This winter, The Head and the Heart will re-enter the studio to complete work on its first studio album with no involvement from founding members Josiah Johnson and Kenny Hensley.

That sounds like a big deal, something that could change the way the Seattle folk-rock band operates as a songwriting and recording unit. But drummer Tyler Williams disagreed during a recent conversation with GO! Magazine ahead of the band’s return to Les Schwab Amphitheater on Wednesday.

“It’s kind of always been this way,” he said from a tour stop in Athens, Georgia. “Jon (Russell, vocalist/guitarist/songwriter) has always been the prolific songwriter in the band, so he’s always been the one who brings forth most of the songs ideas. And I find Kenny and I and Chris (Zasche, bassist) have the same role of arrangers and editors when it comes time to give our input. So without that there, it’s really just kind of — I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem maybe as big of a deal as you might have in your own head, judging by your question.”

While the band’s creative process may be unaffected, the departures did take a toll.

Guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Johnson stepped aside due to unspecified addiction issues in March 2016, when The Head and the Heart was about to start recording its third studio album and major-label debut, “Signs of Light.” He returned to performing solo shows this year but has not reunited with his main band. Matt Gervais, husband of violinist/vocalist Charity Rose Thielen, stepped in for the band’s subsequent tours and the upcoming album.

Pianist Hensley announced his hiatus earlier this year to “focus on some other passions in (his) life,” according to a post on the band’s Instagram page, and Charlie Glenn, a friend and former bandmate of Williams’, stepped in.

Though Williams wouldn’t discuss the specifics of the two situations, he offered that the band has come out stronger for them.

“It’s almost like a weird, unintentional coincidence that here we are with this lineup at this point — it just could not happen any other way,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine making the last record with Josiah in that fold that we had, because it was right around recording time that he was having major issues, and we had to deal with those. It feels like we’re a real strong unit through this adversity.”

Amidst the lineup shifts, “Signs of Light” gave the band some of its biggest successes to date, hitting No. 5 on the Billboard 200 and spawning the No. 1 Billboard Adult Alternative Songs hit “All We Ever Knew” — its first No. 1 on that chart since 2011’s single “Lost in My Mind.” Preceding the release, the band was featured on the debut episode of Cameron Crowe’s Showtime dramedy “Roadies.”

The album’s 13 songs take on a ’70s classic-rock vibe when compared with the piano-driven, Beatlesque folk-rock of the band’s first two albums. Polished production from Jay Joyce drives home the swelling electric guitars on tracks such as “False Alarm” and “Colors.”

“I think with any album we put out, we tend to challenge our audience and not just do what we did in the past,” Williams said. “We all find it pointless to maybe rehash what we’ve already created. So I think anytime we put a new record out — it happened on (2013 sophomore album) ‘Let’s Be Still,’ too — it takes our audience six months to catch up to it or a year or so. I think that’s kind of the joy of being an artist.”

The band has already recorded six or seven tracks for the follow-up, and added “Living Mirage” — “an awesome, desert, Springsteen-esque heartland pop song,” according to Williams — to its set list this tour. It is working with producers Alex Salibian and Tyler Johnson (Harry Styles, Sam Smith) at OmniSound Studios in Nashville, Tennessee, where Jewel’s 1995 debut album, “Pieces of You,” was mixed.

“We have 15 more (songs) to dig through,” Williams said. “I don’t really know what to say — it sounds like The Head and the Heart, but it sounds like a natural progression in our evolution as a band.”

That evolution began in 2009 when Johnson, recently arrived to Seattle from Southern California, began playing with Richmond, Virginia, transplant Russell at open mic nights. Williams was still living in Richmond at the time and playing in bands such as Prabir and The Substitutes, but relocated to Seattle to join the group (he’s since moved back to Richmond).

“I was pretty tired of the restaurant game in Richmond at that time,” Williams said. “(Russell) sent me a demo of ‘Down in the Valley’ acoustic, and I just listened to it with my wife — well, my then-girlfriend. And we just both were like, ‘Man, this is amazing. I’ve gotta go out there and see what happens.’ I moved out there with the goal of signing to (The Head and the Heart’s first label) Sub Pop, and I honestly just couldn’t believe that that even happened. It feels like a made-up dream — it actually worked.”