My Story

Hailing from Bowling Green, KY, bassist Lee Williams has never been able to resist the call of music.

            At the age of 13 he picked the lock on his older brother’s bedroom with a bobby pin, specifically because he knew there was a bass guitar inside. By the age of 16 he was loading his friends into his Ford Explorer to tour venues, garages, and basements across the Midwestern and Southern states with a restricted driver’s license that didn’t allow him to leave his home state of Kentucky. At 18 he was accepted into Belmont University’s School of Music, but within his first week on campus he had deferred his enrollment to accept an offer to tour. By his mid-20’s he had performed in nearly every state and countries across the Americas, had worked with artists signed to independent and major labels alike, and had shared stages with many of his personal heroes, ranging from Weezer to Wilco.

            Williams came up in Bowling Green at a time when it was formulating a slew of bands which would garner attention from national music press and make significant waves in the world of Alternative Rock, including Cage the Elephant, Morning Teleportation, and his own Sleeper Agent. These friends and role models pushed him to work as hard as he could to make ear-catching music and take it to as many people as was possible. Alternative Rock band Sleeper Agent, which he joined in 2010, was his first true success—with Williams in tow as bassist, background vocalist, and (for many years) tour manager, that band recorded with legendary producer Jay Joyce, signed to Sony/RCA, was featured in publications like Spin Magazine and Rolling Stone, and performed on both Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show and David Letterman’s Late Show.

            When Sleeper Agent parted ways in 2015, Williams began pushing into other avenues, growing more and more interested in music production and developing more complex stage shows for larger artists. After cutting his teeth with friends and local artists, he left Bowling Green and returned to Nashville and Belmont University in 2019 seeking more opportunities and a wider skill set. Since then he has had the pleasure to work with artists including Ben Rector, JD Clayton, Emily Nenni, the Josephines, Derik Hultquist, Becca Neighbor, and many more.