Woodyfest 2018: Bill Lewis

Bill Lewis Brings Taste of Hill Country to Okemah

Kick­ing off the 21^st annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, [Sidenote: This post marks the kick­off of a series we’ll be pub­lish­ing over the next few weeks show­cas­ing a selec­tion of artists from this year’s Woody Guthrie Folk Festival. We hope to post at least one or two arti­cles and gal­leries in this vein per week until we get through every per­former we pho­tographed at this year’s fes­ti­val. If you want to keep up on this series, please con­sider sign­ing up for our mail­ing list.] Bill Lewis brought his solo trou­ba­dor act to the base­ment of the Brick Street Café on 12 July at 11:00 A.M., two days before Woody’s birthday.

Lewis learned clas­si­cal piano in and around church in his home­town of Decatur. Finding the small town life too con­strain­ing, he moved away seek­ing cul­ture and art and other real things. [Sidenote: “The Real Bill Lewis,” Luckenbach Moon, November 2008.] He’s cur­rently based in San Antonio, Texas, tour­ing the Texas Hill Country. On Sundays you can find him at Hondo’s in Fredericksburg play­ing piano with The Any Given Sunday Band.

Lewis is a reg­u­lar at Oklahoma City’s Blue Door and is the co-writer of a folk opera about addic­tions rang­ing from fast food to opi­oids, Jack and Jill, with his col­lab­o­ra­tor, the late Michael Hilton. The pair also wrote a musi­cal, Code of the West, depict­ing the rise, fall, and redemp­tion of a cow­boy. Featuring larger-than-life, semi-myth­i­cal char­ac­ters with names like The Sky Boss, The King of the Cowboys, and The Queen of the West, the musi­cal draws inspi­ra­tion from the Legend of King Arthur. At one time, some Broadway pro­duc­ers expressed an inter­est in stag­ing it. Lewis holds out hope that it may one day see the Great White Way.

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