SUMMERFEST GOES WEST
Big Head Todd and the Monsters headline
Since their beginnings in the early 1980s, Big Head Todd and the Monsters continue to infuse jazz, blues, funk, folk and a touch of country into their rock songs. The band is experiencing a split personality of sorts with an album scheduled for release in the winter and its ongoing project, Big Head Blues Club, which will start a tour in September.
For now, audiences will get to hear popular favorites from Big Head Todd and the Monsters music catalog that spans several decades.
“There’s certain songs that people are paying to hear us play, so we have a handful of hit songs that we’ll try to get to every show,” frontman Todd Park Mohr said. “And I’m usually aware of people’s requests to our Facebook page or our website, and everyday I just start from scratch with those two things and look at past performances in the area and try to come up with as fresh a show that I can. Obviously, we’re playing stuff that’s current for us as well that we want to share with the audience, so it’s kind of a mixture of all those things.”
Audiences will have to catch the fall tour to hear Big Head Blues Club tunes. The project’s first album, “100 Years of Robert Johnson,” was released in 2011. It recently released its album, “Way Down Inside,” a tribute to songwriter Willie Dixon, who wrote a great many of Howlin’ Wolf’s and Muddy Waters’ hits, as well as many from Led Zeppelin’s and Rolling Stones’ catalog, according to Mohr.
“About four to five years ago, Robert Johnson turned 100 and our manager had a crazy idea of doing a tour to commemorate his birthday that included musicians from different musical camps. We’re from the rock-pop camp, and we were kind of paired with really incredible blues musicians like Charlie Musselwhite, B.B. King, and so that was our first project, which was called ‘100 Years of Robert Johnson.’ This one is sort of the second edition of that. This time, we’re going out and celebrating the music of Willie Dixon with Muddy Waters’ son, Mud Morganfield, Billy Branch and Ronnie Baker Brooks.”
Getting to meet and perform with his blues idols was quite an experience for Mohr.
“It’s a lot like you’re in the mob, at least like in the movies, you know, and you get to be a made man,” Mohr said. “You get donned. It feels a little like that just because so many of these performers who I have had the pleasure of meeting have been my lifelong idols. There’s just something special that happens when they take you under their wing. That’s a lot of what blues is about is mentorship and carrying on the tradition and passing it on to other generations. That’s a part of music that I really relish.”