Merry Airbrakes
Watermelon Slim - Artist Biography
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 becomes exponentially more
rewarding. Bill Homans a.k.a. Watermelon Slim is the
extraordinary wheel man behind this redemption story road
trip.
In December 2006 Watermelon Slim garnered a
record-tying six 2007 Blues Music Award nominations for
Artist, Entertainer, Album, Band, Song, and Traditional
Album of the Year. Only the likes of B.B. King, Buddy Guy
and Robert Cray have ever landed six. His 2006 self-titled
release was ranked #1 in MOJO Magazine's 2006 Top Blues CDs,
won the 2006 Independent Music Award for Blues Album of the
Year, hit #1 on the Living Blues Radio Chart, debuted at #13
on the Billboard Blues Radio Chart ahead of both Robert Cray
and North Mississippi Allstars, and won the Blues Critic
Award for 2006 Album of the Year.
In April, 2007 Watermelon Slim and The Workers released
The Wheel Man, his second for NorthernBlues Music and his
fourth album in five years. Jerry Wexler, a huge Watermelon
Slim fan after hearing Slim's 2005 self-titled release,
eagerly offered to write the liner notes upon listening to
early tracks saying Slim "is a one-of-a-kind pickin' 'n'n
singing Okie dynamo." The CD hit #1 on the Living Blues
Radio Charts, #2 on the Roots Music Blues Charts and debuted
in the Top 10 in Billboard's Blues charts.
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 now 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. At one point he was 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 member of
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. Many of Slim's current 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."
If it's any indication from raving reviews and features
in Guitar One, HARP, Blues Revue, Toronto Star, Chicago
Sun-Times, NPR, House of Blues Radio Hour, BBC's World
Service Programme, XM Satellite Radio and others, Watermelon
Slim may have finally settled in on his chosen vocation.
www.watermelonslim.com /
www.northernblues.com
/
www.southernartist.net
For press materials, interview requests, and/or more
information on
WATERMELON SLIM, contact Michael McClune Media & Mktg at
310.319.1199 (phone) or 858.342.2626 (cell) or
michael@michaelmcclune.net
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