A woman stood, hands grasping a microphone on the stage at The Locker Room. Her short blonde hair bounced as she swayed on the stage singing Carrie Underwood’s “Last Name.”
“And I don’t even know my last name,” the Muncie native belted as the song ended. Amber Griffith placed the microphone back onto the stand and weaved her way through the crowd, back to a table opposite the bar.
Every Thursday, Griffith goes to The Locker Room with a group of friends for penny pitchers but stays until the end of the night to sing songs during karaoke.
“I’ve always loved performing ever since I was a little girl,” Griffith said. “All through high school, I was in show choir, and I fell in love with being on stage.”
Griffith’s Thursday nights start when she meets her friends at the corner of Washington and Calvert streets at 8:30 p.m. From there, they walk to The Locker Room and sit at their usual booth across from the bar and start drinking penny pitchers.
Griffith said she still gets nervous before she hits the stage, so her friends often put her name down to sing a Carrie Underwood song or duet Wilson Phillips’ “Hold On.”
“We started singing Wilson Phillips every time we went during summer, so much I’m sure people got sick of it,” Griffith said. “But we sing it for fun, and there’s always that heartbroken girl at the bar that needs to hear an uplifting song.”
Karaoke starts at 11 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at the bar. Garry Svetic, a senior telecommunications major, deejays both nights and is always trying to get people to take the stage.
Svetic has played at The Locker Room for a year and a half. Every week, he sets up his system on the stage above the entrance.
“It’s really a fantastic bar to come out to,” Svetic said. “It’s a low-key place, and there are never any problems no matter how crowded or crazy it gets.”
Two blocks down the road, flashing lights above a green canopy illuminate a sign reading “The Chug.”
Inside, rotating disco lights flash around the room. Junior theatre majors Mike Ferraro and Mary Kate Young stood in the back right corner of the room waiting to sing a song.
DJ Rob Meadows stood in front of them and held a dry erase board with two songs on it: “I’m On A Boat” and “I Just Had Sex” by The Lonely Island. It was up to the audience to decide who sang what song. It’s DJ Rob’s Kamikaze Karaoke.
The applause was unanimous, and Young took the microphone first singing “I’m On a Boat,” followed by Ferraro singing “I Just Had Sex.”
“I didn’t know the song at all, but I wasn’t going to be one of those people that talked through a song,” Young said. “I at least tried to sing it. It’s my first time here, so I’m here to have fun and be a good sport.”
Young and her friends decided to go out and enjoy drinks to start the weekend with singing at the bar.
“It’s great because we do this for school, and we are constantly judged,” Young said. “Here, we can be great or terrible, but it doesn’t matter because everyone’s here to have a good time.”
The Chug is a less crowded bar than The Locker Room. Pool tables, darts and $2 Pabst Blue Ribbons draw in the crowd Thursdays. Karaoke starts at 11 p.m.
Meadows has been a disc jockey for 15 years. Known for his trivia madness, he started doing karaoke for The Chug six months ago. Meadows said he wanted to find a way to incorporate the crowd more than other karaoke nights he had attended.
“Sometimes, I would go and there would be two or three minutes between performances,” Meadows said. “I want to get as many in as I can, so everyone gets a chance.”
