Portrait of the Artist as a Young Karaoke-ist.

In the late 90's, if you were in Saginaw, Michigan, and you drove West on State street until you were almost clear out of town.....you drive until you get to some weird fork in the road......

Well, right in the middle of that fork was a little house that was the famous bar called Casey O'Coffey's. And I never went in there, except on the occasional Saturday night during the Fall/Winter of '98-'99.

I think back with great fondness to Casey's, because it was always warm and welcoming on those bitterly cold Michigan winter nights. And, not to put too fine a point on it, there was precious little else in Saginaw that was warm and welcoming on a bitterly cold Michigan winter's night; at least, not for me.

Saturday at Casey's was Karaoke Night.

Now, there was a bunch of us that had mistakenly signed contracts to perform in a Children's Theatre company, and Saturday nights were a chance to perform for adults for a change. No matter how bad the week was, there was always merriment to be had at that little bar. And on Saturday nights, it was always packed.

There were regulars; but I only really knew them by the songs they would sing.

There was the guy who sang New York, New York with a gusto that eclipsed his occasional move to the flatter part of the scale.
There was this charming old fellow who would break us up with his rendition of Funky Cold Medina. I still smile at the memory of it.
There was this woman who would always sing this sad country song about Strawberry Wine....

And then, there was us.

Everybody had their things, of course....sometimes, some of us would our own, and wing a duet, or a trio....heavenly harmony abounded. I can recall Aaron singing some Neville Brothers number, pitch perfect. Misti singing the hell out of a Barenaked Ladies ditty. And you couldn't help but dance when Jason did the Ants Marching bit from The Dave Matthews Band.

Me....I did songs that didn't require a whole lot of melody. Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama; Travelin' Band by Creedence. But what tore the house down was the night Jason and I sang Southern Cross by CSN. The harmony still lingers like the memory of a fine cigar.

It was odd in a wonderful way, really......there was griping and sniping and some bad blood in that company, but at the table in the corner on a Saturday night, all that was forgotten. The smiles were broadened by the never-ending pitchers of cheap beer; the malice temporarily forgotten in the mist of Marlboros.

Casey's is gone now; the building is still there, but there's another bar there now. Like so many things of the past, they have faded like the last chord of A Day In The Life, but they linger in the memory, like the taste of 30 year old Scotch.

And there are some times, in the bitter cold of a Northern State winter, that I wish I had a place like that to go, and a circle of friends like that to go with.

I really could use it.

I surely could.