Big Head Todd and the Monsters Celebrate Forty Years of Colorado-Bred Blues Rock

Back in 1993, Big Head Todd and the Monsters had its first big paid gig. The band brought its super-charged blues rock to the Denver Zoo, where the members found lifelong friends in Blues Traveler — whose frontman, John Popper, shared some portentous words that Todd Park Mohr never forgot.

"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," Popper told the group's titular vocalist and guitarist. "But people are always going to want to see you play, and I'm always going to want to see you play."

It's rare to hold a friendship for forty years, much less a band, but Big Head Todd and the Monsters has beaten the odds. And while Denver has undergone massive changes since Mohr, drummer Brian Nevin and bassist Rob Squires formed the group in 1986 at Columbine High School, BHTM is much the same — as energetic and inexhaustible forty years in as when it released its breakout third album, Sister Sweetly, which went platinum, and built a widespread following touring its blues rock across the U.S. The band is celebrating its milestone fortieth anniversary at the landmark Red Rocks Amphitheatre on Saturday, June 7, and Sunday, June 8. Cheap Trick and Cracker will open the first show, and the second will include openers Warren Haynes Band and Bill Murray and His Brothers. Yes, Bill Murray himself will be performing at the legendary venue for the first time with his newly minted classic-rock cover band.

"He had a book called [Cinderella Story: My Life in Golf], and at the beginning of it he talks about how he goes on the green every morning and listens to my music," Mohr says of Murray. "So I knew that he was a fan, and then about seventeen years ago or so, he was at a show in Charleston, so I went up and introduced myself, and we've been friends since then. Or well, sort of — I mean, Bill's a wild card."

When it comes down to it, BHTM has been a wild card, too. The band's members, a lineup that now includes keyboardist Jeremy Lawton, didn't imagine the success they'd ultimately have, one that has allowed them to essentially hold an annual residency at Red Rocks since the '90s.
Big Head Todd's first show at the venue was in 1991, as part of the Blues Rock Festival, which included the likes of Etta James, BB King and the Staple Singers. They were the sort of acts that Mohr grew up listening to, after raiding record stores and bringing a stack of vinyl home. "There was a record store called Off Beat Records off of Littleton Boulevard, and it was just a used record store, but there was a lady there who kind of guided me through the blues and R&B sections," he recalls. "I'd ride my bike there and buy as many albums as I could. I started collecting the music that I loved based on her recommendations — and how the covers looked."

He notes that "Colorado doesn't have the same" connection to "traditional blues music" as places like New Orleans. "So I've had a fortunate life insofar as I've been able to perform with all those blues musicians I love who are still living," he says. "I had a nice journey from that record store."

Neither Mohr, Nevin nor Squires could have imagined performing with their heroes back when they were in high school. "I went to a couple different high schools — did Littleton High School, then Columbine High School for two years," Mohr says. "I graduated in 1984 and met Brian and Rob in '83; all of us are Columbine graduates."

The trio decided to start a band "pretty early on," he continues. "I met Brian in jazz band — I played sax and he was a drummer — and he knew Rob already, so he had me over with their pre-existing group and we did a couple of high school talent shows and then started [Big Head Todd and the Monsters] in college," at the University of Colorado Boulder.
When the band first got rolling in the mid-'80s, the members were simply knocking around the Front Range to find a place that would let them play. "We knew all the other groups," Mohr recalls. "There were a couple hair groups then...but there weren't a lot of original groups when we started. Most of the bands were cover bands."

Big Head Todd and the Monsters, however, primarily played original tunes that continued the blues tradition. When it was starting out, the band, whose moniker stems from Mohr's nickname, found the most luck in college towns. "Boulder was a really fun town in the '90s," Mohr says. "There were just a lot of interesting musical things going on. It's kind of a Grateful Dead-ish music community out there; there was the Samples, which started at the same time as us." And it's no secret that Deadheads love the blues, which influenced Jerry Garcia as much as folk, rock and bluegrass. The scene created fertile ground for such a new, singular band as Big Head Todd and the Monsters.

