Austin’s live band karaoke scene offers rocking alternative to old classics, discovers new talents

Remember the old karaoke machines with a bad selection of music and those landscape images scrolling on the background of the lyrics? Forget that. You are in Austin, and in Austin, music is always great. Austin's karaoke scene is still a fetus if compared with the amount of local bands playing gigs around town. But only in a karaoke gig can a nobody win the crowd with an amazing performance or kill everybody in the room with a banshee scream. 

Karaoke has been a weird pastime since its birth day, no wonder it was born in Japan. But in a town where weird mean awesome and mainstream means boring, it might become a fever-turning epidemic. The local hip, modern and rebellious air cached on what can be considered one of the lamest types of entertainment and has made karaoke into a show to be seen.

Karaoke Underground brings punk and indie rock to the amateurs, getting rid of the 15 minutes radio hits that usually populate old karaoke machines. For the fans that always complain about the bad music selection, Karaoke Underground, founded by Hannah Ford and Kaleb Asplund, was born with the purpose of erasing karaoke's set list's dark past. Ford and Asplund brought their karaoke addiction from the source, Japan, but the bad selection of music helped them decide to open their own Austin style of karaoke.

"Singing karaoke is fun in and of itself, but when you can sing songs that you love at the top of your lungs to a room of people that love them too, it's a whole other level of awesome." said Ford.

With a list made of old and new, rock and indie anthems, from the mellow sound of Belle & Sebastian to dynamic essence of Iggy Pop, passing by the more accustomed karaoke favorites New Order and The Ramones, Ford's and Asplund's business honor the name "underground."

"Kaleb produces the videos these days and he works mostly by request.  The songs mostly fall into the punk or indie genres and none made the Top 40 on commercial radio in the U.S.  We have 525 songs on our list, and it's growing all the time," said Ford.

Karaoke Apocalypse is not just any karaoke especially because there are no karaoke machines. Replacing the bad recording is a rock band with only one spot vacant: the microphone. The live band, The Dead Motley Sex Maidens, make up Karaoke Apocalypse and is constituted by guitarists Chepo Peña and Mario Alvarez, bassist Chris Nine, drummer Adam Tyner with hostess Mel Joulwan and the singer which can be any person in any stage of attunement or drunkenness.

"We're really lucky and get amazing singers. I guess because everyone here is a musician. If they can't sing, they at least have energy and put on a great show. But we have had some singers that have absolutely no idea what they're doing, which is really hard to deal with. But that's part of the gig", said Tyner.

The band, that regularly plays at The Nomad and The Highball once a month, attracted a crowd of the brave singers and karaoke music enthusiastic at Thunderbird Coffee on September 5th in support of Peña's Star Wars meets La Loteria art project "Space Loteria." The crowd was so excited and the singers were so good that if it wasn't for the pedal activated screen with the lyrics in front of the microphone, a misinformed passerby might have mistaken the karaoke for one of the many new local bands. But Karaoke Apocalypse is not looking for a permanent singer.

"Obviously we are not in it to ‘make it big' since we play covers. We just want to have a blast playing songs we love." said Tyner.

Speakeasy Superstar brings the live band concept to a whole other level. The band, constituted by Gred Williams on the sax and guitar, Glenn Rexach on the guitar, Dave Scher on the bass and keys and Cecilio Ruiz on the drums, don't play just for anyone. Speakeasy's karaoke band is the stage of a talent competition and every Wednesday the amateur get a step closer towards the grand prize of $5,000, a booking contract with BBA/Management & Booking, and an original single produced and recorded by a local recording studio. But there is a catch. There will be preliminaries to quality for quarter finals, semi finals and finals.

"(The point of a live karaoke is) to give singers the opportunity to work with Austin's finest musicians and front the band of their dreams, using a common list of karaoke tunes as the vehicle." said Williams.