Biography

NorthernBlues Music Inc., distributed by Redeye, announces a June 1st release date for RINGERS, the label's fifth Watermelon Slim CD. Ringers follows 2009's critically acclaimed solo country-blues CD Escape from The Chicken Coop. This is the eighth overall CD from the larger than life character with a session crew of top notch Nashville musicians, many borrowed from Delbert McClinton's band.

Prepare yourself for a backstory most find hard to believe. Bill 'Watermelon Slim' Homans was born in Boston. His father was a progressive attorney and freedom rider and his brother is a classical musician. Slim was raised in North Carolina listening to the housekeeper sing John Lee Hooker songs. Slim attended Middlebury on a fencing scholarship but enlisted 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 pick cut from a rusty coffee can top and his Army issued Zippo lighter as the slide.

An ambitious and fast learner, Slim hit the music scene with a 1973 release of Merry Airbrakes, the only known protest album recorded by a veteran during the Vietnam War. It is a protest tinged psychadelic blues-rock LP with tracks Country Joe McDonald later covered for his anti-war projects. In the 37 years since, Slim has worked a myriad of blue collar jobs such as truck driver, forklift operator, sawmiller (where he lost a partial finger), funeral officiator and at times a small time criminal. Due to the latter vocation, Slim fled the law in Boston where he was playing peace rallies, sit-ins and rabbleroused musically with the likes of Bonnie Raitt. (In 2009 after meeting backstage, she acknowledged him to her audience as a fellow living blues legend.) Slim fled Boston to lay low in Oklahoma farming watermelons - hence his stage name.

Somewhere in between all these jobs Slim completed two undergrad and a master's degree, started a family, painted art and joined Mensa…briefly…as the social networking group reserved for members with certified genius IQs didn't keep his attention. He prefers to fish, read Shakespeare and keep bowling a steady 240.

In 2002 he suffered a near fatal heart attack. The event offered a new perspective on mortality and life ambitions and thus his second emergence as a performing musician.

In less than a decade he rose from nobody to genre topper. Jerry Wexler eagerly penned his liner notes labeling him as a "one-of-a-kind pickin' n singing Okie dynamo." He's won Blues Music Awards for 'Band of the Year' and 'Album of the Year.' MOJO Magazine awarded him top honors in consecutive annual polls and he's graced many covers including the largest blues publication in the world. To compare, he tied B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Robert Cray with a record six Blues Music nominations…two years in a row.

In 2010 he continues to create his brand of singular, raw, honest music drawing from his storied past. While trucking and hauling industrial waste for thankless bosses at hourly wages to support himself and his family, he improvised a cappella in his rig keeping him dedicated, awake and entertained. With an amalgam of country, blues, Americana and rock Ringers captures those long hours, life struggles and small victories of now and then.