Steamboat Pilot & Today

This is the concert everyone has been waiting for. Big Head Todd and the Monsters take the stage at 5:30 p.m. today as the second installment of the Summer Free Concert Series.

Adding Big Head Todd to the series lineup came as a last-minute surprise to organizers, but they couldn't have been happier.

Days after they found out, organizers Joe Kboudi and John Waldman held a "buy a song" fund-raiser on radio station KFMU to cover the cost over budget of adding the new band.

They kept the band's name a surprise until all expenses were covered in mid-June.

Big Head Todd is a homegrown Colorado band and its fiercest fans are here. Band members Todd Park Mohr (keyboards, guitars and vocals), Brian Nevin (drums and vocals) and Rob Squires (bass and vocals) have been playing together since their days at Columbine High School in Littleton, finally forming Big Head Todd in the late 1980s as students at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Although the band has a die-hard following in Colorado, its greatest radio success came in the early 1990s with the song "Bittersweet" and the 1993 album "Sister Sweetly."

The band's latest album, "Crimes of Passion," was produced by Mohr in his solar-powered studio in Yampa and at Immersive Studio in Boulder. In a news release, Mohr said he incorporated anti-pop, old-school psychedelic elements to keep the album's sound contemporary.

"I like to call it Techno-Delta," he said. "Delta blues with synthesizers."

Mohr's vision for the album was a combination of catchy rock tunes combined with dark-themed storytelling, according to the release.

"Something between Dylan's 'Tangled up in Blue,' which I think is the greatest storytelling song ever, and Zeppelin's 'Kashmir' is what we were after," Mohr said.

-- To reach Autumn Phillips call 871-4210

or e-mail aphillips@steamboatpilot.com