The Eagle Tribune

02.17.08

Big Head Todd and the Monsters giving the music away to get new fans hooked

By Alan Sculley

 

Todd Park Mohr has been in the music business long enough to remember the days before downloading, when major labels spent big bucks trying to turn the acts on their rosters into stars.

Back then, the singer/guitarist for Big Head Todd & The Monsters said, a half million dollars was on the low end of money expended by major labels to get the music to the public's ears.

"That definitely was what got us on the map," he said, recalling the band's earlier years with Giant/Warner Bros. "It was that kind of effort that initially got us a platinum record, which was 'Sister Sweetly' (1993). So I definitely can't discount what took place there."

But Mohr knows that for Big Head Todd & The Monsters, along with many, many other musical acts, those big-spending days are gone. Nowadays, bands have to find new ways to get their music heard and build an audience.

"Unfortunately, those (major label) avenues just aren't available for a band like us," he said.

So his band got creative in getting their new CD, "All The Love You Need," to market.

Band members and their manager, Alex Brahl, are taking a multi-faceted approach to releasing the record, beginning with a big-splash radio promotion. In January, four radio stations mailed free copies of "All The Love You Need" to listener mailing lists. The effort put nearly 500,000 copies of the CD in the hands of music fans, and Mohr is expecting more stations to join the promotion.

Mohr said he's anxious to see if the promotion brings new fans on board.

"Obviously getting exposed to new people is the name of the game for Big Head Todd & The Monsters," Mohr said. "The last two albums, neither of them have sold over 50,000 units, so it makes a lot more sense for us to be mailing out a half million than selling 50,000."

Those last two albums were "Crimes of Passion" in 2004 and "Riveria" in 2002.

In addition to the radio mailings, the band has "All The Love You Need" available for free download on its Web site. They'll also make it available on iTunes, and in the spring the release will hit retail stores.

"Our philosophy is to get it (the new CD) to as many people as we can in every possible way," Mohr said.

"All The Love You Need" is one of the stronger records by the band, which was founded in 1986 by Mohr, bassist Rob Squires and drummer Brian Nevin. The band, which recently brought on touring keyboardist Jeremy Lawton as a full-fledged member, self-released two albums: "Another Mayberry" (1989) and "Midnight Rodeo" (1990), before signing to Giant Records and scoring the commercial breakthrough with the "Sister Sweetly" album.

"All The Love You Need" is weighted more toward catchy rockers than some other Big Head Todd & The Monsters studio CDs. And with the bluesy, hard-edged "Cash Box," "Blue Sky" and "Her Own Kinda Woman," the group has come up with three strong rockers.

Mohr said the emphasis on up-tempo material is no accident.

"I was very keen on having it be up-tempo and kind of punk rocky," he said. "I've got scads of mid-tempo ballads, and the type of songs that we could use, I felt, were more the up-tempo rock songs."

Some fans may be familiar with about half of the songs on "All The Love You Need," because the band has been playing them live for some time now. Early versions of some of the songs have been streamed for free on the their Web site, too.

Mohr and his bandmates have been among the pioneers in using the Internet to bring its music to fans. In November 2005, they launched a podcast program that has seen dozens of songs — including previously released studio tracks, unreleased live cuts, demos of early songs and newly written material — posted on a regular basis. Many of the songs have been available for download through a subscription program with online music services such as iTunes.

Mohr is a strong advocate of making music available for free.

"I've been kind of on this trail for awhile," he said. "It kind of dawned on me the moment peer-to-peer started to happen, with the first Napster experiments. At that point it was just kind of a brutal realization that however much it (a CD) cost on Napster was about how much it's worth. The kind of numbers that are occurring as far as peer-to-peer stuff goes, they dwarf sales."

Plus, he said, his band never made a lot of money from CDs — and neither do too many other groups.

"Our bread and butter is our live show and getting fans in general that are going to follow us and buy our merchandise and stuff like that," he said. "So I'm just totally thrilled to still have a career these days and watching the record industry tank."