Watermelon Slim and the Workers
"The Wheel Man"
(Northern Blues)
US release date: 14 February 2007
UK release date: 26 March 2007
Review Courtesy of Robert R. Calder & PopMatters
Also known as Bill Homans, as far as government agencies are concerned, the acutely talented Slim is a Vietnam Vet with academic qualifications whose lengthy tenure in a
blue collar day job (readers should appreciate that I am paraphrasing published information sources) was terminated following a heart attack.
Some time back, I reviewed a sampler CD on the Northern Blues label with a title something like “The Future of the Blues.” I did not like its muddle of overproduction, or the implication that the future of the blues was a stylistic pop mishmash with a few old echoes. I mention this only to be clear that the present set is nothing of the kind, but is the work of a talented enthusiast dedicated to doing things worth doing, taking the risk that it might no longer be possible to do them.
Apparently, they are possible, or at least Slim is one of the people who can do them. There might be something to the statement in a blurb on the CD case that Slim’s a white Okie singer whose repertoire includes blues items performed in blues style. The legacy of recordings going back to the 1920s isn’t short on cases of the same—Tony Russell has written about this in Blacks, Whites, and Blues and elsewhere—and more recent examples of this have made interesting encounters for a European longtime blues enthusiast. This is, however, mostly blues with only the occasional flourishes of anything other.
The CD’s title means something like Big Wheel. The drawing on the CD case suggests that, like the Texan bluesmen Oscar Woods and the Black Ace (hear the latter’s excellent 1960s album on Arhoolie), when Slim plays slide guitar he’s sitting down with the instrument laid flat across his thighs. There are some Okie or Bob Wills echoes on the opener and title track, despite the presence of Magic Slim, throwing in a few vocal lines and playing electric guitar on an overall stirring performance. Slim’s classy harmonica playing makes the second track well worth a listen, and on the third and another couple of tracks, the quality is much enhanced by the solid, Otis Spann-influenced piano of another guest, David Maxwell. “Black Water” is a more recent kind of blues number, general rhythm and timing more post-B.B. King, but more excellent slide guitar.
And then there’s the entirely solo “Jimmy Bell”, with Slim’s harmonica and a very good vocal in style with the field holler or work song basis of the item. Its source is the field recordings by the obscure Cat Iron, and it’s followed by another of the numbers with Maxwell, Slim doing a Muddy Waters thing on “Newspaper Reporter”, beginning each verse speaking, and ending in a hollering singing. “Drinking and Driving” skids right into Ole
Opry, “Fast Eddie” brings back the slide guitar, and then “Sawmill Holler” is just that, with no accompaniment nor any need of one, and the man’s voice ringing mightily. Inspired inclusion delivered with passion.
A couple of rockin’ blues, this whole thing is like the programme of a good live set, and then the distinctive rhythm of Slim Harpo’s “I Got Love if You Want It”, a number whose initial recording had some sales beyond its native enclave, and which Slim does in his own way, demonstrating his own harmonica
playing merits. The harmonica wails again on a rockin’ “Rattlesnake”, and somebody gets to shine on guitar on “Peaches” at a tempo variously described on different occasions as musically interesting or dangerous to morality. Then there’s the slide guitar working without a steady rhythmic correlation in support of Slim’s delivery of a classic 1920s number, the “Judge Harsh Blues” of the Memphis slide guitar ace Furry Lewis, who toward the end of his life appeared briefly as the sentimentalized “Uncle Furry” in a Burt Reynolds movie which didn’t deny connections between country white musicians (Dixie Dance Kings) and bluesmen.
More power to Watermelon Slim! Though he has plenty enough here!
Bio
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,
saw miller (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
rabble roused 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.
Watermelon Slim - Smokestack Lightening
From the new DVD "Ripe For The Picking." Live
at the Staircase, Hamilton, ON.
Filmed April 8th and 9th 2005
