Karaoke Queens Host At Coppei

PRESCOTT -- Deb Tiedemann was so young at the time, she doesn't even remember exactly when she first started singing songs.

The household she grew up in Livingston, Mont., in the late 1960s was always filled with her parents' favorite tunes. Her dad, who was a trucker, would play Jim Reeves, Tammy Wynette, Hank Snow, Hank Williams and Dolly Parton at the house.

Tiedemann herself was partial to Mel Tillis.

"There was just something about his voice," she said. "I just loved to hear him sing."

More than four and a half decades later, Tiedemann is still all about listening to people sing, though none of them are famous like Reeves, Williams or Tillis.

They're people like you and me, lending their voices to the lyrics and tunes we like best in a past time that you could call Touchet Valley's American Idol, but without the heartbreaking jabs from Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson, Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler.

"Invented" by Japanese drummer Daisuke Inoue in Kobe in the early 1970s, karaoke spread to Southeast Asia in the 1980s and soon made its way to the United States, its popularity bolstered in recent years by musical talent shows, including "The Voice," which originated in the Netherlands.

"Maybe it's a song they've always wanted to sing in front of a crowd or maybe it's on their bucket list, who knows," Tiedemann said about karaoke fans. "But first and foremost, it's about having fun."

Although no stranger to crooning, Tiedemann has only recently gotten into the business of hosting karaoke evenings. She and her business partner, Amy Spears, a school bus driver from Dayton, bought the sound system from Spears' former husband Travis Eaton late last summer - a karaoke box, monitor, microphones, equalizer, speakers and a library of some 5,500 songs whose lyrics singers can follow like a news anchor using a teleprompter.

Now, the duo sets up their karaoke regularly at the Tuxedo in Prescott, the Rawhide in Starbuck, and the Eagle's Hall and Thresher's (Woody's) in Dayton. This Saturday, Tiedemann and Spears will be hosting an evening of karaoke for the first time at the Coppei Cafe, 137 Main St., in Waitsburg.

"We were finding that both of us would always stay until the end (of a karaoke night)," Tiedemann said about herself and Spears, whose voice she describes as angelic. "We were looking for an opportunity to continue a tradition (started here by Eaton). The response has been excellent."

The vocal response to the karaoke hosts, who will often take requests for songs to sing themselves, but do everything to encourage singers in the crowd, has been as varied as musical tastes in the valley. Participants flip through the hosts' book of songs, whose number has since grown to 6,100, with some choosing old- time rock-n-roll, some country, some Beatles, some new wave and some hip-hop.

"Someone requested Sir Mix- a- Lot's " Baby Got Back" at the Tux the other night and everybody ended up dancing to it," Tiedemann said. Never leaving her musical roots far behind, Tiedemann likes to sing country classics. "Tennessee Flat Top Box" (Johnny Cash) is one of her personal favorites. Spears sings more rock-nroll. Tiedemann's partner was born in Spokane in 1969 and raised in the Tri Cities, where her dad worked as an advertising salesman for the Tri Cities Herald and played a variety of instruments in a light rock band.

Spears, who jokes she shouldn't be mistaken for a better-known artist with the same last name, was a classic closet singer who would goof around singing to records with friends in high school but never displayed her talent any more publicly.

Then her first husband started a karaoke business and, inevitably, she found herself practicing with him and his friends in the basement where the equipment was stored. She still recalls the first time she sang the lyrics to Shelly Fabares' "Johnnie Angel" in front of a crowd.

"My knees were shaking and my cheeks were hot," she said. "But it wasn't half bad and the crowd liked it."

Soon, she started adding more songs and now she can easily sing more than three dozen, having conquered her shyness.

"Johnny Angel was one of my dad's favorite songs," said Spears, whose father, now 67 and still a crooner, recently joined her at a karaoke night to do Elvis songs. "It reminds me of him. It's kind of a comfort thing."

But while Spears and Tiedemann need no enticement to sing, would-be karaoke singers in the audience often do

"You can always tell who needs just a little bit more encouragement," Tiedemann said. "They look through the book. They watch the other singers. We tell them 'You Should Sing.' "

And if they decline, the women simply wait until potential performers have had a couple of drinks to take the edge off their stage jitters and pretty soon, the duo has to stop taking requests well before the end of the evening to cover a lengthy impromptu repertoire. They like the songs and lyrics to remain family-friendly. That means no four-letter words.

Sometimes they have to put up with requests for the likes of "Red Solo Cup" (Toby Keith), a song Tiedemann personally feels is a "waste of oxygen."

Oh well. As long as people have a good time with it, the partners are all for it. For those who've never tried it or believe they can't carry a tune, it's worth a shot, Spears said. "How will you ever know?" she asked rhetorically.