Watermelon Slim

Bill Homans: truck driver, Vietnam veteran, and one of the most nominated bluesmen alive.

Bill Homans was born in Boston in 1949 and came to the blues the long way round. He drove trucks. He served in Vietnam. He worked as a sawmill hand, a firewood salesman, a funeral officiant. He holds two degrees. He recorded his first album from a military hospital bed with a guitar borrowed on the ward.

The late career made up for the slow start. Between 2005 and 2009 he collected seventeen Blues Music Award nominations in four years, and won two in 2008 — Band of the Year and Album of the Year. He has lived in Clarksdale since 2009.

He plays a lap-style slide with a hard right hand and sings like a man who has actually done the jobs in the songs. On stage he is funny, loud and entirely unsentimental.

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