17 April 2013 - 0 Comments

Legendary bluesman Watermelon Slim has announced his first New Zealand tour.

The Up Close & Personal Tour has confirmed dates spanning the country. Slim is looking forward to entertaining New Zealand audiences with his unique blues stylings (and hopefully finding enough time to do a little fishing).

Watermelon Slim will be ably accompanied by Steve “Guitar” Gilles on acoustic guitars and dobro. Steve wowed audiences nationwide while supporting Big Daddy Wilson’s 2012 tour.

"The most exciting and authentic blues performer I've heard in years."  ~ A.W., Paste Magazine

2x Winner: 2008 Blues Music Award - Band of the Year and Album of the Year

2x Winner: 2006 & 2007 MOJO Magazine's #1 Blues Album of the Year

Winner: 6th Annual Independent Music Awards - Blues Album of the Year

TOUR DATES

Wed 10 APR - Wunderbar, Lyttleton 7.30 pm tickets at venue , Pennylane stores and Eventfinda
Thur 11 APR– Churchills Tavern Colombo St Chch 7.30 pm tickets at venue, Pennylane stores and Eventfinda
Fri 12 APR - Coronation Hall, Dunedin 7.30 pm tickets at No 7 Balmac, Marbecks , Twang Town , Disk Den and Eventfinda
Sat 13 APR - Luggate Hotel Wanaka 7.30 pm tickets at venue and Eventfinda
Wed 17 APR - Suburban Club, Nelson 7.30 pm tickets at venue, Everyman Records and Eventfinda
Thur 18 APR - Memorial Hall, Motueka 7.30 pm tickets at Hot Mama’s Café , State Cinema Motueka and Eventfinda
Fri 19 APR - Meow, Wellington 8.30pm tickets at venue , Slowboat Records, Mint Music Lower Hutt and Eventfinda
Sat 20 APR - St Peter's Hall, Paekakariki 7.30 pm tickets, Valhalla Café Raumati, Fruit & Vege Shop, Eventfinda Mint and Slowboat
Sun 21 APR - Butlers Reef, New Plymouth 3.30 pm tickets at venue , Vinyl Countdown and Eventfinda
Tue 23 APR - Bent Horseshoe Cafe, Tokomaru, Palmerston North 7.30 pm  tickets at venue and Eventfinda
Wed 24 APR - Blackbarn Vineyard, Havelock North 7.30 pm  tickets at venue and Eventfinda
Thur 25 APR - ANZAC DAY Tatapouri Fishing Club, Gisborne  3.30 pm show, tickets at venue, Gisborne Deli and Eventfinda
Fri 26 APR - Ohope International Golf Club Harbour Rd Ohope 7.30 pm tickets at venue, All Good Music and Eventfinda
Sat 27 APR - Diggers Bar, Hamilton 3.30 pm  tickets at venue, Shearers Musicworks Anglesea St and Eventfinda 
Sun 28 APR - The Riverhead, Auckland in the Boathouse 2 pm www.theriverhead.co.nz and Eventfinda

ARTIST BIO: An ever-expanding career of ramshackle grandeur.

"Does anyone in modern pop music have a more intriguing biography than Bill 'Watermelon Slim' Homans?" ~ The Memphis Flyer

Bill "Watermelon Slim" Homans has a fascinating history. This living blues legend is well-known for his moves on the slide and the lap dobro, but he is also a skilled raconteur, farmer or watermelons, of course, former Mensa member, fencing scholarship recipient, Vietnam vet and 240-point bowler. His storied life provides him with ample subject matter to sing about including tales of love, heartache and loneliness.

Watermelon Slim’s gritty style of “working man blues” has earned him 17 Blues Music Award nominations in a span of four years. Though born in Boston, he was reared in North Carolina by a John Lee Hooker-humming housekeeper. This showman who is “too tired to sleep” has taken his blues all over the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia in a career that spans over 30 years,  performing  with the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray, and yes, the late John Lee Hooker.

HARP Magazine wrote "From sizzling slide guitar...to nitty-gritty harp blowing...to a gruff, resonating Okie twang, Slim delivers acutely personal workingman blues with both hands on the wheel of life, a bottle of hooch in his pocket, and the Bible on the passenger seat."

Paste Magazine writes "He's one hell of a bottleneck guitarist, and he's got that cry in his voice that only the greatest singers in the genre have had before him."

Slim was born in Boston, his father was a progressive attorney and freedom rider and his brother is a classical musician. He was raised in North Carolina listening to the housekeeper sing John Lee Hooker songs. Slim attended Middlebury on a fencing scholarship but left early to enlist 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 triangle pick cut from a rusty coffee can top and his Army issued Zippo lighter as the slide.

The big turning point was 2002 when Slim suffered a near fatal heart attack. His brush with death gave him a new perspective on mortality, direction and life ambitions and thus his second emergence as a performing musician. Five albums later 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." And when you watch him perform, you know every word is true.

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