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Originally from Chicago, Carol Williams grew up in several small Midwestern towns, one of which consisted of 65 people near Lacrosse, Wisconsin, another in the southern tip of Indiana in the heart of Lincoln Country, with a final move to a rural area in Illinois that was at least driving distance to Chicago; “you could flag down the Amtrak train if you stood by the tracks next to the Sandwich train station”. She played flute in the school band and took piano lessons until, she says; “I realized that no amount of practicing Chopin was ever going to help me learn to play real music”. |
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) ready to play |
) me before the glasses |
) Saugatuck |
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) check out the frames |
) high school |
) far right cheerleader |
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After high school, she dropped in and out of several colleges; lived in the Hells’ Kitchen section of Manhattan where she studied guitar and waitressed; hitch-hiked around the East coast; moved back to Chicago and played flute and electric guitar in the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union Rock Band: and played piano and flute and sang in a bar band named Queens High “when the hours were 8:30 PM until 3:30 AM except on weekends, when you played until 4:30”. She went out and bought an old tenor sax after hearing someone sit in on a gig with them. “I thought it would be easy to learn. It wasn’t.” After that band broke up, she drove a taxi in Chicago, until deciding that she’d rather not get held up at gunpoint a second time. |
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) Chicago band |
) 1973 |
) my back porch |
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In 1975, she discovered Berklee College of Music in Boston, which was “the best thing that ever happened to me, musically, and also on the first day there I saw the person who I ended up spending my life with, Kimo Williams”. He knocked on her practice room door, curious to find out how anyone who played the sax so badly could get into music school. She finished two years at Berklee, then went on the road with show bands throughout Canada and New England for a year. “The gig with Al Valentino and the Playmates (of the 50s’ “Beep-Beep” novelty song) was the end of the line when he fired me onstage at some club in the middle of Connecticut. He said I was the worst tenor player he ever heard in his life. I think he was just mad because I wouldn’t wear the pink jumpsuit”. |
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) Boston 1977 |
) Kimo on Cape Cod 1977 |
) ping pong with Kimo |
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When the long-distance phone calls left them flat broke, Carol and Kimo (a Vietnam veteran) decided that the lure of free medical/dental offered by Uncle Sam was too good to pass up, so they enlisted together into the Army band program. She spent two years with the 9th Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, Washington, and another five years at Fort Sheridan, north of Chicago, playing everything from parades to jazz-band to concert band performances throughout the Midwest. Her nickname at Fort Lewis was "the Dumpster Lady", because she could always be found doing long tones and scales in front of any available flat surface- usually a brick wall or dumpster- while waiting for the parades or ceremonies to start. "Seven years in the army gave me alot of time to practice, usually outdoors in all kinds of weather. Army bands follow their divisions, so when the 9th Infantry went out on an FTX, we went too. We didn't take our instruments, though. It was serious war games and perimeter guarding." |
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) last of the WACs |
) & the glasses were FREE, too! |
) Ft. Lewis |
) LeMoynes in Tacoma |
) 1979 |
) Ft. Sheridan jazz band |
) military ceremony |
) rappelling |
In the early 1980’s Carol and Kimo played the Chicago club scene with their small band Williams and Williams, and created performances with Kimos’ big band (then called the Paumalu Symphony) now known as Kimotion. She is featured on tenor and baritone saxophone and flute on his CDs War Stories and Tracking. They bought an old storefront (a notorious brothel that had recently been closed down) on the near-northwest side and single-handedly rehabbed it for use as a rehearsal space and recording studio. “People in the neighborhood who had been customers would knock on the door to ask if we were still in business. And, yes, we found lots of weird and funky stuff behind the bar and in the attic.” Carol left the Army in 1985 after their daughter Rebecca was born. Several years later, when an opening became available in the sax section of the Army Blues jazz ensemble of the US Army Band in Washington, DC, Carol was the first woman instrumentalist ever to be chosen to audition for that band. When she didn't get the job, “they offered to take me for the parade band, but by that time I’d had enough marching.” |
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) Chicago club 1983 |
) Sarge and baby |
) jobbers |
) rehabber with money pit |
| In 1988 Carol received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to do performances and recordings, and that was the beginning of her direction as a singer-songwriter. During the next three years she played the dinner/dance circuit at Chicago area restaurants and hotels as a solo act; accompanied modern dance classes on piano at Barat College; and worked as a lifeguard at the YMCA “when the gigs dried up”. After recording her first CD Carol Williams in 1991 “I thought I was on my way. Instead, I ended up going to nursing school.” That was a long-term plan that paid off: she recorded a second CD titled Small-Town Girl in 1998. In 2005 she started working on her third CD, called I Can Live With That. In 2007 her fourth CD Letter from Chief Seattle was also completed, both with former Pat Metheny drummer Danny Gottlieb. | |||
) CD:with Mark Walker on drums, Steve Rodby on bass |
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CD: with Danny Gottlieb |
1989 |
From 2004 to 2008, she was the tenor sax player with Gary Sinise’s rock/cover group the Lt. Dan Band, which her husband Kimo founded. They performed for the USO on military bases throughout the world, and locally at fundraisers for causes such as the USO, the Viet Nam Veterans Art Museum, and Gary’s “Operation Iraqi Children”. They’ve been to Korea, Singapore and British Indian Ocean Territory, as well as many locations in the US and Europe. |
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at work 1997 |
) Lt. Dan Band with Gary Sinise, Chicago '04 |
on tour with Lt. Dan Band 2005 |
 Germany with USO 2007 |
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Aside from working as an ER nurse in a downtown Chicago hospital, Carol taught anatomy and physiology for the Medical Assisting Program at Robert Morris College in Chicago. She and Kimo are continuing their focus with their non-profit organization USVAP (the United States Veterans Art Program), and recently performed at the Hue Festival in Vietnam with their 4-piece version of "Kimotion" (www.Kimotion.org). When asked why she never considered trying her luck in LA or New York like so many other aspiring musicians do, she says: "I'd rather be a nobody in Chicago than a somebody anywhere else". |
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 Hue Vietnam 2010, with Kimotion |
 Hue Vietnam 2010 |
 Hue Vietnam 2010 |
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