Name: Mississippi Boogie Blues with the Too Bad Jims! Free admission, donations requested.
Start: 2026-02-28T15:00:00+00:00
End: 2026-02-28T18:00:00+00:00
Location: The Garibaldi Hotel, NN1 3DX Northampton, United Kingdom

Mississippi Boogie Blues with the Too Bad Jims! Free admission, donations requested.

The Too Bad Jims got their name from the seminal Fat Possum album "Too Bad Jim" by the hugely influential blues musician RL Burnside. The band plays a gritty high-octane mix of North Mississippi Hill Country blues and boogie. It all initially started as a casual collaboration between two veteran and multiple award-winning musicians, Little Victor and Son Jack Jr. and they shortly after rounded out the trio with the one and only Nick Simonon (Brother to Paul Simonon of The Clash) on drums and things really started cookin’!
Their unique and unusual combination of dual rough and ready vocals, bare-bones electric guitars, slashing bottleneck, and a heavily rhythm-oriented groove, delivers a hypnotic, raw, and earthy sound typical of a North Mississippi juke joint.
After relocating to the London area from Seattle, Washington USA, award-winning artist Son Jack Jr (an avid a long time player of this style of blues) got in touch with multiple award-winning Little Victor Mac whom he had befriended on social media since Victor's glory days with Louisiana Red in the late 2000s.
The two men never met in person until a few years ago but ever since their first jam, they sounded like they’d been playing together since day one. Little Victor (who moved to England a little before Son Jack Jr.) has deep knowledge of this style of music, particularly RL Burnside. When he was younger, he played with RL Burnside, Robert Belfour, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and many other "backwater" artists from the Memphis/North Mississippi area. His dear ole uncle David Evans is responsible for Burnside's first recordings by George Mitchell in 1967. Years later, he managed and recorded RL, Junior Kimbrough, and Jessie Mae Hemphill for High Water Records. Burnside himself showed Victor how to play Black Mattie, Long Haired Doney, Skinny Woman, and many other songs.
Nick Simonon was exactly the right drummer for this band keeping the trio "loose" and "together" at the same time, just like Burnside’s original recordings. Nick is a veteran of the UK music scene having started touring in the 80’s with Pearl Harbour, and has shared the stage with The Clash, Talking Heads, and The B-52s among many others. After a spell with the Comets Steel band the late 90s he has been steeped in blues and boogie including European tours with famed rockabilly trio The Houserockers.