Watermelon Slim Albums (6)
'Escape from the Chicken Coop'
Release Date 8/4/2009
Tracks 13
Label NorthernBlues
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Escape from the Chicken Coop is a departure of sorts for Watermelon Slim (Bill Homans), with Slim working with musicians outside of his band, the Workers, and taking a more country direction, although that doesn't mean he's become a hat act and is spewing clever clichés over slick production with an eye on Nashville. An album of truck driving songs (it's dedicated to Dave Dudley, whose version of "Six Days on the Road" is the truck driving anthem of all time), Escape from the Chicken Coop isn't really all that different than Slim's previous albums, and while the blues elements may be muted a bit here, this set isn't a radical departure in form. Maybe that's because, at the root, the difference between blues and country is really a matter of approach -- the themes in both genres have always been basically the same. And Slim knows a thing or two about truck driving. He supported his family for years driving trucks -- as a card-carrying MENSA member, he had to be one of the smartest drivers out there on the road -- and he would write and sing songs to himself to pass the time on long hauls. So the songs collected here aren't some fancy imagined facsimiles of the truck driving musical genre, they're the real deal. That said, these sides still have that wonderfully loose, ragged, and wry blues feel that Slim has always done so well, and Escape from the Chicken Coop fits right in with his previous recorded work -- it isn't a departure so much as a refinement. Among the highlights here are the gorgeous "Should I Have Done More," the traditional-sounding "300 Miles," and a striking re-imagining of Roy Acuff's classic "Wreck on the Highway." Slim's many fans won't be disappointed by this release. It's still a blues album, really, at least the way Slim marks out the territory. It's also affirming, joyous, and appropriately somber by turns, giving a fresh new meaning to the term "country blues." ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide
'No Paid Holidays'
Release Date 6/24/2008
Tracks 14
Label Northernblues
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What The Critics Say
Watermelon Slim has a fresh contemporary vision of country blues, a personal one that still allows listeners to feel right at home, and while he hasn't varied his approach too much over the course of his past couple of albums (No Paid Holidays is his third release for Northern Blues), what he does fits and works so well that that's undoubtedly a good thing. Here he hits his usual touchstones, pounding out a couple of full-tilt blues-rockers, shining on slide guitar, stripping things down on occasion for one of his unique "hollers." There aren't really any surprises, but again, that's fine. Well, actually, hearing Slim's stripped-down harmonica version of Laura Nyro's "And When I Die" is a bit of a surprise, and a delight at that. Also a delight is the slide guitar bonanza of "Bubba's Blues," which features guest slide guitarist Lee Roy Parnell and Slim tearing the rafters down. Slim's sharp narrative sense emerges on "Max the Baseball Clown," which conjures long-ago boyhood summers while the opener, "Blues for Howard," contains the remarkable line "You can't stay neutral on a moving train." The blues is such a conservative genre in so many ways, depending on familiar progressions and purposely clichéd sentiment to convey universal emotions. Watermelon Slim manages to work within that framework and still somehow make it all seem hushed and personal, even intimate. It's not an easy line to walk, but he does it as well as anyone currently on the contemporary blues scene. No Paid Holidays may not cut into any new territory, but it doesn't really have to because what this guy does is wonderfully solid right where it is. ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide
'The Wheel Man'
Release Date 4/17/2007
Tracks 14
Label Northern Blues
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
The blues has always been an enigma. A music that expresses deeply personal emotions, it does so with a well-worn collection of repeated phrases, rhymes, and floating verses that are nothing short of community property. It is also a music of constriction, with a conservative set of stock progressions and riffs that make innovations to the genre extremely difficult. The resulting familiarity of all of this is what makes the blues what it is, personal yet general, individual yet communally held, a music that if it were any more blue collar it would be the deep blue sea itself. How on earth does one bring something fresh to this genre in the 21st century without tipping the whole cart over on its side? Bill Homans, or Watermelon Slim, as he is known these days, seems to have found an answer by looking backward all the way to the field holler and looking over sideways to country music, rolling it all up into a smart synthesis that sounds fresh and sharp even though it is only a half-step removed from the sounds of Charley Patton or Jimmie Rodgers. The Wheel Man, Slim's second album for the Northern Blues imprint following 2006's magnificent Watermelon Slim & the Workers, isn't as striking as the previous offering, mainly because it is cut from the same exact cloth, but it also isn't a fall off, either, and the two releases taken together make a seamless arc. A former truck driver who just happens to own several university degrees and is a member of MENSA, Slim is his own walking enigma, and he manages to tread the line amazingly between what is blue collar and what is blues academia again on this album, beginning with the lead and title track, a duet with Magic Slim (do two Slims make for one Extra Large?) on the dilemma of making a sane life out of long-haul trucking, which itself becomes a blues metaphor for steering through life. "Sawmill Holler" is just that, a work holler that is both a cathartic release and a way to focus in on the tasks at hand. The harmonica and foot-stomp-driven "Jimmy Bell" is old-fashioned storytelling done without any fancy modern recording tricks. There are a pair of impressive blues covers here, too, an Okie rendition of Slim Harpo's "Got Love If You Want It" and a solo acoustic take on Furry Lewis' "Judge Harsh Blues." But it is Slim's Oklahoma twang that binds everything together, and it reminds that there was a time when the blues and country music drank side by side from the same river. Two of the best songs here, the wise, humorous, and carefully subtle "Drinking & Driving" and the raggedly stomping "Rattlesnake," could be all over country radio if the people who programmed that stuff really had a clue to what real country music is. Jimmie Rodgers (who never gets played on country radio -- even though without Rodgers the format might not even exist) was the singing brakeman who loved the blues, and Watermelon Slim, the singing truck driver who also loves the blues, seem cut from the same cultural remnants. Slim's smart enough to know it, too. Which is fine. He drives that truck well. ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide
'Big Shoes to Fill'
Release Date 4/25/2006
Tracks 12
Label Southern Music Dist.
