Interview Transcript: Corey duBrowa
and Bill “Watermelon Slim” Homan

Q: So how are you Slim? I’m catching you at the airport on your way to Canada, is that right?

A: I’ll tell you, I’m about as bad as I’ve been going out on tour right now. I’m not feeling very well. Having some orthopedic issues, but playing and singing as good as ever! I’ve got some serious arthritis that’s keeping me from being right on top of things.
 
Q: So your guys told you we’re doing this story for U of O’s alumni magazine, right?

A: I’m always a Duck! Anything we can do for the Ducks, I’m down with it! I was the oldest intercollegiate athlete at the U of O. I was captain of the bowling team for three years. I’ve been a bowler all my life. Currently, because of my physical problems, I’m retired from bowling. But I was a bowler with some half serious aspirations to professionalism. I was a hustler. (laughs) I got there to Oregon and immediately found I had a bowling alley in the bottom floor of the student union, and knew right away I was meant to be there! It cost me ten dollars per term for unlimited practice, throwing 50, 60, 70 games per week, bowling something like ten games a day. Practice I threw 299 in that bowling alley, I had one game where I threw eleven strikes, then lined up for the twelfth one, told the members of the team I was with that day that under no circumstances would I ever roll another ball again if I came up with that twelfth strike. Sure enough, I buried the ball in the pocket and wound up with a seven pin that wobbled. Have bowled ever since, I’ll never bowl my 300 but I came that close at the University of Oregon. 
 
Q: How’d you wind up at the UO? You were from Massachusetts originally, right?

A: No, no, I was living in Oklahoma already by the time I went to Oregon. I was married to my first wife, who felt I should be doing something more challenging than being a school bus driver and janitor. None of it worked, every time I’ve tried to improve myself I’ve come up short, but education at the U of O and Oklahoma State later, I wouldn’t trade you for an education from Harvard. I’ve got nothing but great professors all the way through the academic career I designed myself, in order to become a writer. People like Dr. Daniel Pope at the History department, Dr. Gordon (Bill) Rockett in the English department, emeritus. Those two people will know more about me than any other professors there. Dr. Rockett is just a great guy, he was – Dan Pope was more instrumental, but of all the people in my undergraduate and graduate career, Bill Rockett was the professor I liked best.
 
Q: Were you playing music professionally when you were here at the U of O?

A: Oh yeah, I was over at Taylor’s Tavern – Dave Dingman, who owned it, another guy you should talk to. Was trying to be taken seriously as a musician, by the time I left Oregon, I was being taken seriously. I was playing the blues! Roommates with Henry “the Sunflower” Vestine, late of Canned Heat while I was there. He and I were roommates on Willamette Avenue, we played around quite a bit. I was playing with serious musicians at Oregon for the first time, it certainly did help my musical education, playing with the people I did out there.
 
Q: So tell me about your Vietnam experience, when did that happen for you in this whole chronology?

A: Vietnam (pronounced it rhymes with “ham”) was many years before Oregon – after UO I was in Europe, trying to establish myself as a musician. And that didn’t work. I came back with cracked ribs having been bounced off some railroad tracks by an English mugger. And ended up driving truck for several years after that; that’s usually what I came back to, driving truck after I had failed at something. (laughs)
 
Q: And what about the Merry Airbrakes album (original copies of which now trade hands for hundreds of dollars on eBay)?

A: 1973, many years before Taylor’s or Oregon or any of that was even a gleam in my eye. I was at Oregon 1984 – 1987, my BA was in Dec. 1986. I was a History and Journalism major, those were my degrees.
 
Q: I’m still trying to fill in the gaps in terms of all the different things you did – you’ve had an amazing life when you piece all these things together.

A: Well that’s it, isn’t it? You have to piece a whole lot of things together, more things than most people have. (they’re calling first boarding for my flight, so let’s move ahead!)
 
Q: Why did it take so long between the first record you made and the more recent spate of records you’ve made (in this decade)?

A: Here’s the thing: I wasn’t technically anywhere near as good a musician as I needed to be in order for Atlantic records not to ignore me in 1973! Technically I was a good songwriter but mediocre instrumentalist, in 1973 when the oil embargo happened, the price of polyvinyl chloride shot up by about 400% over its earlier price, and suddenly Atlantic Records, which had been trying to re-release the “Merry Airbrakes,” wasn’t interested in the slightest! I was no longer an attractive loss leader, that’s the way they put it. (laughs) So when there was no longer that, I went off to work at this job, that job, another job, and it took me 27 years before I recorded anything more.
 
Q: Watermelon Slim – where’d the name come from?

A: I was out in the middle of a watermelon field, it was very hot, and I suddenly realized I had a piece of watermelon in one hand and hawk in the other, and had me a blues name. That was all that was. Like hiking on the Damascus Road, one of those revelations that just hits you, you know that’s what you’re supposed to do. It was about 105 in the shade, and I was standing in the sun. That’s how the name came around. I was affected by the heat, in short. It got to me. (laughs)
 
Q: Let’s circle back to your Vietnam experience; what more can you tell me about your time as a soldier?

A: Well, I might as well say, from my short experience; I was honorably discharged. I was such a poor troop they didn’t even give me a good conduct medal over there. My service record indicates I was honorably discharged, the VA is my emergency help of last resort. So I got over there and the good thing that happened, is that I ended up beginning to learn to play the guitar.
 
Q: Your guitar-playing style is very unusual – how’d you come by such an unorthodox method?

