Another month, another Karaoke World Tour. It's mid-January and I've found myself in Ft. Worth, Texas. I'm visiting family there and although it's not a vacation, I do intend to find some trouble in Texas.

In downtown Ft. Worth, I was at a bar called Billy Miner's, where my aunt had been a Friday night regular for the last 147 years. I made the mistake of inquiring about nearby Karaoke places to one of my aunt's friends and he said, "You Karaoke? We're goin' ta eat supper at one ol' dem Karaoke joints later t'night." He told all the others--about 10 of them--then they started telling everybody at the bar, "Hey, Paula's nephew is a rock star 'n' he's gonna sing us some Kareeeeeeokeeeeeee next door at Riscky's. C'mon over."
 
So we had a huge table. Since the youngest among them was 25 years my senior, I decided to introduce them as 8th graders on a field trip from Altadina Middle School. They were, of course, in an art class who's assignment was to create a Fake ID. Turns out none of them were even carded... They appreciated the compliment, and the audience seemed to understand ridiculous sarcasm when they hear it.

I had put down my email address, micman@karaokeworldtour.com, on one of the song request slips so that I could get on this KJ's email list, and he noticed my URL, so he comes over to talk to me between songs. Now my aunt's friends think I'm a celebrity. When he called me up to sing Lonestar (yes, Lonestar in Texas), I nailed it and the whole place went wild!

I've never been to a k-bar where people go to WATCH Karaoke without the urge to share their bad singing with the rest of us. They were entertained, they laughed at my jokes before I sang, and clapped as though they were actually enjoying themselves. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought they were all actors and I was on some candid camera version of American Idol. Complete strangers were approaching me to "get my name" and say, "Nice job there, feller. You can sing." To top it off, there were only about 7 singers, so I got up about 6 times in 2 hours. I was actually running out of country material...

It was approaching 11 p.m. and my geriatric crew was beginning to fall asleep in their chairs. I had to make my last song a good one. Who's Your Daddy was always a winner. Right before it was my turn to sing, Randy Ro the KJ asked me if I could sing (rap) Baby Got Back, and for 2 seconds I forgot that I was in the presence of my mother. "O' course," I replied, starting to feel a little bit Cowboy, myself. He tells me that it's been requested by 2 girls that want to dance to it. Not knowing--or caring--who requested it, I was up for the challenge.

Now alcohol has been known to make big girls skinny, ugly people beautiful, and good drivers bad, but it had never been an impairment to my song judgment. Mothers everywhere should put down their fight against drunken driving in order to take on a much more important issue: Alcohol-impaired Karaoke.

Don't get me wrong, I've rapped before. And I've done Baby Got Back before, but I got my head all twisted up in the K-game, fo' shizzle. I sucked. Baby Got Back is my Kryptonite, and alcohol was my lead trunk. I couldn't see through the alcohol to realize that what I thought I wanted would actually be the death of me, Super-K.

The only highlight to that performance was getting my @$$ slapped repeatedly while performing. Good thing I apologized to Mom before I went up to sing. With that, I decided to make a quick exit. The KJ protested, teasing me with, "I've got Who's Your Daddy in next!" No, Randy, not tonight. I can't pull this crowd back up after that. I've learned my lesson: Don't mess with Sir-Mix-A-Lot in Texas.

I wish he would have said, "Y'all come back now, y' hear?"

Now, Randy Ro of Riscky's is a great KJ, and I doubt that you'll find Karaokeworldtour.com on randyro.com, but I'll certainly give him and Riscky's BBQ a great plug for making my trip to Ft. Worth a great one. Party on Randy.

See you on tour.

Kyle Rokee

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