Big Mo John Heim retiring – Go Retire Psychiatrist

John Heim, aka Big Mo of Iowa KCCK radio blues show delivered his penultimate program last night. I heard the “penultimate” title from Ron Adkins who announced it on his Afternoon Jazz show which comes just before the Big Mo blues show. It’s one of those adult words that Big Mo would probably never use—only he did last night. Penultimate means “next to last” and Big Mo’s last show will be next Friday. It’s hard to believe.

Big Mo dropped some gentle goodbye notes into his program. Among them was a shout out to local and national Blues artist Kevin Burt. He won the Acoustic Blues Artist award a couple of days ago at The Blues Foundation’s 47^th Annual Blues Music Awards event in Memphis, TN. Congratulations to Kevin Burt!

We also really liked the music of Jimmy Thackery and the Drivers that Big Mo played. He praised the brilliant performance on the Stratocaster guitar evident in the number “Daze in May.” I almost didn’t find this tune because I thought the title was “Days in May” which at first made sense. Anyhow, Big Mo spelled it right. I’ve never looked up the Stratocaster on the web, but I did for the first time today. We like the tremolo.

There are a couple of ways to interpret the title “Daze in May.” One of them is an obvious connection to Big Mo’s upcoming retirement next Friday, May 15^th, which will be his last show. And, I think there are a lot of Big Mo’s fans, including me, who are dazed that his long KCCK career in blues music broadcasting is coming to an end.

The other big feature of his show last night was a more colorful and detailed Shout Outs list—and I’ve always wondered if I was on it. Now I’m pretty sure I’ve been on it for a while. It turns out Jim the Shrink is probably me. He told a short anecdote about how he first heard from a guy who emailed him about where he could find MayRee’s hand-battered catfish. It really tickled Big Mo that he’d got “a clinical psychologist” to bite on this faux sponsor gag. That happened about 4 years ago. He mentioned an idea he had about designing a tee shirt about MayRee. That led to me writing a blog post (my blog is Go Retire Psychiatrist) suggesting a design and making a fake picture of me wearing it. It never caught on, for some reason. But I made the Shout Outs list.

We were listening to the KCCK radio Big Mo Blues Show last night when John Heim aka Big Mo announced he’s retiring as of May 15, 2026. Iowa musician Ed English (Uncle Ed of the Beaker Brothers band) was also in the studio and remarked that he’ll be taking over the show sometime after that. The Beaker Brothers Band will also be retiring around the same time frame. It was a surprise to us.

I’ve been listening to the Friday night blues show off and on probably for about 18 years. And here’s a shout-out to Bobby DeForest who first started “da Blues” back in 1992 (Little Village news story). After that John Heim (aka Big Mo) came on. Bob DeForest still has a blues music show on Saturday night.

I don’t remember who was doing the Friday blues show during the times when I was listening (although Sena says it was Big Mo) which probably started back in the mid-1990s or so—but I do remember that Iowa blues star and member of the Iowa Blues Hall of Fame Kevin Burt substituted for a couple of weeks sometime between 2005 and 2011. Despite my faulty memory for some things, I’m pretty sure about that. There’s no mistaking Kevin Burt’s voice.

Ed and his band will be retiring sometime this summer. They have several gigs planned in June. Ed mentioned he might record some of the Friday night blues shows after May 15^th. By the way, I’ve got a blog post from last August about my post from April 14, 2024 entitled “KCCK Big Mo News and More.”

Ed left a comment on it: “Always available on the web and the KCCK App, too… ;0).”

The first part is clear, although the emoticon puzzled me. I looked it up but couldn’t find anything about it except that it might mean amazement. It looks like wink.

Other than the music, I like Big Mo’s sense of humor, which he often displayed in little comedy bits which are about “Sponsors de faux.” The main one is MayRee’s Hand-Battered Catfish. There are a few others like Shorty’s Adult Diapers (they’re ready when you aren’t) and Big Furry Shaving Products. There was a podcast about those. And I can’t swear to it but I think he tried to start another one about “fish psychics” back in October 2025. But I can’t swear to it and I’ve not heard it since.

I have suggested that KCCK make a tee-shirt with a MayRee’s hand-battered catfish logo on it, but apparently that’s a non-starter.

Anyway, we wish Big Mo all the luck in the world after his retirement and hope he enjoys it as much as he can. I retired from psychiatry 6 years ago and look how well I turned out! That reminds me, I always like to pretend that, during the shout-out part of his show, when he mentions “Jim the Shrink” he means me.