How POETS Karaoke Came Into Being
A.K.A. Wall of Text
I was a public school teacher in Florida from 1990 to 2006. Several of the teachers would get together on Friday afternoons for drinks. We dubbed these our POETS meetings: Piss On Everything; Tomorrow's Saturday.
In 1993 I started attending karaoke shows at Cracker's Bar & Grill in Crystal River, Florida. Later that year the regular host asked me to run his show when he couldn't be there. I was hooked.
When I decided to start my own karaoke show as a hobby in 2003, the name POETS became the perfect choice for my karaoke show. My first gig was every Wednesday and Thursday at The Gypsy's Den. Soon Harley Davidson of Crystal River had me out at their show room every Saturday and Sunday afternoon for a combination of karaoke and disc jockeying. Friday nights were soon added at Manatee Lanes bowling alley bar, and Saturday nights at The Loft.
By 2004 I had accumulated several hundred discs and finally decided to step on the technology bandwagon and transfer them all to a laptop. I quit teaching altogether in 2006 and made karaoke hosting my primary profession.
When John and I decided to move to Ironwood with our friends John & Katie Melnik in 2006, it was with the intent to purchase a bar, offer karaoke during the week and live bands on the weekends. Of course, as timing would have it, we acted right as the housing market began to crash, so we were stuck with a home in Florida, one in Michigan, and no way to pay for a bar. Fortunately, Jon Decker of the Pub & Grub in Bessemer hired POETS for Thursday nights and John's band for weekends. It was a great arrangement, and oh, so much fun!
All good things must come to an end, and because we were unable to sell our house in Florida or find full time work in Michigan, John and I decided we needed to move back to Florida where I could get regular karaoke work and he could go back to teaching full time. Wouldn't you know it...within a few days of moving back to Florida we got an offer on our house and closed on it the following week! By this time however, John was in a year-long teaching contract, so we rented a small place and settled in with karaoke back at Harley Davidson weekend days & The Loft weekend nights.
We were able to move back up to Ironwood full time in 2009, and I've been doing karaoke every other Friday at Dawn's Never Inn in Hurley ever since. POETS also appears at Stutzy's Pub in Gile, J.J.'s Yale Bar in Bessemer, Joany's Sidekicks in Iron Belt, Do Drop In in Pence, Gogebic Lodge in Marenisco, Bam Bam's in Marenisco, The Wilderness in Winchester, The Gogebic County Fair, as well as several private party functions throughout the Upper Peninsula.
Today POETS boasts almost 1,800 discs containing 19,700 tracks (15,138 unique titles as of October 2011), reflecting an investment of more than $35,000. Although circumstances no longer allow me to grow my collection at the rate I used to, I still add 18 new songs every month to keep the song list fresh. Want to help? Tip your karaoke host! Or, better yet, hire her to provide a great show for your business! :-P
~Cindy Ladd, owner/operator POETS Karaoke