Big Head Todd & The Monsters still play a mean blues, but 2014’s Black Beehive shows just how much further Todd Mohr’s songwriting can take the band. Tough blues workouts like “Seven State Lines” and “We Won’t Go Back” feature plenty of nasty blues guitar lines and in-the-pocket shuffles, which a producer like Steve Jordan (Keith Richards, Buddy Guy) could bring about himself. But it’s the heartwrenching title track (an elegy for late British R&B singer Amy Winehouse), “Fear, Greed and Ignorance” (an unflinching but funky look at America), and the driving shuffle “Josephina” that illustrate Mohr’s strengthening songwriting abilities. Jordan and Mohr met while planning a tribute concert for legendary blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin, who died in 2011; “Hubert’s Dream” is a sweet, swaying remembrance of the man who stood out on the Chicago blues scene. The acoustic elements heard on “I Get Smooth,” “Travelin’ Light," and “Forever Bonnie” make an austere spiritual connection.