If we told you that Watermelon Slim, the award-winning bluesman, is headed "500 miles to Mississippi," you might think we were just making it up. | MyPantagraph: Local Music Scene Group

Sounds too much like a song, a reporter suggests, as Slim (William Homans III) does what he's got to do to get from here (Oklahoma) to there.

That could be said about Slim's entire life, though: Too good to be true in its high adventures, perhaps.

But perfect grist for an epic blues dirge.

After Slim does the Big Muddy thing, he'll be headed several hundred more miles back north, to Bloomington for a June 19 Blues Blowtorch Society gig at the Treehouse Lounge.

With its single-digit price, it's the bargain of the year, insists the Society's Deborah Mehlberg, who adds that the group can't believe its "amazing" good fortune in snaring Slim.

Two years ago, Slim and his band, The Workers, scored a record-tying six Blues Music Award nominations, something only matched before by Buddy Guy, B.B. King and Robert Cray.

Last year he landed six more of the same, making him the only blues artist in BMA history to cop as many in two consecutive years.

"I basically write about three things: work, relationships and dying," he nutshells it - which, considering he nearly died from a heart attack and stroke seven years ago, justifies the latter; a lifetime of hard labor and harder lovin' ("I've had more pedal-to-the-metal sex than anybody there ever was") takes care of the former.

Of his flirtation with the Reaper: "Oh, that's nothing compared to some of the other stuff - the arthritis, the broken back I didn't know I had."

And on and on, as he goes down the list.

"The worst thing about the heart attack and stroke," he notes in his sandpapery timbre, "is that they keep me from having any insurance."

It's the aching joints and bad back that are the real deal-breakers for a working musician.

For example, he recalls being in such agony walking to the chiropractor's office that he literally had to lift his leg with his arms to get it up onto the curb.

But that's the stuff that happens offstage we don't need to care about; onstage, he's still the electric bluesman who leaves legions of admirers like Bonnie Raitt charged up (she recently introduced him as Oklahoma's "living legend" at one of her concerts).

His seemingly native Okie twang notwithstanding, Slim's saga began on the Eastern seaboard nearly 60 years ago, with a privileged Boston upbringing and prominent civil rights attorney William Homans Jr. for his father.

Before he was 20, he dropped out of college "and went to Vietnam, but I didn't do a very good job with it. I had no more idea why I was there than why I'd been in college. I was just a stupid kid. I don't want to overestimate my service career, but I was glad to have gone. And I was also glad to be shed of it."

The good part: While laid up in a Cam Rahn Bay hospital, he taught himself (a left-hander) to play guitar on a "nasty cheap" balsa-wood concoction, using a coffee can tab for a pick and a Zippo lighter with Snoopy on it for a slide.

"Because I was left-handed, no one could teach me how to play but me."

After coming home from the war, he put his new talent into the service of writing war protest songs - becoming, in fact, the first 'Nam vet to record an anti-war album during the war, 1973's "Merry Airbrakes," with several tracks covered by the better-known protest singer, Country Joe McDonald.

Besides music-making, several decades' worth of hard labor awaited him - trucking, melon-farming, working in a saw mill (and losing part of a finger), officiating at funerals, driving a forklift and, he confesses, dabbling in some serious small-time crime.

Oh, and did we mention he's a certified genius and former dues-paying Mensa member with an IQ of 142? ("It was 142 in 1997, but I've been losing about a point every year since," he notes, "so I'm probably headed toward full retardation in a few more years …").

He's also lost all of his upper teeth to all that hard living, which is why he rarely smiles on stage, even though he insists on making eye contact with his audiences.

"I'm not pretty, not good-looking, no teeth whatsoever" he laughs. "We can dress good, though."

At a glance

What: Watermelon Slim & The Workers with Steve "The Harp" Blues Band

When: 6 p.m. June 19

Where: Treehouse Lounge, 2060 Ireland Grove Road, Bloomington

Tickets: $8

Information: (309) 662-0996

Slim's pickins

If a bluesman's street cred is measured by life experiences, then Bill "Watermelon Slim" Homans is one extra-incredible musician. Among those experiences:

• Episcopalian choir boy

• Son of famed Boston civil rights lawyer William Homans Jr., who led criminal defense on Boston Strangler and Chicago Seven cases

• Dropped out of college off to Vietnam at 19; taught self guitar on balsa-wood ax while laid up in a Cam Rahn Bay hospital

• Only known 'Nam vet to record an anti-war record during the war (1973's "Merry Airbrakes")

• Became a fervent anti-war, peace-rallying activist around Boston

• Employed as: forklift operator, industrial waste trucker, firewood salesman, sawmill operator (where he lost part of a finger), collection agent, funeral officiator, watermelon farmer (hence, a certain nickname), "bilingual bass fisherman"

• During lean times, also worked as "a small-time criminal"

• Forced to lam it out of Boston for above pastime, among others

• Certified a genius 10 years ago with an IQ of 142 (down to 102 lately); joined the all-genius club, Mensa

• Completed two master's degrees (history, journalism)

• Won't smile (has no upper teeth)

• Suffered a near-fatal heart attack in 2002 ("the least of my ailments")