Watermelon Slim & The Workers - 2008 - No Paid Holidays.nfo
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Watermelon Slim & The Workers - No Paid Holidays
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Artist...............: Watermelon Slim & The Workers
Album................: No Paid Holidays
Genre................: Blues
Source...............: Flac
Year.................: 2008
Codec................: LAME 3.10
Version..............: MPEG 1 Layer III
Quality..............: Insane, (avg. bitrate: 320kbps)
Channels.............: Joint Stereo / 44100 hz
Tags.................: , ID3 v2.3
Information..........: Thanks to the original flac ripper
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Tracklisting
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1. Watermelon Slim & The Workers - Blues For Howard [02:19]
2. Watermelon Slim & The Workers - Archetypal Blues No. 2 [04:30]
3. Watermelon Slim & The Workers - Call My Job [04:58]
4. Watermelon Slim & The Workers - Dad In The Distance [04:04]
5. Watermelon Slim & The Workers - You're The One I Need [02:44]
6. Watermelon Slim & The Workers - Bubba's Blues [03:49]
7. Watermelon Slim & The Workers - And When I Die [04:36]
8. Watermelon Slim & The Workers - Into The Sunset [03:44]
9. Watermelon Slim & The Workers - Gearzy's Boogie [02:41]
10. Watermelon Slim & The Workers - This Traveling Life [04:13]
11. Watermelon Slim & The Workers - Max The Baseball Clown [02:38]
12. Watermelon Slim & The Workers - The Bloody Burmese Blues[03:20]
13. Watermelon Slim & The Workers - I've Got A Toothache [03:41]
14. Watermelon Slim & The Workers - Everybody's Down On Me [04:59]
Playing Time.........: 52:22
Total Size...........: 119.91 MB
NFO generated on.....: 1/19/2019 6:52:25 PM
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In recent years, Watermelon Slim has risen to the top of the blues genre; his
last LP, The Wheel Man, helped him garner six nominations at the Blues Music
Awards, a feat that has only been accomplished by legends like B.B. King and
Buddy Guy. Slim s got his own legend, and it starts back in Vietnam, where he
learned how to play slide guitar backwards on a lap dobro with a jagged pick
cut from a tin can and his standard-issue Zippo lighter subbing in as slide. Slim
is credited as the first Vietnam veteran to release an album, 1973 s self-titled
protest blues record Merry Airbrakes, which contains lines like, If I die in
battle / Pick up my AK-47 and fight on. Back then, he was known by his given
name, Bill Homans, and described his album as anti-capitalistic, anti-
imperialistic, and containing incontrovertible underground credentials.
It was 30 years before Slim released another album. But he stayed busy
working a handful of odd-jobs, and picked up his blues name while harvesting
watermelons, as he recalled on 2003 s They Call Me Watermelon Slim : I was
standing in a great big old field full of watermelons down in southeast
Oklahoma about 23 years ago. Had me a great big ol slice of red watermelon
in one hand and a Hohner D harmonica in the other not a woman within 20
miles. I was getting to be a lonely SOB. But I looked at the harmonica and I
looked at that piece of watermelon and I said, Wait a minute, I got me a
blues name! I m Watermelon Slim. And I been Watermelon Slim to this day.
No Paid Holidays is somewhat more introverted than the boogie-heavy
WheelMan. But Slim finds room for his full range of styles, from the field
holler, through the Mississippi Delta blues, and on up ol muddy to the rockin
Chicago blues. Slim also manages to break from traditional blues chord
progressions on the excellent honky-tonk number Into the Sunset and the
somber paternal dirge Dad in the Distance (You re where you should be, and
though you are gone / You re the one and only reason I m galloping on).
This Traveling Life is a vox-and-harmonica prayer of thanksgiving ( Thank you
for every miracle you send my way / Ooh, and best of all / For letting me see
/ Things the way they are / The way they are ). And When I Die is similarly
composed, with Slim singing, All I ask of livin is to have no chains on me / And
all I ask of dying is to go naturally. Oddly enough the latter number is the
more upbeat of the two. Or maybe from Slim s perspective that s not at all
odd, as the laughs really come rolling in on Max the Baseball Clown , on which
he reminisces about an all-but-forgotten grandstand entertainer: It s taken
me this many years to ask myself, Is he alive or dead? (Personally, I m afraid
that Max has had his last laugh.)
I ve Got a Toothache is a spoken-word number beat down by a slow thud,
and laced with Slim s slide dobro as he seeks a remedy for the pain: I got me
a glass of bourbon here Wild Turkey. I m gonna drain it down. Slim has likely
had his share of toothaches, as his trademark sound is a vocal delivery that is
both hampered and enhanced by a dearth of teeth that has left his
consonants with a lisp-like quality.
Slim s subject matter comes full-circle with The Bloody Burmese Blues , on
which he notes, We are in this lovely hotel looking down on a war zone / We
saw it all breaking down, soldiers and the people they were firing on. Thirty-
five years have lapsed since the Merry Airbrakes Draft Board Blues , but
listening to it you can already hear Slim s down-to-the-grit perspective and
the sharp bite of his overdriven harmonica.
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