Key to the Highway: Todd Park Mohr

Todd Park Mohr with Big Head Todd and the Monsters photo by Kristen Cohen

Americana Highways’ Key to the Highway series

Fans always clamor to learn more about their favorite, most beloved musicians and those who travel with them. There’s such an allure to the road, with its serendipity, inevitable surprises, and sometimes unexpected discomforts. This interview series is a set of questions we are asking some of our favorite roots rock Americana artists to get to know more about them and what they’ve learned and experienced on the road for music. We are sure they have key insights to share and stories to tell. Here’s one from Todd Park Mohr of Big Head Todd and the Monsters.

Americana Highways: How do you like your coffee or other morning wake-up beverage?

Todd Park Mohr: Coffee w/cream please!

AH: What’s the most interesting or strangest motel/hotel or place you have stayed (while on the road for music?)

TPM: When we first started out, we could not afford the hotel and found ourselves in Memphis. We crashed in a parking lot near Graceland. It was so hot. We couldn’t take it in the van, so had to crash on the asphalt and spent the night getting eaten by mosquitoes. that day was one of the sweetest sunrises ever. We couldn’t wait to get to a Village Inn!

AH: If one CD is stuck in the player in the van for the entire tour, what do you hope it is? And why?

TPM: The one CD I would prefer to be stuck in my player on a desert island is Aretha Franklin Live at the Fillmore West. It is probably the greatest live album I have ever heard, with the greatest catalog of songs, and the greatest singer of all time.

AH: What’s one personal item you must have with you on your road trip?

TPM: I have an embroidered unicorn that was given to me by my daughter Margo. It sits on my peddleboard at all times!

AH: What is your relationship with food? How do you handle this on the road, and what’s your favorite dish on the road, (or restaurant, and what do you order there)?

TPM: Food is a difficult subject on the road. Sometimes it’s hard to make good choices. One gets a lot of what I call yellow food, that is to say, fried food, sandwiches, etc. I have taken to making my own breakfast, as the hotel breakfast leaves something to be desired. One wonders if there is a real egg in that folded thing. So I have started to make my own breakfast in the microwave, featuring delicious poached eggs, cream of rice, cereal, and berries.

AH: If you could pause your life for a few weeks and spend some time living in a place you only have passed through, which would you choose, and why?

TPM: I like Alaska a lot. I have been to Fairbanks and Anchorage a few times. I especially love the winter, where it is always twilight. So relaxing! Would love to stay for a week, snowmobiling and fishing.

AH: What quote or piece of advice have you gotten from someone on the road that has really stuck with you?

TPM: Luther Dickinson of the Mississippi All-Stars once told me that “blues is the kind of thing you have to learn from the flesh.” Which was his way of saying you can’t just listen to it, but you have to learn it from a real person. Having had the opportunity to spend a fair amount of my life with my blues heroes in the flesh, I have to say it’s true!

Find more information about her new album and tour dates for Todd Park Mohr and Big Head Todd & the Monsters here: https://www.bigheadtodd.com

See other Key to the Highway interviews here: https://americanahighways.org/category/interviews/key-to-the-highway-series/ (click here for: Vince Herman Jimmy Smith Ben Nichols Bruce Cockburn Charlie Musselwhite Nicki Bluhm Jim White Danny Barnes Patterson Hood Jerry Joseph BJ Barham Rodney Crowell Todd Snider Elizabeth Cook Tommy Womack Eric Ambel, Dan Baird, Robbie Fulks, Malcolm Holcombe Jon Langford Steve Poltz, Lilly Hiatt Sarah Shook & the Disarmers Sadler Vaden )