Todd Park Mohr went down to the crossroads. The devil, in the form of a record company executive, wanted his soul.
It was 1993 and his band, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, were breaking big. The band was a trio who’d met at Columbine High School in Colorado and had later dropped out of college together in order to tour the American West in a mustard yellow 1977 Dodge van dubbed “The Colonel” that would eventually log 400,000 miles. They’d self-released a record, Midnight Radio, which had attracted a passionate cult following and earned them a major label record deal. That record, Sister Sweetly, reached number one on the pop charts.
Big Head Todd was poised to become one of the biggest bands in America. But Mohr did something almost unheard of in the annals of rock n roll. He said no.
The record company wanted to make a video of the band’s #1 hit, a song called “Bittersweet.” Videos were at the apex of their influence at that time – MTV was one of the biggest power brokers in the music business, playing videos on frequent repeat that were able to launch bands into stratospheric stardom.
Mohr thought long and hard about it and then shocked the music industry when he essentially said, thanks, but no thanks.
“The thought then was that a lot of groups were becoming famous by their videos, and most of the groups that were making it didn’t really have a lot of substance,” Mohr said in an interview this week. “I was kind of concerned about being kind of lost in the wash, you know, a one hit wonder – and I felt our band had lot more to offer than one song. I never really liked videos anyways so it was just kind of bullheaded decision that probably cost us a lot in terms of celebritydom. But in the end it probably prolonged our career because we came to be known as a great band with a lot of songs, and that was kind of my goal.”
Eighteen years later “The Colonel” has been retired but The Monsters are still roaming the country playing for a devoted fan base, but doing so most decidedly on their very own terms. The band never reached such great heights of commercial success again, but they got exactly what they asked for – the independence to make music entirely as they saw fit.
But in the post-music industry music industry, the model they built – low-to-the ground, artist-controlled, and tightly connected to their fans – has become more the norm. They also were one of the first bands to give their music away via free download in the first part of the 2000s — years before Radiohead – and have consistently pushed the boundaries of the music business (at one point they released only songs as singles via podcasts, toying with the notion of ending album-making to better conform to the digital age drives of consumers).
“We just weren’t that compatible with the major labels,” Mohr said. “I’m glad it is over. There were goods and bads about it. The good thing is the solid marketing machinery that was able to break bands and make stars. That machinery is really ground down – there is not much of it left. The positive thing is there lot of opportunity for lot of diverse music and different types of artists that operate on a smaller scale. I think that is a healthier scene for music and culture, generally, so I am happy about that.”
Mohr is a decidedly different kind of rock musician. Throughout his years on the road, for example, he assiduously educated himself on theoretical philosophy. Then, a few years ago, he issued more than 30 podcasts that essentially offered his own course on the history of philosophy (the titles of his lectures included “Confucius: The Sage King” and “Schopenhauer: The Metaphysics of Sexual Love”).
He is a man, in other words, who goes his own way. Towards that end, this year he went down to another kind of crossroads and released an album called Big Head Blues: A Hundred Years of Robert Johnson as a way of honoring the famously devil-doomed bluesman’s 100th birthday. The record features such guests as B.B. King and Ruthie Foster as well as the last man to see Johnson alive, David “Honeyboy” Edwards.
This wasn’t a skimming-the-surface exercise in rock-blues. Mohr delved deep into the blues and the native philosophy of its greatest practitioners. He ended up trading seven electric guitars for two old blues guitars (a 1940 Gibson and a 1933 National) and toured with and studied under Honeyboy.
“He’s 95 years old and he’s the last one to see Robert Johnson alive,” Mohr said. “He’s a great musician in his own right – a great guitar player and singer – but he’s got an incredible autobiography. It’s called The World Don’t Owe Me Nothin’. It really reflects, I think, the gist of blues music, which is definitely not complaining. There is pain and suffering, for sure, but it really isn’t about being victim, I don’t think.”
Mohr makes an unexpectedly good bluesman – or perhaps it should come as no surprise, given the fact that he cites Ray Charles as his biggest influence as a singer and his music has always had that late night feeling, songs soulfully sung from that time when the small talk of the day has faded. And though he and The Monsters are no longer touring in their blues incarnation – they are still fundamentally a rock band – Mohr said the experience has forever changed him musically.
“To learn this music was really an education for me, and I’m quite a different person, musically, afterwards,” Mohr said. “Especially after getting to know some of the other artists a little bit, like Charlie Patton, Son House, Bukka White, Mississippi Fred McDowell….The first thing it did for me is it made me realize there is a lot more to blues than 12-bar blues…there is just such a rich variety, different progressions, different types of songs – these guys, they had so much to chose from, and I don’t think they considered themselves necessarily as straight blues. They were the walking juke boxes of their day.
“The other thing is the feeling of the non-commerciality of it – the fact that it was sort of a necessary part of life and survival. All these guys were basically hobos that were riding the blind side on trains from town to town and just trying to get people to shake money at them. There is something special about the music they created, because to me it’s real life, not commercial music at all. It’s really emotional and universal.”
Big Head Todd and the Monsters play Saint Rocke Friday and Saturday night. See saintrocke.com for ticket info. See easyreadernews.com for an expanded version of this story. ER
