Sheridan Opera House: Big Head Todd & The Monsters in Concert!

03 Jun Sheridan Opera House: Big Head Todd & The Monsters in Concert!

The Sheridan Arts Foundation (SAF) announces Big Head Todd and the Monsters live in concert on Thursday, June 8, 2023. Doors open at 7 p.m. and music starts at 8 p.m. www.SheridanOperaHouse.com. Tickets are $65 for standing room tickets and $75 for reserved balcony seats plus a $5 ticketing fee.

Big Head Todd and the Monsters will perform to celebrate the 30th annual Wild West Fest, a week of empowering mentorship activities for youth from the region and Boys & Girls Clubs of America. The SAF has held the festival since 1992 (taking off 2020 and 2021 because of COVID) and covers all costs for kids to attend.

Go here for more about Sheridan Arts Foundation.

Scroll down for a preview of the show.

Big Head Todd and The Monsters have quietly become an American institution following three and a half decades of writing, recording, and touring (totaling over 3,500 performances). After countless sold-out shows in amphitheaters and on the high seas, beaming their tunes to outer space (literally), earning the endorsement of everyone from Robert Plant to The Denver Broncos, and tallying tens of millions of streams, Big Head Todd and The Monsters cite the friendships formed in the crowd among their proudest accomplishments.

Fast forward to 2023 and the Colorado quartet—Todd Park Mohr, vocals, guitar, keys, sax, harmonica; Brian Nevin, drums, percussion; Rob Squires, bass, vocals; and Jeremy Lawton, guitar, keys, vocals, steel guitar—continue to unite audiences.

“Friendships have spawned because of our band,” smiles Todd. “Maybe a bit like the Grateful Dead, the line between audience and stage has over time become a bit blurred and many lifelong friendships have been made in every direction. I’m very proud of that. Bringing people together and sharing a joy for a couple of hours is an important function of music. Music can cultivate community, even harmony. We need that!”

Fittingly, the guys in the band began as friends as well.

Todd and Brian first crossed paths in high school jazz band circa 1982. Soon, the guys started to jam in Brian’s basement, joined by Rob. Sweat-soaked house party gigs and talent shows followed until they became a fixture on the bar circuit “before I was even old enough to drink,” laughs Todd. As perennial outliers, the musicians performed original material at these formative gigs, standing out from a bevy of cover bands in the scene at the time.

Adopting the moniker Big Head Todd & The Monsters, they served up their independent debut, Another Mayberry, in 1989 and Midnight Radio in 1990 to critical acclaim, setting the stage for their seminal 1993 breakout Sister Sweetly.

Powered by staples such as “Broken Hearted Savior,” “It’s Alright,” and “Bittersweet,” Sister Sweetly eventually went platinum, and Todd wound up supporting Plant on tour. At the time, Variety hailed Todd as “a soulful singer and nimble lead guitarist,” while The Los Angeles Times claimed, “Mohr, who has a voice like smoke, writes great songs that incorporates blues, folk, rock and country, which sounds sort of like, well, Big Head Todd & the Monsters.”

Throughout the next decade, the group presented fan favorites such as “Strategem” and “Beautiful World.” The latter yielded the cover of “Boom Boom”(feat. John Lee Hooker), which famously served as the theme to “NCIS: New Orleans.”

In 2005, Todd exceeded our atmosphere altogether. Friends with connections encouraged the group to write a song for NASA, so they ignited “Blue Sky.”

In 2011, Big Head Todd and The Monsters played “Blue Sky” live from the middle of Mission Control to awaken the astronauts aboard the shuttle.

Todd released “New World Arisin’” in 2017 to fan adoration and critical acclaim. Glide Magazine claimed, “such tracks, like most of this music, radiate a sense of optimism and purpose ever so welcome in these fragmented times.”

Along the way, the band joined the Denver Broncos on their Super Bowl victory parade, delivering a triumphant performance to boot. Not to mention, they’ve headlined their own cruise multiple times and introduced “Rockin’ the Reef” as a five-night musical extravaganza in Jewel Paradise Cove in Runaway Bay Jamaica.

Big Head Todd & The Monsters have taken the stage at hallowed hometown haunt Red Rocks Amphitheatre a staggering 32 times. In June 2021, they made a rapturous homecoming to Red Rocks for their first full capacity, post-COVID gig at the venue. Chronicling the gig, 303 Magazine described the group as “a longtime pal that has defined Colorado’s blues-rock scene for multiple decades.”

“The Red Rocks performances have all been special to me,” Todd goes on. “Growing up in Colorado, I always loved going to shows there as a teenager. I’m super proud of that. The COVID year was really unique, because we played there four times before finally getting back in front of a packed house. It meant a lot to all of us.”

Todd and Co. have notably managed to collaborate or perform with a myriad of their heroes over the years, namely Neil Young, B.B. King, Allman Brothers, John Prine, Albert Collins, James Cotton, John Lee Hooker, Hubert Sumlin, and dozens more.

“For a half-Asian kid growing up in Littleton, Colorado, it’s not likely I would’ve ever ended up being as involved in blues music as I have been,” Todd observes. “It’s unbelievable we’ve gotten to play and even record with some of my idols.”

Sheridan Arts Foundation, more:

The Sheridan Arts Foundation was founded in 1991 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization to preserve the historic Sheridan Opera House as an arts and cultural resource for the Telluride community, to bring quality arts and cultural events to Telluride and to provide local and national youth with access and exposure to the arts through education.

The Sheridan Arts Foundation is sponsored in part by grants from the CCAASE, Colorado Creative Industries and an American Rescue Plan Act grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support general operating expenses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.