"We played a place called JJ McCabe's, which was our first regular gig," Mohr says of a now-defunct Boulder club. "We played there Wednesday or Thursday nights, and just fully got a crowd that would follow us around when we'd play Herman's Hideaway in Denver or the Mercury Cafe."
They toured in a 1977 yellow Plymouth van, seeking out college towns to play in, and gathered a following around the country, with a solid attraction in the South. But their biggest base has remained in Colorado, of course. The state's landscape of golden plains and rugged mountains is almost a physical reflection of the band's freewheeling ethos, pushed forward by Mohr's original melodies and lyricism.

After independently releasing its first two albums, Another Mayberry (1989) and Midnight Radio (1990), the band had already established a large fan base thanks to its live shows. BHTM joined the bill for the 1993 H.O.R.D.E. Festival tour, which was helmed by Blues Traveler, joining such bands as the Allman Brothers, Neil Young, Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic, Primus and more. A live album stemmed from the tour and, not long after, a record deal followed.

"We did Sister Sweetly under Giant Records, which was under the Warner Bros. umbrella. That was Irving Azoff's label," Mohr says. "He signed us, and that was that." Sister Sweetly, which was produced by Prince's associate David Z, was a major hit for the band, going platinum with three charting singles: "Bittersweet," "Broken Hearted Savior" and "Circle."

As Big Head Todd maintained the blues legacy, the band got to play with some of the genre's forebearers. That even included Johnny Lee Hooker, who joined BHTM to record a cover of his song "Boom Boom" for 1997's Beautiful World, which was produced by Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads.

"He showed up at the studio at about 9:30 in the morning," Mohr recalls of Hooker, "stepping out of a black Cadillac, wafting smoke coming out the doors, with three biker chicks arm-in-arm. He's dressed in a maroonish, orange-ish three-piece suit — immaculately dressed. And he's like, 'Where's the pot? Where's the Miller Lite?'"

Mohr chuckles at the memory. "He still was really fun and sat and played with us [as] we faked our way through 'Boom Boom' with him half a dozen times, but he kept looking at me going, 'You bet,'" he says. "That was, like, the compliment of a lifetime." More star-studded collaborations came when the band recorded the tribute album 100 Years of Robert Johnson, which was released in 2011 and featured such blues legends as B.B. King, Charlie Musselwhite, David "Honeyboy" Edwards, Hubert Sumlin, Ruthie Foster and the "two-man wrecking crew" of Cedric Burnside and Lightnin' Malcolm.

"I've had a really nice life in music," Mohr says, ticking off more impressive names he's played with: Lonnie Brooks, Wayne Brooks, Hubert Sumlin (the guitarist for Howlin' Wolf), Albert Collins. The list goes on. "There are almost fewer that I can't think of," he says. "I'm especially grateful for that."

With fourteen studio albums and six live albums, Big Head Todd and the Monsters has made its mark on not just the Colorado music landscape but the blues genre as a whole. BHTM was inducted into Colorado Music Hall of Fame last year alongside Hazel Miller, a longtime collaborator and champion of the band, which they all naturally celebrated at Red Rocks. And as the band heads to its fortieth-anniversary show, Popper's words of encouragement from 1993 at the Denver Zoo ring even truer: People still want to see Big Head Todd and the Monsters play, and these musicians are still more than happy to do so.

"Relationships don't have to fail — that's a lesson," Mohr says of the band's longevity. "We listen to each other and we respect each other. We're kind of a benevolent democracy. We want everyone to feel part of it. Bands often don't have long, lengthy careers — and there are reasons why they don't — and I think what keeps us going are people liking the music."

When the band was just starting out, he recalls playing a show at the Glenn Miller Ballroom in Boulder. "Glenn Miller, his popularity was in the '40s. So it was about forty years from Glenn Miller to when we played the Glenn Miller Ballroom, and in musical time that is an eternity," Mohr says. "So to have a span of that amount of time, and consistently work and slowly grow? That's pretty remarkable."

Big Head Todd and the Monsters Fortieth Anniversary show, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, 6 p.m. Saturday, June 7 (with Cheap Trick, Cracker), and 5:30 p.m. Sunday, June 8 (with Warren Haynes Band, Bill Murray and His Blood Brothers); tickets are available via AXS.com.