Todd Park Mohr sounds relaxed — maybe even amused — when he talks about writing songs. “You look at a blank page after decades,” he says, “and you think, I’ve done this how many Saturdays in a row? But I actually find myself more interested and more engaged the longer I do it.” After three decades leading Big Head Todd & the Monsters, the guy still talks like a student.
The band’s twelfth studio album, New World Arisin’, arrived that October, and Mohr was quick to set expectations straight: “It’s all rock and roll,” he says. “Not a bluesy record or rootsy record — just rock pop.” That might sound like a small distinction, but after a few years spent in deep blues immersion — including albums with legends like Hubert Sumlin, Charlie Musselwhite, and Muddy Waters’ son Mud Morganfield — Mohr wanted to make something that moved again. “We’d done a couple of blues projects,” he says. “We were just looking to get back to rock and roll.”
He laughs when reminded that most bands would treat a genre shift as a midlife crisis. “For me it’s the opposite,” he says. “I enjoy learning. I like being in situations that challenge me.” Working alongside blues giants didn’t just expand his musical vocabulary — it blew it wide open. “It was like school,” he says. “Being in a different band with incredible musicians changes you. You can’t come out of that the same.”
So New World Arisin’ isn’t a reinvention so much as a return — though one filtered through everything Mohr picked up along the way. The single “Damaged One” hums with distortion and confidence, a muscular counterpoint to the reflective tone of 2014’s Black Beehive. “That last record was pretty blues intensive,” he says. “This one’s not. It’s got energy. It’s got movement.”
Thematically, he’s still exploring human friction — or, as he puts it, the “triple entendre” of conflict, pleasure, and intimacy. “I love the idea that intimacy and conflict are closely related,” he says. “Even pleasure and conflict are connected. So I use metaphors that everybody understands about sex — but the sexual metaphor is really about something bigger.” He grins at the phrasing: “It’s a fun thing for me to explore.”
That fascination with tension — between love and destruction, connection and chaos — runs through much of his work, from early hits like “Bittersweet” to later anthems. He wrote two of New World Arisin’’s tracks, “New World Arisin’” and “Wipeout Turn,” the year prior and later re-cut them for the record. The title track, in particular, carried a surprising resonance when it dropped in the late-2010s political churn. “It worked out that way,” Mohr says, with the understated tone of a man who’s been through a few news cycles. “It wasn’t intentional, but sure — the timing made it feel right.”
The phrase “New World Arisin’” could have been a current headline — chaos, change, and resistance all wrapped in a single lyric. For Mohr, it’s less about politics and more about perspective. “I think I understand more about why I write now,” he says. “When you’ve been at it this long, you’re not chasing hits or trying to repeat yourself. You’re trying to stay curious. To learn more deeply about music itself.”
It’s a kind of creative defiance — the sound of a career built not on nostalgia but renewal. The band has survived the ‘90s boom, the label shifts, the genre detours, and the streaming era — not by chasing trends, but by ignoring them. Mohr laughs again when asked if that was a strategy. “Maybe by accident,” he says. “We’ve always mixed it up. Keeps us from getting bored. Keeps us from repeating ourselves.”
That curiosity has kept Big Head Todd & the Monsters quietly vital long after their peers faded from radio rotations. Their willingness to stretch — to jump from Chicago blues back to Colorado rock — feels more like a philosophy than a phase. Even Mohr’s description of songwriting sounds like something out of a mindfulness workshop. “I think I’m onto something,” he says, as if still surprised. “Every time I sit down to write, I feel like I understand a little more. And that’s exciting.”
He’s still wary of comfort. “Getting in the groove is great,” he says, “but you don’t want to stay there.”
That’s why New World Arisin’ doesn’t sound like a band coasting on legacy. It sounds like one rediscovering its own pulse — after thirty years of touring, experimenting, and occasionally losing itself in the flood of other people’s songs. It’s the work of musicians who’ve learned that rock and roll is a language that never stops evolving, as long as you keep speaking it.
Listen to the interview above and check out "Damaged One" below!
