000 Weight In Gold” from the band’s sophomore release from 2013, Let’s Be Still. Oddly enough although this is a huge fan favorite, 10K had fallen from the band’s regular rotation so hearing it was quite the bonus.

Continuing through the rest of the night with songs that ultimately had the crowd singing and dancing right along with H&TH to the point that by the time the three headed monster of an encore (“In The Orchard”, “Living Mirage” and “Rivers and Roads” came our way we clearly knew that we had been gifted a truly wonderful night of music.