Isaac, Carol

Websites:  https://citizenfreak.com/artists/105291-wild-rice
Origin: Regina, Saskatchewan - Greenwood, Nova Scotia - Winnipeg, Manitoba, 🇨🇦
Biography:

Singer-songwriter Carol Isaac led a gypsy-like life before settling in Winnipeg in the latter ’60s. Born in Saskatchewan and raised in Nova Scotia, the daughter of an Air Force father, she hit the road as a solo folk music artist in her latter teens criss-crossing the country by train or by thumb to perform at coffeehouses.

“I was playing at the 4D (Fourth Dimension) coffeehouse in Fort William in 1965 when Neil Young was playing afternoons there with his band the Squires,” she said. Isaac recorded a solo album in Montreal and even appeared on radio with Tommy Hunter but put down roots in Winnipeg after playing a few gigs with country performer Eddie Laham. Meeting Bill Ivaniuk, folk duo Bill & Carol was born.

By 1969, the two had switched to electric instruments with Carol on electric guitar, Bill on bass, drummer Gord Osland, and guitarist Greg Leskiw and taken the name Wild Rice. After Leskiw left to join the Guess Who, guitarists Eddie LeClair and Dale Russell played in Wild Rice. “It was really hard after Greg left because we had a pretty good sound together,” she said.

“We opened for several acts at the Centennial Concert Hall and did a few shows with the Guess Who,” said Isaac, who recalls Guess Who manager Don Hunter bringing the group to New York to try getting RCA Records to sign them. In late 1972, Wild Rice released an album titled Together on their own Rice Records label recorded at Century 21 studios in Winnipeg and featuring the top local musicians. The group appeared in local pubs and played in the American Midwest.

“It was a bit tricky playing down there because of the Vietnam War going on and the draft,” she recalls. By the mid-1970s, the two had grown apart. Their swan song came one night performing at the Paddock restaurant on Portage Avenue. Ex-Guess Who member and friend Jim Kale was in the audience heckling the two. “I just stopped in the middle of a song,” she said, “put my guitar down, went out into the audience, grabbed Kale by the lapels and offered to take him outside to settle things. I wasn’t going to take any nonsense from him.” That was it for Wild Rice.

Isaac married Manfred Wadien and moved to Saskatchewan before returning to rural Manitoba. She had three children before the marriage broke up. She now lives in the Interlake and has driven a school bus for 15 years.

“I had to survive,” she says. “I built my own house and have a lovely garden. Doing music professionally to put food on the table sours you after awhile. My family became my focus.” For a time she and her children performed as Prairie Rose. “My only regret is that Bill and I didn’t split up the duo sooner,” she muses. “We would have grown individually the way we wanted to. I had stopped growing as a musician.”

Not long after she started as a bus driver, someone recognized Isaac from her Wild Rice days, and the word spread. “I like being invisible,” she said, “but most of the kids I drive for now know I’m a musician. They’re all musicians themselves, so I get a little bit of respect.”
John Einarson, Sept. 11, 2016