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'The Watermelon Slim & the Workers'
Release Date 2/14/2006
Tracks 14
Label Northern Blues
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
You could see this one coming. Watermelon Slim's last album, 2004's sparse and arresting Up Close & Personal, revealed a contemporary bluesman with a scholar's understanding of the genre and a truly skewed, passionate approach to performing it that hinted at even deeper possibilities. Watermelon Slim & the Workers is the payoff. The sound on this record (which was produced by Chris Wick, who also plays bass on one of the tracks) is simply huge, and yet Slim's songs and field holler vocals keep it all appropriately intimate, making this release one of the best contemporary blues albums in years. On the surface Slim (his real name is Bill Homans) seems always to be working on the edge of parody, but this ex-truck driver who is also a member of MENSA (and owns several university degrees) is after bigger things. His passion for the blues makes these songs pulse with a gospel-like joy and intensity, and his new band the Workers gives him the kind of raggedly perfect backdrop to make it all slam home. Beginning with the opener, the shuffling and stomping "Hard Times," things never let up through the loose-limbed "Dumpster Blues," the spooky "Devil's Cadillac" (which sounds a bit like a revamped take on Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put a Spell on You"), the revealing and convincing "Bad Sinner," and the rolling rhythms of "Juke Joint Woman." One of the highlights on an album that is filled with them is a version here of Fred McDowell's "Frisco Line," which Slim and company tackle like they're on a careening blues train, and while Slim isn't quite the fluid slide guitar player that McDowell was, he's still darn good. This remarkable set is capped off by the closing "Eau de Boue," which outlines Slim's passionate devotion and commitment to the blues, and since he is perhaps the smartest ex-truck driver to ever sing this stuff, Slim sings it in French, maybe just because he can. For Watermelon Slim the blues isn't so much a musical genre as it is a calling, and beyond that, a shot at redemption. This guy is the real deal, and this is a great album. ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide
'Up Close & Personal'
Release Date 1/1/2004
Tracks 18
Label Southern Records Gro
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Watermelon Slim (his real name is Bill Homans) strips things down to basics on Up Close & Personal, a move that brings out the raw, impassioned intensity of his songs, and brings him as close as he's ever gotten to a fresh contemporary vision of country blues. The instrumentation here is sparse, usually just Slim alone with his National Steel guitar (a couple tracks feature his fevered harmonica style, and on the moving "Bridgebuilder" he plays a kalimba thumb piano), and at times he sounds like a looser, more unhinged John Hammond, albeit with a more personal vision and an unyielding blue-collar view of the world. There is more here than immediately meets the eye, however, and if Watermelon Slim plays up the truck driver turned blues player bit, he's also a member of MENSA and has a master's degree in history from Oklahoma State University, which may well make him the most literate figure in all of blues history. He certainly knows the country blues forms (two of the most striking tracks here are unaccompanied field hollers that sound like they could have been recorded by Alan Lomax), and he also knows how to modernize them without distorting them. The end result is a furious, visceral album of mostly acoustic blues with several striking tracks, including "Blue Freightliner," "The Last Blues," "Scalemaster Blues," "Cynical Old Bastard," and the affecting, delicate "Bridgebuilder." Watermelon Slim is obviously part caricature, but the intensity with which he growls and shouts these songs is more than a creative construct. It has to come from the heart. ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide
