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Williams' Technics Turntable grinds through the grooves of a 1973 Montrose record, on Monday morning,

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"Lonesome" Larry Williams is running late this morning, and it's all Tommy Castro's fault.

On Feb. 15 at 6 a.m. the control room of WWHP "The Whip" is motionless, lit faintly by the screen of the single computer that's keeping the station on the air. 10 minutes later the station slowly springs to life; lights flare up and Williams prepares to make up for lost time.

Last night in Normal, Ill. the Tommy Castro Band, a blues band, was performing a Whip-sponsored show. Williams had been out of the station since 4 p.m. the day before, and he didn't return until after midnight. He then missed his usual 5 a.m. wake-up call and is obviously eager to make up for lost time. "It's a good thing I don't drink or this could be worse," he says.

Williams looks as though he's just rolled out of bed: His salt and pepper hair is ruffled and his caterpillar eyebrows accent the sleep in his eyes.

Williams is the station manager, morning personality and one of the owners of The Whip, a small, independent radio station in Farmer City. Found on the dial at 98.3 FM and online at wwhp.com, The Whip's music style is self-described as "somewhere between Memphis and Chicago."

Lori Allen, Williams' girlfriend and co-worker, is at the station this morning as well. Allen usually drives in each morning from Charleston, Ill., but stayed at the station after Castro's show ran so late. Allen is responsible for keeping The Whip running smoothly behind the scenes. She checks the daily e-mails, gathers the information for the daily gas and oil reports, works on The Whip's web page and the station's advertising.

Allen and Williams have been together for eight years. They met while Allen was working for the Census Bureau gathering data for the 2000 census. After hearing about The Whip during a show, sponsored by the now defunct Periscope Records, Allen became a quick fan of the station and went to meet Williams. Williams invited Allen out to lunch, and then quickly persuaded her to come to work at the station. "We started dating and then he put me to work," said Allen.

There's nothing that distinguishes The Whip's station from any of the other houses in Farmer City, which boasts a population of approximately 2100 people. In fact, it wouldn't be surprising if someone looking for The Whip were to drive past it a few times before they spotted the 50-foot antenna in the back yard of the single story, modest looking gray building where Williams also lives. Inside is a neat, spacious, sky-blue carpeted living room with furniture made by listeners lining the walls. The faint aroma of Marlboros hangs in the air. With a little luck in a few months this room will host live performances by traveling singer-songwriters, but it still has to be sound-proofed.

The Whip's station is just over a year old and is a palace compared to where Williams was operating before it was built. According to Jay Pearce, who worked at The Whip shortly after it went on the air, "It [the old station] was a mess." Wood paneling covered the walls of the dark, compact building. While there was enough space to have traveling musicians perform live in the station, there wasn't much space for anything else. Williams slept on

a couch in the production office while his son Chuck (now 33), who worked regularly at the station until a year ago, slept in a room no larger than a closet.

"That station was about the size of a two-car garage," said Williams. "Now we've got a home and a two-car garage."

The Whip's control room doubles as a storage facility for its massive music library. 2,000 to 3,000 CDs line the walls, all alphabetized by artist, and newly arrived music teeters precariously on a table in the corner of the control room. Williams receives anywhere from three to 10 CDs per day from record labels and listeners. Williams owns just as many vinyl records, many of which are given to him by listeners. At the center of the room is the computer that earlier was doubling as a night light for the station. This is the nerve center for the 3,000-watt radio station, which has enough power to broadcast roughly 20 miles in all directions.

As the sun begins to illuminate Farmer City, Williams continues to work. He's got a lot to do; Tommy Castro is playing another sold-out show tonight in nearby Saybrook. He also has to upload the day's ads into the computer while preparing to go on the air, which requires two essential items: coffee and cigarettes.

"Bad news," says Williams. "We're out of Folgers." Luckily Williams finds a stash of off-brand coffee a generous listener left at the station.

At 6:45 Williams makes his first broadcast of the day, kicking off his morning show, the "Sunrise Ranch." After making his morning debut Williams cues up some of Castro's music. Themes play an important role in The Whip's play lists. "Blue Monday" is devoted to blues music and "T for Tuesday" is an all-country format. Sundays feature a Celtic show, but other than that it's generally at the programmer's discretion.

