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Watermelon Slim and The Workers at Pearl, Dallas, Texas
Saturday, January 12, 2008

Watermelon Slim has got to be to be livin’ the life these days.

He’s got quite a bio, hard knocks, hard times, hard work and all the while “making sure the boss gets paid.” Now that his own dues are paid- in spades, he says he finally gets to practice his true vocation. Bluesman.

And if you go see him play, you get to hear all about it.

I got hipped to him by a friend who sent me his second CD, The Wheel Man, for Christmas. It had me with the first spin.

He played Pearl in Downtown Dallas Saturday night with his band, The Workers, to a pretty impressive crowd.

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The Old 97s and The Drams
New Year’s Eve at The Longhorn Ballroom, Dallas

There’s something about the Longhorn Ballroom.

Something that hits you the minute you walk through the door. The room just permeates history from every corner and crevice. It’s an awesome place, in the truest sense of the word awesome. For one thing, it’s as big as an aircraft hangar. For another, it’s the real thing.

Any performer who was anybody in country music played there back in the day. Bob Wills owned the place in the 50s and 60s. Later, it was resurrected briefly in the 80s as a live music venue banking on its biggest claim to fame that it hosted The Sex Pistol’s Dallas show just a few short days before that band broke up.

Having seen a number of shows there through the years, I can personally attest that just being on that enormous stage, where so many came before and made history, seems to inspire bands to go above and beyond what anyone would expect of them.

I had all that in mind and more when we went there on New Years Eve to see The Old 97s, The Drams and The Boys Named Sue.

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