One of the most amazing and talented bluesmen makes his way back to Tulsa, Wednesday, September 15. A night of the blues 
comes to the Flytrap Music Hall (514 E. Second St.)
Watermelon Slim and the Workers will light up the small music hall stage with some of the areas best blues. These cats can flat get down. If you have an itch for blues music, they will supply the scratch.
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.
Bill "Watermelon Slim" Homans is a truly unique man with an amazing story behind how he came to be a musician and bluesman. 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.
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."
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.
He has great stories, fabulous music and stage antics that will have you laughing as well as leaning in to hear more. Check out his wide array of guitar slides also. From a Zippo lighter to a small bottle of whiskey. Nothing is off limits to the one-of-a-kind man.
Watermelon Slim and The Workers with opener Dustin Pittsley
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Flytrap Music Hall (514 E 2nd St)
Doors open 7:00