Karaoke and Me

So the company Xmas party happened over the weekend at a very nice Gatlinburg hotel and it was awesome. Of course, the constant rain kind of drowned out the fun of Dollywood on Friday night (particularly for Annie), but the pool splash later on made everything okay in that department.

However, it was later that Friday night in which the real fun was had.

You see, I've never in my life done karaoke. Ericka couldn't believe this, but hey, not everyone has the chance and me being the singer guy, it seemed like an interesting and fun thing to do.

Me? I was fuckin terrified. But hey, I've performed in front of others in bars, living rooms, etc, so this isn't much different, right?

Well, it is. You see, for a singer/songwriter, his guitar is his wall. Inside the walls of this vast piece of equipment live the dreams, and ideas, the melodies that the player has perfected. And just as the singer strives to connect, he also strives to disconnect into the safety the guitar barrier provides.

Without this barrier, naked in front of everyone...well, it was a bit awkward for my first song, REM's It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine). And if you're not aware of it, perhaps you should check out the lyrics. Yeah, it's right up there with brain surgery in terms of getting it right and doing it well. But I've performed the song before and have memorized several huge chunks of the verses, so I believe I did pretty well.

The best part was when I was up there and the song has a section when you say "Right? Right!" For the latter, I put the microphone into the crowd and they shouted it after me. It felt fantastic. So yay for that!

My second song was Elton John's "Your Song", a personal favorite of mine. Just beautifully done in terms of melody and lyrics. So here I really got to spread my wings and the crowd loved it, as did I.

So what to make of these two successful outings? Well, you could say that I'm definitely looking forward to another karaoke session, as I got constant kudos the entire weekend (one woman in the bar came up and said I was best she had seen all night. Wow). Not bad for the ego, but even more encouraging for my talents. It simply makes me want to practice, to pick up a guitar again, to see where it could lead. It has been a year or more since I've played my favorite instrument, and I don't want my abilities to simply atrophy away. I've simply worked too hard over the years to let it wither.