JamBase Questionnaire: Big Head Todd
By Team JamBase Jul 21, 2010 • 3:05 pm PDT
“Open me up and turn my life around/ Let the sun shine in and shook me off the ground/ Fallen apart, somehow you kept it together/ Kept me from drifting into stormy weather.”
Thus begins the new album from Big Head Todd and the Monsters entitled Rocksteady (released July 20). It’s another pretty seamless mix of adult pop, blues riffs and smooth grooves from the long-lived Colorado band, which has survived and even thrived as a unit well past their string of 90s hits. With a lineup that’s remained steady while their peers played musical compatriots, Todd Park Mohr (vocals, guitar), Rob Squires (bass, vocals), Brian Nevin (drums, vocals) and Jeremy Lawton (keyboards, steel guitars, vocals) exhibit an overlapping, communicative energy on Rocksteady, which frequently explores the things that build up and shake our faith, offering hope and harmony at a time when both are in short supply. It’s the work of pros that sound like they’re enjoying making music now as much as ever. And they spank Howlin’ Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightning,” too, so one’s blues get a workout as well, not to mention a sauntering, wistful cover of the Stones’ “Beast of Burden.” (Dennis Cook)
Here’s what Todd Park Mohr had to say to our inquiries.
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Instrument of choice: Telecaster guitar
1. Great music rarely happens without…
Musicians listening to each other, and an appreciative audience listening to musicians
2. The first album I bought was…
The Grease soundtrack, followed by Aretha Franklin’s Live at the Fillmore West
3. The last song or album to really flip my wig was…
Radiohead OK Computer
4. When I was a kid I wanted to grow up to be…
A doctor or any kind of athlete
5. My favorite sort of gig is…
A mid-sized theater with good sound, and an audience that doesn’t have much knowledge of the band so they need to be won over.
6. One thing I wish people knew about me is…
That I really prefer to be left alone and to not be known at all…but oh well, I am an entertainer after all.
7. I love the sound of…
Wind and water running through a canyon
8. One day I hope to make an album as fantastic as…
Well, as fantastic as Elton John’s Captain Fantastic of course!
9. The best meal I ever had on tour was at…
Grits and shrimp in Oxford, Mississippi
10. I always find the coolest audiences in…
Colorado at Red Rocks Amphitheatre
11. The worst habit I’ve picked up being on the road all the time is…
Sleeping at all times of the day and night
12. The Beatles or the Stones? Por qué?
Rolling Stones for me because of the roughshod blues influence of Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf! The Beatles are more well, Chubby Checker.
13. The craziest thing I ever saw was…
A large herd of elk, maybe 50 head, running right through the middle of the road I was driving on.
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