A: I play left handed and backwards on a right handed guitar (like Hendrix). I’m left handed, there was no other choice. I just happened to have a Zippo cigarette lighter and guitar, in the same place at the same time, and I knew I couldn’t play right handed or make normal chords on the guitar, so I turned it over and learned it left handed. Part of the reason I didn’t go anywhere between the ‘70s and current century is that technically I just wasn’t good enough a guitar player for anybody to be interested in. I could write songs and play harp, but I was a late bloomer on guitar. Recording companies, commercial musical world, haven’t been interested in me until this century, when I became enough of a master on my own style to have people listen to me play guitar. I’m going up to Winnipeg to play right now, in fact. People do actually want to listen to me play now. But that hasn’t always been, I was a late bloomer.
 
Q: Things must feel so different for you today, in terms of the critical and popular reception given your music in this past decade vs. when you were struggling and scraping by in your Eugene days, or earlier.

A: I’ve had the Hollywood ending after a life that really had nothing to do with Hollywood at all. Whatever happens to me now, it’s all government money, I’m just playing with government money at this point. Whatever I do now, whether I keep going or retire – and retirement IS a possibility at my age, in my condition – I’m not that far from saying “OK, that’s it, I’m going home, finish my biography, get enough paint on the canvas to get a proper exhibition going.” Touring – the traveling’s the tough part. The music is easy. The music I can sing and play as good as ever. I’ve got a new record coming out August 4, another new one after that, at least one more by next year. I’ve got so many good things that can happen, have already happened – it’s just a shame I can’t do ‘em all! (laughs) So…
 
Q: Do you subscribe to the notion that to be a good bluesman, you have to have lived a hard life, lived the blues in some respects?

A: I subscribe to it, but I don’t know if it’s true or not! But I subscribe to it. I would never want to dis anybody, but I do know this: certain people who make an awful lot of money, enough that I could have retired on it some time ago, people who loosely work under what’s called the blues, never worked a day job in their life! Never actually had to sweat and maybe bleed for their living. That means a bunch to me. But I’m not… you take the longest time example: Pinetop Perkins, 95 years old, all he’s ever done since the 40s in his life is play music. Pinetop hasn’t been out doing construction, or anything like what I’ve had to do. Just been playin’. If I was a piano player, maybe I’d come along that way myself. I’m not saying Pinetop doesn’t play the blues! But a lot of guys that have come up haven’t done anything besides play. You can play your guitar, fine – but what else have you done? That resonates for me.
 
Q: You’ve driven truck, been a melon farmer, anti-war activist, garbage man, forklift operator, bowler, soldier, sawmiller (a job that cost you part of your finger), firewood salesman, collection agent, officiated funerals, even a small time petty criminal (had to flee Boston), what else am I missing from the Slim resume?

A: You can always say he’s a man who tried to envision himself as a white collar person but it never worked, always ended up going back to trucking. I don’t know that you’ve missed anything other than that I’m a political investigator – I’d quit my blues career in a heartbeat if I thought I could generate enough money finishing my investigation of the Murrah Federal Building bombing (Timothy McVeigh). I’m one of the investigators of that case that has not been debunked – my master’s thesis is about the case. Go to the History department at Oklahoma St. University, 405-744-5678, ask the receptionist for William D. Homans’ thesis entitled “North American Fascism: Transmission of the Virus.” That’s what you ask for, that’s the thesis.
 
Q: What else should I be asking about you? If you were conducting this interview, what else would you probe or dive into?

A: What else from Oregon, let me think: I graduated with honors in History. It was made clear to me that I was part of the History department. I’ve been back a couple of times, played jams at Good Times when Rooster (the impresario of the blues in Eugene) was there in Eugene. Haven’t been able to spend much time around there, but musicians who’d remember me and give you a story or two about the old days, you might ask for Mac Singleton, from Church of the Blues when I was with Henry Vestine. Rick Johnson, around there some place or other; Lloyd Jones, talk to him, that’s for sure. And Curtis Salgado, I’d give you a bunch; Mac and Ricky are still in Eugene. Robert Cray, he wouldn’t know much about me but he was one of the more important songwriting influences on me over the past 25 years, he’s a great songwriter. The way he’s written songs, inspired several of mine.
 
Q: Final question before you go: what’s your funniest memory or anecdote from your U of O days?

A: I drove into U of O having blown my engine in Elko, Nevada, then having picked up a 1965 Dodge Polera with a crankshaft pulley that didn’t match up with the cam pulley, it’s a lucky thing I even arrived there! I never paid to play in Eugene (bowling). Funny time I was having, hmm – I’ll tell you, it’s a dichotomy: I was very serious about my education, still married to that first wife I told you about. But it was also very important that I get the musical education I was looking for, I didn’t go there to Eugene, my head wasn’t swelled about going into these places with people like Salgado. But eventually I gained what I needed to gain there, and today Curtis and I, I have a song in my bag I’m supposed to write with Curtis, get around to that one day. We see each other once in a while, glad he’s gotten through this cancer business. But I can’t think of a funny story. There’s plenty of it to be had, can think of some lewd ones, but no funny ones. Oh, I’ll give you one: My greatest adversaries were Oregon State, if you might believe. At Oregon State, we went there and bowled a dual match one time, and practiced with the lights on in their bowling alley, but when it came time to bowl, they turned all the lights off, and I complained that this was unfair competition, and the coach of OSU told me “You don’t like it, you can put your ball in your bag.” So I’ve always had a big grudge against Oregon State. Those damned Beavers can kiss my ass. (laughs) They were unsportsmanlike. I was able to get my revenge at the Northwest Regionals, the conditions in Pullman (Washington State) were terrible but Oregon bowled less horribly than everyone else and won the Northwest Regionals in 1986. I beat the top bowler at Oregon State and later, he said “how’d you like to bowl a little match” and I SMOKED HIM at a cost of $20 per match. His coach came down and said “you’d better leave that fella alone.” I threw 700 at him for three games, when we were bowling for money.
 
Q: Thanks again for squeezing this in, Slim. It’s been fun talking with you.