Watermelon Slim - Big Shoes to Fill (2003)

Watermelon Slim (born Bill Homans) was raised in North Carolina, where, he says, he was first exposed to the blues at the age of five. He began seriously turning to music after a tour of duty in Vietnam that ended in 1970. He independently released the furiously antiwar album Merry Airbrakes in 1973. Although he has spent most of his adult life as a blue-collar laborer (mostly as a truck driver), Homans still found a whole lot of time for academia, earning degrees in history and journalism from the University of Oregon and a master's degree in history from Oklahoma State University. He founded a blues band, Fried Okra Jones, in the late '90s and has fronted them with his raw, impassioned blues singing, harp playing, and impressive National Steel guitar style (which he plays left-handed). His songs feature subtle, intelligent twists while remaining undeniably in the blues tradition. Following a serious heart attack, Watermelon Slim turned his attention full-time to music, releasing two albums on Southern Records, Big Shoes to Fill in 2003 and Up Close & Personal in 2004. He strips things down to basics, a move that brings out raw, impassioned intensity of his songs, and brings him as close as he's ever gotten to a fresh contemporary vision of country blues. He certainly knows the country blues forms and he also knows how to modernize them without distorting them.