By Doug Hill

pop writer

Google Maps calculates the travel time from Tulsa's airport to OSU-Okmulgee's campus at approximately 54 minutes. "I did it in 27," Bill Homans, aka Watermelon Slim, claimed in an interview before his sold-out solo show Jan. 13. It was part of the Winter Wind concert series at Norman's Performing Arts Studio. Slim is also known as The Wheel Man. Partly for his former career as a tractor/trailer driver and also for his preternatural ability steering anything with rubber on the road.

"I was driving the only hot rod I've ever owned, a 1960 Chevy Nova with 350 V-8. Had to get some boys to school registration on time," he said. "I absolutely hammered it, going 125-130 mph to get them there. It was probably the craziest driving I've ever done, but I'm a good driver so it was completely safe," Slim maintained.

This is just one anecdote in a treasure of life experiences from one of America's finest blues artists. Not an Okie by birth, he's lived all over America and 2 other continents. It was a matter of chance that Slim calls this state home.

"In 1979 I was living in a Southeast Oklahoma hippie commune . They were activists against nuclear power. I'd been out in Albuquerque looking for cheap land, but ended up buying 62 acres in Pushmataha County. Big Cedar Creek runs through it." The creek was of salient interest to Slim because he's an angler. And not only can he hook the slippery devils, preparing stuffed bass is a specialty.

"I bake them head-on after filling the body cavity with butter, bread crumbs and onions. Blue fish teriyaki is another one of my dishes," Slim said. Down-home southern and Italian cuisine spice his repertoire. Favorite restaurants include Gopuram, Himalayas and Hideaway Pizza (Stillwater). But when he's not cooking, bowling, reading Shakespeare or serving as Oklahoma contact for Viet Nam Veterans Against the War, Slim is planning new projects. Next album, "No Paid Holidays" is slated for release in June. Also in the works is a country, truck-driving disc dedicated to Dave Dudley ("Six Days on the Road") and a blues collaboration with his wife. Slim's the Wizard of Wheels but could just as easily be called Renaissance Man. It's the variety of depth, quintessential talent and intellectual curiosity that contribute to his music's richness.

Watermelon Slim

Slim brought along a 14-piece collection of various "mojo" objects fans have given him. He uses them as guitar slides. Airline bottles, a spark plug socket, an arrowhead ("Probably Sac and Fox or Wyandotte") and a Peterbilt gear shift knob were arranged around his horizontally-tabled guitar. Throughout the show he used different ones. They created different sounds and Slim told a story about each. He began singing a simple blues song about sinking or swimming, then segued into a Mississippi Fred McDowell line. Slim's voice is a thing of peculiar beauty. It's deep and comforting, like steaming coffee flavored with Tennessee whiskey on a cold winter morning. Not a pretty choir boy voice, he's more riverboat captain hollering across an 1898 Mississippi barge. Slim dedicated the next song to wives in the room, memorializing the trials of being married to a truck driving man. Deep in the set he did a blues harp solo with crowd clapping percussion. Slim went into tent revival mode, down on his knees pointing at heaven, singing about avoiding Satan. He took the harmonica to task. Slim inadvertently knocked a glass guitar slide off his table. He told a tale concerning a show in Santa Fe, NM, which was rudely cut short by management. "It's my worst slide-busting story," Slim said. He'd angrily thrown and shattered a 19th century chloroform bottle against Buddy Guy's bass drum. "I'm not opening for him anymore. I hope we're still friends," Slim concluded.

Watermelon Slim closed with an unusual trio of songs ranging from Australia's deserts to the frigid Northwest Passage to a street fight with Nazis in Boston. Just like Slim driving a speedy Nova, the concert was gone in a flash.