Biography

Born a poor white child in upstate NY of French Canadian descent, J Todd Plant was cursed from the start. He had no first name, allegedly in the grand tradition of J. Edgar Hoover or J. Paul Getty or J. Geils. After one arctic winter that nearly killed Todd, the family moved to the tropical climes of Florida. No one in his family was artistic or musical, but that didn’t stop him from dabbling in the forbidden black craft. Grade school was the early training grounds with slave driver Ms. Dennis. Recorder, bells, autoharp, and finally clarinet were the weapons of choice. In Jr. High Mr. Fredrick continued the torture and Todd was forced to march for thousands of miles in preparation for “the Big One”: the Gasparilla Night Parade. After escaping the evil sorcerer’s grasp, Todd turned to sports - baseball, basketball, football, bully-dodging, but nothing filled the void. His big brother had been brainwashing him with Hendrix, Beatles, and Zeppelin records for years and the muse was calling Todd to take up the sword of doom - the guitar. He was immediately banished to his dungeon to hack away in solitude.

The years passed as Todd punished the peasants of South Tampa with painful howls of torment - then plugged in his guitar to finish them off. OK, so now he was a rock star. What to do, what to do…..Hey! why not join the Navy Seabees and become a plumber- traveling the globe pumping and jamming and shooting off his gun, but the Chief eventually forced him to pick up his tools and get to work.. So Petty Officer Plant alternated between pipe wrench, M-16, and Stratocaster. He was influenced by musician-warriors from all over the country learning bluegrass, funk, Irish jigs, blues and metal. He got married, got “saved” and joined a string of Christian rock bands, and after his Honorable (and merciful) Discharge, played church youth groups, coffee houses, street ministries and prisons. One of those groups collectively backslid into Top-40, hired a chick singer and hit the road in an ugly brown school bus. Plant soon filed bankruptcy, got a divorce, and lived happily ever-after.
 

But wait! His humiliation wasn’t over…... hundreds of hours of singing on dozens of projects and he realized no one was asking him to play guitar, so it was sacrificed on the altar of shame and he resolved to sing himself into oblivion. At long last Todd found himself running and posing and wailing and gnashing on huge festival stages before the screaming hoards making literally tens of dollars and drinking from the sweet beehive of success. Ah, yes it must be great to be a huge star like Steven Tyler, except without the fame and fortune part. Goodnight Akron!


Editor’s note: Todd now resides in Clearwater FL with his new wife and puppy, and works for a defense contractor testing missile parts.