Size: 135,5 MB
Time: 58:37
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2024
Styles: Blues/Roots
Art: Front
1. Pick Up My Guidon (3:30)
2. Mean Streets (4:57)
3. Australia (3:02)
4. Four Hideous Little Songs (3:21)
5. The Day I Left Cabbagetown (3:22)
6. WBCN (5:29)
7. You're Going To Need Somebody On Your Bond (3:26)
8. Winners Of Us All (5:14)
9. They Never Even Gave Us A Parade (5:08)
10. Northern Blues (3:51)
11. Max The Baseball Clown (3:27)
12. Wolf Cry (3:39)
13. Barrett's Privateers (3:57)
14. Dark Genius (6:07)
Bill “Watermelon Slim” Homans was born in Boston. His father was a progressive attorney and freedom rider. His brother is a classical musician. He grew up in North Carolina where he heard his housekeeper singing John lee Hooker songs. He attended college on a fencing scholarship but left early to enlist to fight in Vietnam. While laid up on a hospital bed in Vietnam, he taught himself how to play on a $5 upside down left-handed guitar using a triangle pick he cut from the lid of a coffee can and using his Zippo lighter as a slide. He ended his tour of duty in Vietnam in 1970 and in 1973 released his first album, a furiously anti-war album, Merry Airbrakes.
He returned to Boston and took on many jobs over the next 30 years including truck driver, forklift operator, sawmiller (where he lost a partial finger), a funeral officiator, among others. He also became a small-time criminal, which ultimately forced him to leave Boston and relocate to Oklahoma where he became a watermelon farmer, thus giving him his nickname of Watermelon Slim. Somewhere in between all those activities, he completed two undergrad and a master’s degree and joined Mensa, the organization that recognizes certified genius. But he continued truck driving as his principal income using the long hours in a truck singing a cappella songs to himself that kept him awake and entertained, but also became the source of the songs for his albums.
In 2002, he had a near-fatal heart attack. After recovering from that and with a new direction in life, he moved to a new emergence as a blues performer. His music has received 17 Blues Music Award nominations, including six nominations in both 2007 and 2008. Only a few musicians like B.B. King and Buddy Guy have ever received six nominations in a single year and Slim holds the record as the only artist to receive six nominations in two consecutive years. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2015.
His gruff, but passionate vocals intertwine on fourteen original songs with his razor-sharp slide guitar work and harmonica, which he says is in keeping with the style of Slim Harpo. He is joined on the album by Joanna Miller on drums & percussion, Gilles Fournier on upright bass, John Soles on electric bass, Jay Nowicki on electric guitar, Jeremy Rusu on piano, clarinet, accordion and mandolin, Don Zueff on fiddle, and with vocals from Jolene Higgins, Sol James and Ray “Coco” Stevenson. Scott Nolan plays the drums, percussion, guitar and adds vocals on the title song. Chris Carmichael plays drums on “They Didn’t Even Give Us a Parade”.
Watermelon Slim’s lyrics are just as sharp and poignant as ever, which has always been the pinnacle of his work on his many albums over the years. Here he is reminiscing about his many past experiences, speaks for how the common man survives today, and concludes with a song seemingly addressing a concern for what the world is coming to presently. The songs sometimes drift away from what I consider the blues, but he is presenting a cross-section of life, which makes you want to listen carefully. /John Sacksteder, Blues Blast Magazine
He returned to Boston and took on many jobs over the next 30 years including truck driver, forklift operator, sawmiller (where he lost a partial finger), a funeral officiator, among others. He also became a small-time criminal, which ultimately forced him to leave Boston and relocate to Oklahoma where he became a watermelon farmer, thus giving him his nickname of Watermelon Slim. Somewhere in between all those activities, he completed two undergrad and a master’s degree and joined Mensa, the organization that recognizes certified genius. But he continued truck driving as his principal income using the long hours in a truck singing a cappella songs to himself that kept him awake and entertained, but also became the source of the songs for his albums.
In 2002, he had a near-fatal heart attack. After recovering from that and with a new direction in life, he moved to a new emergence as a blues performer. His music has received 17 Blues Music Award nominations, including six nominations in both 2007 and 2008. Only a few musicians like B.B. King and Buddy Guy have ever received six nominations in a single year and Slim holds the record as the only artist to receive six nominations in two consecutive years. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2015.
His gruff, but passionate vocals intertwine on fourteen original songs with his razor-sharp slide guitar work and harmonica, which he says is in keeping with the style of Slim Harpo. He is joined on the album by Joanna Miller on drums & percussion, Gilles Fournier on upright bass, John Soles on electric bass, Jay Nowicki on electric guitar, Jeremy Rusu on piano, clarinet, accordion and mandolin, Don Zueff on fiddle, and with vocals from Jolene Higgins, Sol James and Ray “Coco” Stevenson. Scott Nolan plays the drums, percussion, guitar and adds vocals on the title song. Chris Carmichael plays drums on “They Didn’t Even Give Us a Parade”.
Watermelon Slim’s lyrics are just as sharp and poignant as ever, which has always been the pinnacle of his work on his many albums over the years. Here he is reminiscing about his many past experiences, speaks for how the common man survives today, and concludes with a song seemingly addressing a concern for what the world is coming to presently. The songs sometimes drift away from what I consider the blues, but he is presenting a cross-section of life, which makes you want to listen carefully. /John Sacksteder, Blues Blast Magazine
Winners Of Us All mc
Winners Of Us All gofile
