Big Head Todd And The Monsters Headline Secret City Summer Concert At Ashley Pond Park Tonight!

Big Head Todd and the Monsters will be on stage at 8 p.m. tonight at Ashley Pond Park Pavilion. Courtesy photo
 
The County provided this map detailing available parking lots to accommodate the expected large turnout for the concert tonight at Ashley Pond Park. Courtesy/LAC

MUSIC News:

Big Head Todd and the Monsters will be the featured act at tonight’s Secret City Concert. They’ll take the stage at 8 p.m. at Ashley Pond Park Pavilion.

The band turned 30 this year,  right now they’re less about celebrating stability than volatility, in the form of their eleventh studio album, New World Arisin’, which makes good on its forward-facing title with what might be the brashest rock and roll of their career. The old world can’t rest on any laurels, and neither will they.

“We’re in a real exciting part of our career right now,” co-founder Todd Park Mohr said. “We’re a viable band with a great audience and we’re able to work at a very high level. It’s a career that’s getting more and more interesting, rather than less, which is remarkable.”

The desire to communicate and connect is very much reflected in a new album that explores a variety of subgenres, from the funky (“Trip”) to the unexpectedly punky (“Detonator”), with stops along the way for raging country-rock (“Damaged One”), expansive storytelling in the Van Morrison/early Springsteen mode (“Wipeout Turn”), a Jimi Hendrix cover (“Room Full of Mirrors”), and, in the title track, “New World Arisin’,” a Charley Patton-inspired tune that ended up having what Mohr describes as “a heavy metal/gospel feel.”

“The fact is, most people, like myself, listen to multiple genres of music, so I don’t think people have a problem with variety., Mohr  said. “I love it.”

But if there’s a dominant musical motif to New World Arisin’, it’s “straight-up rock-pop,” Moh said.  

Big Head Todd went platinum in the mid-’90s with the album Sister Sweetly, which spawned the rock radio hits “Broken Hearted Savior,” “Bittersweet,” and “Circle.”

The history of the group actually stretches farther back from the 1987 point at which they took their name. The core members came together at such an early age that it’s hard to know exactly how many candles to put on their collective cake. They began playing original music in earnest in a nascent Colorado music scene that then consisted almost entirely of cover bands. A debut album, Another Mayberry, arrived in 1989, though it would be another four years before Sister Sweetly made them a national phenomenon. The only personnel change in these three decades has been the addition of a fourth member, putative “new guy” Jeremy Lawton, in 2004.

While they enjoy a robust fan base around the country, their success is outsized in Colorado, where they’re practically the unofficial state band.

What’s clear is that Big Head Todd is one multi-headed rock monster, easily traversing the most accessible hooks and the heaviest grooves.

Visit the band at bigheadtodd.com.

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