At least once in every man's life everything seems to come together magically. When the road leading to such times is long and grueling, the zenith is exponentially more rewarding. Bill Homans a.k.a. Watermelon Slim is the extraordinary wheel man behind this redemption story road trip.
In each of the last two years Watermelon Slim garnered a record-tying six Blues Music Award nominations including Artist, Entertainer, Album, Band, and Song of the Year joining B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Robert Cray in the record books. Slim’s 2006 and 2007 releases were both ranked #1 in MOJO Magazine's Top Blues CDs. He has won the Independent Music Award for Blues Album of the Year, hit #1 on the Living Blues Radio Chart, #2 on the Roots Music Blues Charts, debuted in the top ten in the Billboard Blues Radio Charts and won the Blues Critic Award for Album of the Year among others.
Jerry Wexler, a huge Watermelon Slim fan, eagerly offered to write liner notes.
The Memphis Flyer led it's terrific CD review with the question "Does anyone in modern pop music have a more intriguing biography than Bill "Watermelon Slim" Homans?" Slim was born in Boston and raised in North Carolina listening to his maid sing John Lee Hooker and other blues songs around the house. His father was a progressive attorney and ex-freedom rider and his brother is a classical musician. Slim dropped out of Middlebury College to enlist for Vietnam.
While laid up in a Vietnam hospital bed he taught himself upside-down left-handed slide guitar on a $5 balsawood model using a triangle pick cut from a rusty coffee can top and his Army issued Zippo lighter as the slide.
Returning home an fervent anti-war activist, Slim first appeared on the music scene with the release of the only known record by a veteran during the Vietnam War. The project was Merry Airbrakes, a 1973 protest tinged LP with tracks Country Joe McDonald later covered.
In the following 30 plus years Slim has been a truck driver, forklift operator, sawmiller (where he lost part of his finger), firewood salesman, collection agent, and even officiated funerals. At times he got by as a small time criminal and eventually forced to flee Boston where he played peace rallies, sit-ins and rabbleroused musically with the likes of Bonnie Raitt.
He ended up farming watermelons in Oklahoma – hence his stage name and current home base. Somewhere in those decades Slim completed two undergrad degrees in history and journalism.
While roommates, buddies and musical partner with the heavy drinking Henry 'Sunflower' Vestine of Canned Heat, Slim was able to finish a masters degree and join Mensa, the social networking group reserved for members with certified genius IQs.
Throughout his storied past, it has always been truck driving that Slim returned to. While trucking and hauling industrial waste for thankless bosses at hourly wages to support himself and his family, his id yearned for release of the musician inside. Most of Slim's songs began a cappella in his rig keeping him awake and entertained.
In 2002 Slim suffered a near fatal heart attack. His brush with death gave him a new perspective on mortality, direction and life ambitions. He says, "Everything I do now has a sharper pleasure to it. I've lived a fuller life than most people could in two. If I go now, I've got a good education, I've lived on three continents, and I've played music with a bunch of immortal blues players. I've fought in a war and against a war. I've seen an awful lot and I've done an awful lot. If my plane went down tomorrow, I'd go out on top."
Media:
Michael McClune Media & Marketing
310.319.1199 or michael@michaelmcclune.net
Management:
Chris Hardwick at Southern Artist Management
405.447.4329 or staff@southernartist.net
Label:
NorthernBlues Music
866.540.0003 or info@northernbluesmusic.com
Booking:
Intrepid Artists
704.358.4777 or staff@intrepidartists.com
