Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

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WATERMELON SLIM

(b Bill Homans, c.1950, Boston MA) Blues singer, songwriter, guitarist, harmonica player, bandleader. He grew up in North Carolina, served in Vietnam. While laid up in an Army hospital he taught himself left-handed backward slide guitar on a $5 balsawood guitar, using his Zippo lighter as the slide. He appeared on the music scene in the early 1970s as the only Vietnam veteran to record a full length LP during the war, an anti-war album called Merry Airbrakes, recorded and produced in Boston. (In 1987, 'Quang Tri City' from that album was recorded by Country Joe McDonald as part of a series of music by Vietnam vets.)

Though he had been exposed to the blues since age five, played his first paying gig at 18 and played all over the country with a lot of impressive names, he did not try to make a living at music for many years. He had some success at watermelon farming, but his itinerant side turned to truck driving. After a dozen years of that and with a family to support, Slim tried to re-invent himself, earning degrees in history and journalism from the University of Oregon and a master's degree in history, as well as high school teaching endorsements, at Oklahoma State University. However, four days after achieving his MA, with tuition loans mounting, Slim went back to trucking, hauling industrial waste. Finally he formed Fried Okra Jones in the late 1990s, and also performed and exhibited his art work along with Barbara Dane, Thurston Moore, Ben Lee and others as a part of 'Songs of Protest: The Vietnam Songbook' at the New York Public Theatre, February 15, 2003.

In the meantime, however, he had had a near-fatal heart attack in 2002, which concentrated his mind. He finally released two albums on Southern Records, Big Shoes To Fill in 2003 and the critically acclaimed Up Close And Personal in 2005. After 30 years of making music he was nominated for a W.C. Handy award for Best New Artist Debut. He then formed a new band, and released the even more impressive Watermelon Slim & The Workers on the Toronto-based NorthernBlues label in 2006. He and his band sound like they've been around for a while and know exactly what they're doing, and as though you heard them and liked them many years ago and you'd like to know where they've been all this time.