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You're on the mike

Karaoke night at the American Legion Hall is a time to chat, dance and to show off vocal skills.

By S.I. ROSENBAUM
Published July 14, 2006

[Times photo: Brian Cassella]

Tanya MacFarland does her best to belt out Aretha Franklin’s Respect at the American Legion Hall’s karaoke night despite losing her voice the night before. Go to photo gallery with audio

RIVERVIEW

The little sign outside the American Legion Hall on U.S. 301 says: Karaoke. 8 p.m.

Inside, cigarette smoke curls in the air, and a woman named Shirley croons Unchained Melody into a microphone.

Steve Sapp is dancing with his wife.

Patricia Burney is dancing with her daughter.

They don't know each other. But sometimes, people's lives brush up against each other in unexpected ways.

Sometimes a song sung at the Legion Hall can change everything.

1. Steve Sapp sings,

It's 4 in the morning

And once more the dawning

Just woke up the wanting in me

Sapp is a big guy, 57, with gray hair slicked back and a gray moustache and a gold chain and two big rings on his right hand.

He was a lineman for a telephone company. He and his partner used to drive all over, and the truck didn't have a radio, so they'd sing old songs they knew.

The first time Sapp sang in front of an audience, it was at a Legion Hall.

He was there with one of his old partners from the telephone company. He was nervous.

"We sang a song and it stunk," he says. "My wife was sitting there and she's just about to throw up."

His friend turned to him and said, "Sing like you do at work."

So Sapp did.

This time, people asked his wife, "Where have you been keeping him?"

At home, now, there are three karaoke machines.

"One in the living room, the wife's got one in the bedroom, and I got one in the garage."

He and his wife, Joyce, come to the Legion Hall every Friday without fail. He always brings a case of his own karaoke CDs.

His voice is fine and mellow, with a little upward hitch like a sob at the end of each note:

She tries but she can't tell

how she feels, but I know too well

just what she's going through.

It does something to him, singing. It lets out stress. He feels lighter.

2. Janet Ulman walks to the microphone in her halter top and jeans, looks out under the brown bangs that come down to her eyelashes, and belts:

Well I'm an eight-ball shootin', double-fisted, drinkin' son-of-a-gun

I wear my jeans a little tight just to watch the little boys come undone.

She's 31. Mother of three. The first time she came here, it was her aunt Joyce's birthday. Her uncle, Steve Sapp, threw a surprise party at the Legion Hall.

To her surprise, she fell in love with the place.

She and her husband Joe, 38, used to go out every Friday night to a rowdy bar.

"It seems like there was always some kind of confrontation," she said.

Now, they come out to the Legion Hall. They're the only people here under 50 most nights, but they like it that way.

"I couldn't go to a normal karaoke bar and sing," she says. "I wouldn't feel this way."

Janet sings,

I've been waitin' all week just to have a good time

So bring on them cowboys and their pickup lines

Her voice is clear and strong, bouncing off the wood-paneled walls.

3. Tanya MacFarland always wanted to be a singer.

When she was 8, her grandmother got her a karaoke machine. Her parents would make her stay up all night for their parties, singing karaoke until dawn.

At 26, she's pretty enough to be a star: thin-hipped, with a heart-shaped, elfin face.

But she never got near that dream. She became scared of singing for an audience. Then came a baby, marriage, a job in the billing department of an insurance company.

One Saturday morning her best friend, Janet Ulman, called her up to tell her about the amazing Friday night she'd had at the Legion Hall.

"Janet. The Legion Hall?" MacFarland asked.

She let herself be coaxed into coming along next time.

Now the two of them are singing a duet about a wife and her husband's lover, a number they've been practicing all week:

Janet sings,

As soon as he's away from me

In your arms is where he wants to be

Tanya sings,

But you're the one he rushes home to

You're the one he gave his name to

She hits a long, wailing note, and people clap.

Her stage fright is almost gone.

Tonight, she's invited her whole family to listen to her sing, like they did when she was a little girl.

4. Patricia Burney is sitting in the shadows, listening.

This place - with all these people, and the flag bunting hanging from the ceiling, the framed sepia portraits of old-time Legionnaires, the bar in the back - seems strange to her.

"Where the hell am I?" she asks. "That's the way I feel."

She is 70 years old.

Until tonight, she hadn't really left her house in nine years.

Not since her husband died.

"I lost my love," she says.

Behind her tinted glasses, tears are sliding down her face.

"He was my best friend," she says.

She went out only for groceries. She didn't visit her children.

You've got to be around people, her family told her.

No, I don't, she said.

She said that for nine years.

Then her granddaughter, Tanya MacFarland, asked her to come to the Legion Hall.

Burney was a singer when she was young. She even cut a record once, before smoking ruined her vocal chords. She always believed her granddaughter could go further. She still does.

"I love her," she says. "I've always had faith in her.

It was Burney, after all, who got Tanya that karaoke machine all those years ago.

Come to the Legion Hall and hear me sing, Tanya begged her.

So here she is.

"I'd do anything for Tanya," Burney says.

A woman named Shirley has the mike. Burney's daughter, Rose, comes and pulls her onto the dance floor. Men are dancing with their wives, their hands entwined.

Time goes by so slowly,

Shirley sings,

Time can do so much.

S.I. Rosenbaum can be reached at 661-2442 or srosenbaum@sptimes.com.

[Last modified July 13, 2006, 13:55:08]