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Back Stage Is Where 'Lotus Guy' Lee Williams Prefers To Be

lee williams in his office

Lee Williams discovers new music at his desk.

He brings up a YouTube video of Tunisian singer-songwriter Emel Mathlouthi. He first saw this video in 2011.

"I don't even remember if I was searching for her or if I was randomly looking for artists," he says.

The video shows Mathlouthi standing in a crowd, wearing a red coat and trying to sing into a TV microphone. "The background is a whole lot of people in a street in Tunisia in the revolution," he adds.

Williams is the artistic director of the Lotus World Music & Arts Festival. He finally succeeded in booking Mathlouthi for this year's festival after working on it for three years.

Plugged In



The internet makes everything easier for Williams. He's connected to the world music industry through a listserv. They share musical discoveries with one another there. He gets e-mail after e-mail from artists all over the world asking to be booked for Lotus.

He does still get tips the old-fashioned way from people on the street. "They do it all the time. They know me. I'm the Lotus guy."

People ask him questions like, Will there be Irish music this year? Over the past few years it's been, Is Movits coming back? "And if the answer is yes, they get really excited. If I say no, it's, 'Why not?'"

Movits is a Swedish band that plays swing and hip hop. And yes, they're performing at the festival this year for the fourth time.

Music Junkie



Williams has been programming music for Lotus since the very beginning, in 1994. His obsession with music can be traced back to 1968. That's when his family moved to London. He was 11 years old. When he heard music he liked, he would get more albums by that artist. Then he would get more music distributed by that label.

"By the time I was 17, I had one whole wall of my albums. My mother hated it," he says. At this point, he's gotten rid of most of the records, cassettes and CDs he collected.

Fast-forward to the early-1980s, he scored a job programming musical acts for two nightclubs in Bloomington Second Story and Jake's.

Who's Who Of Musicians



The top of his desk is littered with papers, mostly drafts of the schedule for this year's festival. In his desk drawer, that's where he keeps his history. He pulls out yellowed papers clearly from back in the typewriter days, typed in all caps. It's a list of artists he booked for Jake's starting in 1983. How many tickets were sold. How much money they made.

The musician who pops up most often is Richard Thompson. Williams booked him ten times.

There are a couple other artists that jump off the page.

"R.E.M. May 26, 1983. It was a Thursday night. Bar sales, $1500. There were 300 people in the room," he reads.

He remembers getting a call from R.E.M.'s agent who asked to send Williams a copy of the band's EP. "And, oh boy did I love it. I told them yes. I can pay you $350."

R.E.M.'s debut album Murmur was released a month before they played that show at Jake's.

Looking at the list, it's a who's who of musicians, from Tito Puente in 1984 to Arlo Guthrie and reggae artist Jimmy Cliff in 1985.

Flip the page to 1989, "There she is, in lowercase," one of the artists he's most proud of booking. "kd lang was on a Tuesday, August 15, 1989. About to be really famous. She was on the cusp," he says.

More than 800 tickets sold. Over $10,000 in revenue. kd lang won the Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance that year.

Williams booked shows for five more years, then Jake's changed ownership and became a dance club. "They fired me in April of 1994."

But he wasn't out of work for long. Three months later, he was part of the first meeting to start the world music festival that would become Lotus.

Memory For Music



Replacing the papers, he closes the drawer on his past and picks up the present this year's schedule for the festival. He needs these papers to help him keep everything straight. He could talk about his life in music all day, but his memory for other stuff just isn't what it used to be.

"If you put me on a lectern and I'm supposed remember all that stuff and just give a lecture on it, I would be dead in 30-seconds, because I wouldn't remember it. I can't keep things in my head anymore," he says.

That's part of why he stepped down as Executive Director recently. He's more interested in music than in being the face of Lotus when it comes to fundraising and marketing.

Attendees this year will see him on stage briefly Thursday evening. He's paying tribute to an employee who's retiring. But other than that, Williams prefers to be on the sidelines.

Let's Dance



Back on his computer, he goes to the website for the group Las Cafeteras. (He heard about them through that world music listserv.) They'll be performing on the same stage as Movits Saturday night.

Las Cafeteras play a kind of Mexican folk music called son jarocho. He finds a song on their website. He guarantees I'll recognize it. "The most famous and the first hit single for a Spanish-speaking artist," he says. "Every son jarocho band in the world plays La Bamba."

It's at moments like this when Lee Williams the music junkie shines through.

The music crescendos and that recognizable tune takes over. He starts dancing in his chair, waving his arms in the air and grinning.

"Love it! How can you not," he says.

You might not see him on stage, but keep your eye out for the tall, lanky guy standing in the wings. No doubt, he'll be dancing.

That's Lee Williams, The Lotus Guy.

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