19 MAY 30-JUNE 5, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | FIND MORE MUSIC COVERAGE AT WESTWORD.COM/MUSIC Happy Beats TODD PARK MOHR DISCUSSES BIG HEAD TODD AND THE MONSTERS’ NEW ALBUM AND TOUR. BY EMILY FERGUSON Some songs instigate nostalgia, while others are meant for making more memories while dancing in clubs with pulsing beats or boot- stomping on dusty festival grounds. “Thun- derbird,” the latest single teasing Big Head Todd and the Monsters’ upcoming album, Her Way Out, is the kind that’s meant to be played while speeding down a mountain road, chasing that Wild West type of freedom that this Colorado band has always evoked. As the single’s chugging chords and ram- bunctious attitude suggest, the group hasn’t lost any steam in its nearly four-decade career. If anything, the blues-rock heroes are revved up and ready to take on their summer tour with the same vivacious energy they’ve exhib- ited since forming the band as high-schoolers. “All the things that I’m interested in as a person and as an artist have to do with rela- tionships,” says frontman Todd Park Mohr, “and freedom comes through as a theme in various ways in a lot of the material.” Her Way Out is Big Head Todd and the Monsters’ twelfth album — the fi rst since 2017 — and will be released on Friday, May 31, just after the group kicks off a summer tour that will see it joined by fellow blues stalwarts Blues Traveler in July. But fi rst, BHTM has some big-time hometown gigs scheduled, with performances at Blue Arena on June 7 and Red Rocks Amphitheatre on June 8, when the band will tear up the stage after an opening set from the Wallfl owers. At those shows, expect to hear some of the new offerings from Her Way Out. “Some of it is inspired by fi lms and pop culture,” Mohr says of the album. “There’s a song called ‘King Kong’ that’s an overview of all the supermonsters and their relationship to human beings.” “Thunderbird,” meanwhile, was moti- vated by American Graffi ti, George Lucas’s directorial debut that Mohr found himself watching one day. “I wrote down all the one- liners, just kind of stream-of-consciousness,” he recalls. “I spliced them together into a song. I kind of take different paths to songwriting.” While the album encapsulates the free- wheeling prerogative that’s fi xed in the wide web of blues music, Mohr says the themes that connect the songs came about “subcon- sciously.” He’s a storyteller, and a damn good one. The title track is instantly familiar: “It’s about a guy who got drunk and said some things to his girlfriend, and she broke up with him,” Mohr explains, but when the boyfriend sobers up, “she won’t tell him what he said.” With such a deep well of creativity, why wait seven years for a new album? “We had kind of given up on albums after the 2017 New World Arisin’,” Mohr admits. “We liked the album a lot, but it’s a lot of money to promote a record.” Plus, the music industry has changed, with a new demand for constant content creation. “For a couple of years, we did this thing called the Monsters Music Monthly, which meant that we would record a new original track or a new cover, make a video for it and post that on [streaming channels] and social media monthly,” he recalls. “But we started to feel like we wanted to make another old-school al- bum, an actual long-form album release. And so we gave up everything to focus on that.” Like the band’s other full-lengths, Her Way Out is an album to listen through in one sitting (before playing it over and over again). The Monsters are seasoned champions of a genre that’s all about upholding a long-established fl ame while continuously pushing it to new heights. “I’ve always loved blues music, espe- cially from the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s — the before- electric-blues music,” Mohr says. “They’re more than just music. They’re such a primal, human crossroads where culture and politics and daily life intermingle. “The logic of folk and blues music is dif- ferent because it’s about celebrating the tra- dition,” he continues. “Now, when you’re a pop star, it’s all about being original and ‘how great I am’...but when you’re in blues and folk, you’re really recognizing the greatness that’s in your past. Learning how to think about music differently changed how I think now as a writer for my original music. What I think is possible with music has defi nitely expanded.” And the Big Head Todd fan base has defi - nitely expanded, as well. The act is intrinsic to the state’s music history, and last year it received a well-earned spot in Colorado Music Hall of Fame alongside Hazel Miller, a longtime supporter of the group and a legend in her own right. “We’ve enjoyed working with her our whole career. We will be with her probably at Red Rocks,” Mohr hints, “so we look forward to that.” Mohr attributes the group’s success to always maintaining a clear vision, which is simple enough: Make people happy. “I think my band has always been supportive of me as a writer,” he adds. “What my goals as a writer are, they’ve gotten behind me and made all that possible. But beyond that, I think our vision is we want to make our fans happy and we want to give them moments that are going to be uplifting and inspiring and fun, and that they’ll look back on and say, ‘Man, we had a great time at your show.’ We want to entertain people to the furthest extent that music can do it. So it’s a great thing, a great opportunity, for us to be able to live with that as our goal.” The band, which now includes keyboard- ist Jeremy Lawton, began as a trio in 1986, when Mohr, drummer Brian Nevin and bassist Rob Squires were attending Columbine High School and gigged around Denver, Fort Collins and Boulder, playing clubs and college parties. It’s rare for an act to be able to stick around this long without some breakups or strain, but as Mohr tells it, the musicians have remained grateful and, above all, happy. “It’s been a great boon for my life. Profes- sionally and personally, we’re good friends and we have a common goal,” he says. “You know, there is such a thing as a good marriage. There are all the sad stories about bands breaking up and relationship failures here and there, but we’ve actually had great relationships within the band. We all listen to each other and enjoy working with each other still.” One of their fi rst “big gigs” happened in 1993 at the Denver Zoo, he recalls, which is where the band met Blues Traveler. “That was the fi rst time we made more than, like, $700 for a gig,” he laughs. After Mohr’s band performed, he remem- bers getting these words of encouragement from Blues Traveler’s John Popper: “When you’re young, you don’t know how long you’re going to be around; you don’t realize what you’re getting into. But people are always going to want to see you play, and I’m always going to want to see you play.” A couple of months later, Popper reached out and asked if Big Head Todd would join Blues Traveler on its 1994 H.O.R.D.E. tour, which included such heavy hitters as the Allman Brothers, Neil Young, Widespread Panic, Phish, Barenaked Ladies, Primus, Dave Matthews Band and many more. Mohr con- siders it one of the band’s milestone moments, along with performing at Red Rocks annually. “We’ve been able to play Red Rocks every year, and every time you play it, it’s an achieve- ment,” he says. “It’s the best venue in the world, and it happens to be where we live, but we’re really proud of being able to do that every year. And we’re still here! It’s been almost forty years. I mean, we’ve had our best years ever in the last several years. So we’re really very fortunate, you know, in an unlikely way, to be experiencing that kind of success thus far.” Thinking back to meeting Blues Traveler at the Denver Zoo and how both bands now have annual Red Rocks shows and tour to- gether, Mohr grins. He recognizes that it’s all pretty surreal. “We think both of our bands are still pretty good, and people are buying tickets still,” he says. “So we’re really happy.” And with a sold-out Red Rocks date, Popper’s words continue to ring true: People still want to see Big Head Todd and the Monsters play. “What I tell other bands is: The most important thing is your relationship to the audience,” Mohr says. “No matter how good you are or how big your audience is...if you have a quality relationship — even if it’s a small group and they think that song X is their favorite song or you’re their favorite band — you’ve won.” Her Way Out is available on all streaming platforms Friday, May 31. Big Head Todd and the Monsters will play Blue Arena, 5290 Arena Circle, Loveland, on Friday, June 7 (tickets are available at axs.com), and Red Rocks Amphitheatre, 18300 West Alameda Parkway, Morrison, on Saturday, June 8 (sold out). MUSIC Big Head Todd and the Monsters KRISTEN COHEN
