Karaoke Can Bring Us All Together

BlogHer 2011, the Mother of All Momblogger Conferences, is upon us; and by the time this is published, I will be in the thick of it.  I’ve never been before, but for some reason, I have always assumed that karaoke will be included among the other notorious shenanigans.  And whenever I think of karaoke, I think of this story.  How I lost my karaoke virginity in a seedy motel in West Virginia.

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Snowshoe, West Virginia.  January, 1998

Near the top of the mountain, there’s a series of switchbacks that makes me a little dizzy every time I drive up this way.

It stopped snowing sometime early this morning, but the plows haven’t been able to keep up.  I’m in four-wheel drive, but I still slide through the corner, which makes the toxic stew in my stomach churn and foam.  I slow down a bit, but the next turn sloshes the roiling sludge up one side of my gut and fills my throat.

No time to pull over, and nowhere to do it anyway: the shoulder is banked up with snow.  I open the door and lean out as I take the next right-hand switchback, jettisoning last night’s Salisbury Steak dinner special and the fuming dregs of all the beer and liquor that bartender kept forcing on me.  My eyes water as I try to focus on the road again.  I close the door and open the window, spitting into the cold fog. I feel a little better.

The storm hit Charlottesville on Wednesday afternoon, and by the next morning, it was almost two feet deep and still coming down.  My partner and I had been hanging siding on a house in a subdivision that didn’t even have paved roads, so there was no way we could even get in there.  I decided to jump in my Blazer and drive the three hours to Snowshoe, ski all day, and then drive back home.

It snowed off and on the day before, and after the lifts closed it started falling hard again.  I called my partner from a payphone and asked how things were going back in Charlottesville.  He said the whole town was closed down, so I said, Screw it, I’m gonna spend the night here and ski again tomorrow. 

I didn’t have enough money to stay at the resort, but I knew there was a motel in Marlinton, about 20 miles away, where rooms were around thirty bucks a night.

I checked into my room.  There was nothing to do, so I walked over to the 7-11 and got a six pack of Corona, the closest thing they had to decent beer, and watched some of the movie Billy Jack on TV.

I noticed that the sign in front of the motel said Thursdays were karaoke night at the bar.  I figured that might be some good entertainment.

My ski clothes were all I had to wear, since I thought I was just coming for the day.  I had worn neoprene bike tights under my black North Face shell pants, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to wear tights to dinner.  So I put my ski pants and my black sweater back on, and headed to the restaurant.

Besides me, there was one couple eating at the restaurant.  The bartender was also the waiter, and we chatted for a while about this and that: the weather, where I was from, the usual bullshit.  I asked him if he thought the karaoke thing was going to happen and he said, yeah, definitely–the regulars are very serious about their karaoke.  He asked me if I was going to sing, and I told him, no–hell no–I’m just gonna watch.

Dinner was filling–that’s the best I can say about it.  I had a drink before my food was ready, and the bartender brought me another one that I didn’t order, so he didn’t charge me for it. 

The karaoke host showed up a little late due to the snow, and started setting up his equipment.  And sure enough, as he did, more people trickled in, got drinks at the bar, and talked.  Everybody seemed to know each other.

When I went to get another drink, the bartender introduced me around and joked that he thought I would probably sing if they all encouraged me.  The guys–and it was all guys, no ladies so far–were all friendly and kind of excited about the storm, swapping stories about the wild rides they had been on to make it to karaoke night.  A couple of them had been on the road for more than an hour.

I hung out at the bar as the karaoke started up.

The first few singers were just awful.

The next three were even worse.

And they made some odd musical choices.  Sure, they warbled a couple popular country tunes, but a number of these bearded lumberjack-looking guys seemed to prefer pop ballads like Journey’s Open Arms. West Virginians are unpredictable.

Whenever anyone finished their song, they would come back to the bar, and order up some kind of shooters for them and their buddies, like B-52s or Kamikazes.  The bartender would always make too much and pour what was left in the shaker into a glass and give it to me.  After a while I didn’t even know what I was drinking anymore.

I think everyone else had already sung by the time the guy with the handlebar mustache took the microphone.  The murmuring stopped as his song started.

I knew the song from my childhood but it took me a few seconds to recognize it: I Started a Joke, by the Bee Gees.  But why?  That wasn’t even from Saturday Night Fever, which at least had some campy retro-novelty value.  What a weird selection.

But, by God, he nailed it!  I got chills after the first line, and they lasted throughout the song.  I hate to admit it, but I even got a little choked up.  You should listen to that song sometime.   You’d get a lump in your throat too.

Things started getting a little fuzzy by then, and the next thing I knew, I was up on stage with the mic in my hand, singing Folsom Prison Blues.  I had never karaoked before, and I had always thought it was pretty lame.  But there I was, in front of a dozen or so of my new best buds, singing my heart out.

And I gotta say: I tore that shit up.  I was the Man In Black, even if it was black Gore-Tex.

After my first number, everybody slapped me on the back and bought me drinks, congratulating me on losing my karaoke virginity.  The bartender complimented me profusely, telling me how surprised he had been to hear such a big baritone booming out of a slim guy like me.

It must have been the combination of the drinks and that special camaraderie you feel when you’re pinned down by a storm together, but I felt really close to those guys.

And I couldn’t wait to get back on stage.  I filled out the request forms as fast as I could, mostly for Johnny Cash songs, since they’re all in my range.

I’m still not sure what I stumbled onto that night.  It’s all just bits and pieces.  The bartender was definitely hitting on me–he told me how handsome I was about a dozen times.  A guy with a beard down to his beer gut totally sang “Rock Lobster.”  The last thing I remember was linking arms with five or six other guys and singing “Margaritaville.”

West Virginians are supposed to be garden variety toothless rednecks who screw their cousins and eat roadkill.

But they’re really much weirder than that.  Or maybe karaoke just reveals the weirdness in everyone.