The Kenwick-based couple Lee Carroll and Connie Milligan run GreenRoom Exchange, a nonprofit that combines their love for travel, music and community. Photo furnished
In 2020, after years of honing their community-building skills — he as a musician and bandleader for a variety of local and regional acts; she as a licensed clinical social worker with an entrepreneurial spirit — Lexington couple Lee Carroll and Connie Milligan decided to pool their resources and passions into a collective project. Building on their love of travel and world music, they formed the non-profit GreenRoom Exchange with the mission of sharing music and culture with the Lexington community through a series of concerts and events featuring musicians from all over the world.
Carroll and Milligan met 15 years ago, when Carroll, who is originally from Cave City but was living in Pennsylvania at the time, was in Lexington to participate in a music celebration for another local musician. Milligan, an Alabama transplant who originally moved to Lexington to go to school at Transylvania University, had been tasked with throwing a party for the musicians.
“I had this huge party and Lee pitched in so much, it was like we were hosting together,” she explained. “It kind of hasn’t ever stopped. All these years later we’re still providing an audience and hospitality for musicians and music lovers.”
Forming GreenRoom Exchange seemed a perfect fit for the couple, who married in 2012, to fuse their passion for music, travel and other cultures. Over the past four years, they have brought performers from Senegal, Haiti, France and Cuba, among other places, to Lexington stages. The musicians are treated like more than just performers passing through. Often hosting the performers in their own home or in the homes of friends, Carroll and Milligan take a focused interest in the personal stories and backgrounds of the performers they host, and said they quickly become like family. Many of the visiting music makers have declared Lexington the friendliest town they have visited and have made it a special point to come back.
Carroll often gets in the studio with the musicians, mentoring them on the process of getting their music recorded and expanding their audience. On a recent trip to New York, the couple attended Global Fest, an annual showcase for international music artists, with one of the first GreenRoom Exchange guest musicians, Senegalese artist Alioune Guisse.
Guisse says working with the organization has been a relaunch for his career.
“They got me back on stage since I have come to the United States and they have helped me develop my music so it is being heard internationally,” he said. In a moment of complete kismet, Milligan first met Guisse who is from Senegal when he was her Uber driver in Chicago. She recounted how Guisse was playing music in the car that was wonderful. She inquired who it was they were listening to, and Alioune explained it was his own original music.
Milligan called Carroll to share the music, and he was intrigued. Since that fateful Uber ride, Carroll and Guisse have performed together many times in Lexington and New York and have recorded music together that they hope to share with the world — a world made bigger and wider for us all thanks to Lee Carroll and Connie Milligan and GreenRoom Exchange.
Keyboardist and arranger Lee Carroll performs with a variety of local and international musicians, and also works to bring musicians from different cultures to Lexington to perform and collaborate. Photo furnished
Carroll and Milligan recently sat down with Smiley Pete writer Celeste Lewis to answer a few questions about their work and lives.
What inspired you to start your non-profit, GreenRoom Exchange and bring world music to Lexington?
LC: For us, it was an evolution. When we met, we decided we wanted to travel, first to Europe, then Africa and Cuba. With my background in music and interest in African rhythm and its impact on western popular music, it was natural that we would seek out music wherever we traveled. But there was always Connie’s interest in social, cultural and spiritual aspects, which really can’t be separated from music and art.
CM: The unifying idea for our travel was that we wanted to see places through the “eyes of those who live there.” Little did we know that this would be the impetus for the development of GreenRoom Exchange. It was our trip to Cuba, where we stayed with a local family who bowled us over, humbled us, and made the desire to share our experiences with our friends back home so strong that we hosted our first official [GreenRoom Exchange] event with our Cuban interpreter.
LC: In addition, we had been hosting Gideon Alorwoyie’s 10-member Afrikania dance and drum group here in Lexington for many years prior to starting GreenRoom Exchange. They stayed in our home and neighbors’ homes, and we became close like family. So, this became a template for how we would structure GreenRoom Exchange.
What do you see as the biggest challenges for arts non-profits in Lexington?
LC: Limited resources, money and available venues. All the local non-profits face the same challenges.
CM: When presenting events that are not mainstream, we are all trying to engage the same 1,000 people who are interested in a diversity of artistic expression. That is what we are trying to change. We know that world class cities offer a great variety of culturally diverse artistic offerings. It is one of our goals to help make Lexington a city that is considered a destination for the arts, along with the usual offerings of bourbon, basketball and horses.
Tell me a little about what community means to you both and your work.
LC: It’s everything to us. Lexington has such a supportive and loving creative community. The artists stay at our home and with neighbors. We cook together and celebrate our commonalities with friends and neighbors. The musicians we bring to Lexington always want to come back, several have expressed a desire to move here.
CM: What separates GreenRoom Exchange from other presenters of world music is our focus on community engagement. We all benefit. The artists are invited to provide workshops, go to our local restaurants and meet people. We always host an after-party so the musicians and supporters can meet one another, serving the food of the musicians’ culture. It’s a delightful exchange. We develop friendships that make our interactions more personal, interesting and long-lasting.
Connie, you’re very in tune with social reform and personal development. Tell me about where that comes from and your work outside of GreenRoom Exchange.
CM: I’m a licensed clinical social worker with 40 years’ experience in the mental health and social justice reform arena. Creating change, personally and in systems, has always been at the heart of what I do.
I’ve helped create numerous statewide service delivery systems, one of which is the Fayette Mental Health Diversion Court, where I currently serve as the clinical director, and it is seen as a model for statewide expansion. I also consult and train nationally for SAMHSA (Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration) on implementing criminal justice diversion programs and trauma informed care. In addition, I have a private practice where I provide personal therapy and transformational life coaching and training.
GreenRoom Exchange is an extension of this work in that it embodies the same values and beliefs. The essence of both is, as our motto says, “we are more alike than different” — that we can learn from one another, grow and become better for having shared what our different cultures have to teach us.
Lee, you are a music man. How did music come into your life? Tell me a little about what is happening with your own music currently.
LC: I grew up in Cave City, playing in dance bands. I didn’t have local role models; the music that I heard on the radio — WLAC in Nashville for R&B and gospel and Chicago’s WLS for pop —was what moved me. It was a very exciting moment in American music history: a Renaissance where radio defined tastes and music was everything. I taught myself to play and later went to Berklee College of Music before going to Nashville to join The Judds, and, later, Exile. Music was my life for over 25 years before becoming a business owner.
What is a favorite way to recharge as a couple?
LC: Each time we visit a new place we find inspiration, immersing ourselves in the culture. We’re always at our best when traveling, and each time we return with renewed enthusiasm for GreenRoom and our mission to share other cultures with our community in Lexington.
CM: I agree, traveling is pure joy for us. It expands our understanding of the world and gives us more impetus to bring what we’ve learned back to Lexington. Being able to share this through GreenRoom Exchange, using the universal language of music and the arts, gives us great delight.