Ripped from original CD with Exact Audio Copy.
Art & Rip log included. All tracks are Properly tagged with art embedded in tag.


Watermelon Slim

2004 - Up Close & Personal [mp3@320]




Watermelon Slim


Watermelon Slim at Silver Dollar Room, Toronto, Ontario 2008

Wikipedia:
Bill Homans, professionally known as "Watermelon Slim", is an American blues musician. He plays both guitar and harmonica. He is currently signed to NorthernBlues Music, based in Toronto, Ontario.
Homans has been performing since the 1970s and has been linked to several notable blues musicians, including John Lee Hooker, Robert Cray, Champion Jack Dupree, Bonnie Raitt, "Country" Joe McDonald, and Henry Vestine of Canned Heat.


Up Close & Personal



Artist: Watermelon Slim
Title: Up Close & Personal
Release Date: July 6, 2004
Label: Southern Records
Catalog: SRG - 1003
ASIN: B0002IQCZ2
Genre: Blues, Country Blues, Acoustic Blues, Delta Blues
Duration: 73:33

AllMusic Review by Steve Leggett:
Watermelon Slim (his real name is Bill Homans) strips things down to basics on Up Close & Personal, a move that brings out the raw, impassioned intensity of his songs, and brings him as close as he's ever gotten to a fresh contemporary vision of country blues. The instrumentation here is sparse, usually just Slim alone with his National Steel guitar (a couple tracks feature his fevered harmonica style, and on the moving "Bridgebuilder" he plays a kalimba thumb piano), and at times he sounds like a looser, more unhinged John Hammond, albeit with a more personal vision and an unyielding blue-collar view of the world. There is more here than immediately meets the eye, however, and if Watermelon Slim plays up the truck driver turned blues player bit, he's also a member of MENSA and has a master's degree in history from Oklahoma State University, which may well make him the most literate figure in all of blues history. He certainly knows the country blues forms (two of the most striking tracks here are unaccompanied field hollers that sound like they could have been recorded by Alan Lomax), and he also knows how to modernize them without distorting them. The end result is a furious, visceral album of mostly acoustic blues with several striking tracks, including "Blue Freightliner," "The Last Blues," "Scalemaster Blues," "Cynical Old Bastard," and the affecting, delicate "Bridgebuilder." Watermelon Slim is obviously part caricature, but the intensity with which he growls and shouts these songs is more than a creative construct. It has to come from the heart.




01. Truck Holler (No.1)
02. Blue Freightliner
03. The Last Blues
04. I Don't Care No More
05. Stud Poker
06. Smokestack Lightning
07. Cynical Old Bastard
08. Two Trains Running
09. Bridgebuilder
10. Too Old Is Getting Younger All The Time
11. Highway 61
12. Scalemaster Blues
13. Archetypal Blues
14. Got My Will Made Out
15. Mean Streets
16. Truck Holler (No.2)
17. The Whaler's Battle Cry (Bonus Track)
18. Trashy Trashmen (Bonus Track)


Personnel:

Chris "Stovall" Brown - Guitar
Adam Enevoldsen - Guitar (Bass)
Kyle Enevoldsen - Percussion
Honour Havoc - Guitar (Bass), Spoons
Watermelon Slim - Harmonica, Kalimba, Lap Steel Guitar, National Steel Guitar, Vocals



Note:
This is not my rip.
My thanks to the original uploader (whoever that may be).










♪♬♫ ENJOY! ♪♬♫