The Whip has four other DJs, Allen, Chuck, Dale Dubson and Rodney Scott who volunteer at the station. During Williams' shift he may play songs meant to acknowledge somebody's birthday, the weather or simply because he likes them. This particular morning's playlist will feature music from Wayne "The Train" Hancock, Fred Eaglesmith and tracks from Eric Clapton and JJ Cayle's CD The Road to Escondido. Much of this music comes from independent labels including Blind Big, Sugar Hill and Alligator.

You won't hear standard Top 40-style music on The Whip. You'll hear the Reggae Cowboys' cover of "Hotel California," best described as a cross between reggae and classic 1970s, rock and works by the Twangbangers, a group that was together for 26 days in the 1970s, whose song "Hot Rod Lincoln" emulates everyone from Chuck Berry to Ben E. King to Elvis to Deep Purple. The Whip thrives on works that don't necessarily fit into a given genre.

"They're (musicians) not thinking about what genre it is or what category it fits in," said Williams. "They're writing something from their heart, something that they feel. It's the non-artist that wants to put it in a category so they can understand it."

The Whip first went on the air in 1996, but its story begins a decade earlier. In 1986, Williams had just gotten out of radio. Up to that point Williams, who got into radio in high school, had worked in a number of radio markets, including a 100,000-watt station in Sarasota, Fla. After WYMG, a station in Springfield Williams had been working at, was bought by Saga communications Williams decided to get out of the business.

Still passionately devoted to music, Williams took a job with the Association of Songwriters, Composers, Artists and Publishers (ASCAP), a copyright organization. Williams would drive to various venues in downstate Illinois and license live music performances. "Basically I was a music cop," said Williams. The job provided Williams with $30,000 a year, a company car and paid his room and meal expenses while on the road. But despite having found steady work, people would constantly complain to Williams about the state of radio.

At the prompting of Dave Durham of Springfield, Williams and several investors went looking for a station to call their own. After a number of opportunities came and went, the group bought a building in Farmer City that had been home to a number of other radio stations beforehand. In 1996, The Whip went on the air for the first time.

Coincidentally 1996 was also when the Telecommunications Act was signed into law, essentially doing away with radio ownership restrictions and paving the way for corporations like Clear Channel to seemingly take over the airwaves. According to Clear Channel's Web site, the notion that it controls the majority of the country's radio waves is exaggerated. It states that of the over 13,000 stations in the country, Clear Channel owns only nine percent. However according to a 2001 Salon.com article, of the 1,200 stations Clear Channel owns, 247 of them are in the country's top 250 radio markets; Clear Channel also controls more than half of rock radio. This can make finding music outside of what Clear Channel deems worthy difficult.

Listeners regularly call in or come by the station to tell Williams how much they enjoy The Whip's music. Don Dickey is one of the station's more zealous listeners. A truck driver for Nestle, Dickey pays close to $60 a month to stream The Whip online from a laptop in his truck while he's on the road.

"I discover something new every day when I listen to him," said Dickey. "Larry will play new music before anyone else will; he'll try a lot of new stuff. I really enjoy knowing he's setting up the playlist."

Dickey also does his part to spread word of The Whip wherever he goes. Two months ago a New Jersey State Trooper was performing an inspection of Dickey's truck. The trooper spotted the laptop in the front of the truck, and after listening briefly to the station he took down The Whip's Web site address.

When he's not on the air Williams spends most of his time advertising. Ads are responsible for the bulk of the station's income, and they can be hard to come by as most ad agencies are interested in stations the focus on 18-25 year old listeners. Most of the station's sponsors are local establishments such as Lil' Porgy's Barbeque in Champaign and The Pawnshop in Rantoul.

It doesn't take much time talking with Williams before his passion for music comes to the surface. Williams has a deep respect for musicians and artists, and it's that respect along with his desire to share their work with his listeners that keeps him motivated. Williams' passion also contributes to his frustration with mainstream radio today. He hates the constant lack of musical variation from one station to another. He could care less about who has won how many Grammys or who the latest American Idol is.

"If I were to jump out off an airplane," said Williams, "and land in the northwest end of Champaign or the west end of Bloomington or the southwest side of Springfield, I couldn't tell what town I was in. They all look the same. And it's the same with radio. If I was to turn on the radio to find out what town I was in, it would all sound the same."

Williams' frustration with radio today isn't motivated by a dislike of particular artists but by his love for music. The only requirement for music to make it onto his playlist is that it be good. And Williams simply wants to get as much good music out to his listeners as he can.

"Why I like music so much is to me it's the most spiritual thing," said Williams. "You sit down and write a song about what's in your heart; you can't get more spiritual than that."