‘Everything’s Pretty Much Back to Normal’: Karaoke Hosts and Owners Talk the Long Road to Recovery Following 2020 COVID Shutdown
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Joey Park decided to get out of the karaoke business altogether. The co-owner of Baby Grand — a renowned New York karaoke institution for nearly a decade, with locations in both lower Manhattan and the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn — Park was forced to close both locations at the height of the city’s 2020 shutdown-induced inactivity.
Related
Cole Swindell on the Inspirations Behind 'She Had Me at Heads Carolina' & His Own Karaoke Origin…
“I sold my condo and moved to Bloomington, Indiana, to retire early, essentially,” he explains. “I started this woodworking career. I bought all my shop tools. I had a 4,500-square-foot shop, and I started to build fine furniture, like learning how to build… I just went all-in on this.”
More from Billboard
But upon a return visit to New York a year and a half later, he felt karaoke calling back to him. “I realized there were so many of these commercial spaces that were available or vacated, and I thought, ‘Well, these landlords must be hurting, so let me see if I can get any kind of a deal.'” His instincts proved correct, and he was able to locate a space near Manhattan’s Union Square — the previous site of a different karaoke venue, Karaoke One7 — that he and his partners believed could work for a new Baby Grand site.
Despite the setbacks and discouragement of years earlier, Park was convinced that interest was still there in what Baby Grand could offer New York’s karaoke community. “I saw so many of my customers trying to desperately hold onto the feeling of karaoke by doing Zoom karaoke or YouTube karaoke or whatever the hell they were doing,” he recalls. “It was just so sad. I thought, ‘If there’s ever an opportunity to rebuild Baby Grand or the karaoke community at large, I’m gonna do it.'”
Baby Grand reopened at its new location in June, with a Tribeca Film Festival afterparty kicked off by a performance from Glee alum Dianna Agron. It was another encouraging sign that after a devastating year for the industry — few businesses were as COVID-unfriendly as one offering an activity built around drunk people gathering into tight enclosed spaces to essentially shout at one another — karaoke was finally fully back in America.
“I think once people got over the general fear of COVID — and once more people, you know, got vaccinated — then everything’s pretty much back to normal,” says Jason Adkins, karaoke host at Lipstick Lounge in Nashville.
It’s a return to normalcy that’s happened slowly over the course of the past two years — rather hesitantly at first. Joe Zara, GM of karaoke bar Hula Hula in Seattle, remembers tiptoeing back into the karaoke waters he did upon reopening in February 2021: “We could open at 25% seating. The tables all had to be 6 feet apart. We had no tables within 10 feet of the stage. Had to wear a mask to sing. And I was the only employee. I had a door guy that checked vax cards and IDs, a kitchen guy that cooked the food, and I bartended and ran all the tables.”
Old habits died hard with his customers at that point, who were not ready to extend social distancing to their karaoke routines. “People were just so excited to be not at home — I had to stop people from going up to each other,” Zara says. “It was a strange way to run a bar, because you couldn’t go up to somebody’s table and tell them, ‘Hey, I loved you guys.’ I had to say, ‘You can’t do that.'”
And in those early days of reopening, KJs (karaoke jockeys) had to be particularly strict about observing protocols when it came to masking and sanitation. “When I first started doing karaoke again after COVID, I made sure I sanitized the mics between every single person, and I always wore a mask while hosting,” says KJ Danny, veteran of Melody Bar in Westchester, Calif. and The Shack in Playa del Rey, Calif. “I always had a huge thing of Clorox wipes.”
A year or two later, most KJs are still diligent about sanitation — “Honestly, [the microphones] should be sanitized anyways,” Danny says, “[since] people are putting them near their mouth, spitting on them…” — but masking has gotten admittedly lax for many. “All the waitresses and myself were wearing one when we first reopened,” says KJ Shane, karaoke host at Backstage Bar in Culver City, Calif. “But now, there’s nothing.”
Much of the policy precautions remaining at karaoke establishments this deep into the COVID era are centered around what the industry refers to as “microphone condoms”: disposable covers that go over the microphone for each use, supposedly protecting the mic from the germs of individual performers. Some KJs are skeptical how much they really help — “It’s made of mesh, so I don’t see how much protection they can do,” KJ Danny offers — especially because patrons often end up reusing them anyway, or not asking for them in the first place.
But the fact of the matter is, most in the karaoke industry report that patrons are not nearly as concerned about COVID as they were a year or two ago. “It was very hard to get a room full of people to do karaoke in the beginning,” says Darran Mosley, KJ of Misfit Toy Karaoke, Bloomington, Ind. “But now, I think we’re down to a 1 percent mortality rate in the United States. Your driving to karaoke might be more dangerous now than actually singing karaoke, as far as COVID is concerned… people are approaching it from that angle, that the worst part is you have to miss work.”
Part of the current return to normalcy in karaoke establishments may also have to do with the inherent normalizing impact of simply being around a bunch of other karaoke people. “There’s probably some endogeneity when it comes to the people who show up to karaoke,” says Mike Cortes, another of Baby Grand’s co-owners. “Obviously, the ones who show up are the ones who are extroverts to begin with, and they have a real ‘f–k it’ attitude. So, they’re most likely also like, ‘If I get it, I get it,’ or, ‘I already got it. Maybe my antibodies are strong enough to resist the next thing.'”
Which isn’t to say all karaoke patrons share the confidence of Baby Grand’s core constituency. Maricela Olivas, karaoke animator at karaoke bar and restaurant El Güacalito, says that the health risks inherent in COVID-era karaoke have resulted in a demographic shift at his establishment. “Before the pandemic, a lot of older people would show up to karaoke to sing — I would see the same older men and women at the restaurant,” he says. “But after the pandemic, that crowd has disappeared. Now, it’s a younger crowd, who’s probably not that afraid of COVID.”
And it’s not just some of the patrons who are wary. Liz Lewis, who used to run karaoke at The Shack in the pre-pandemic years, has since left her post to return behind the bar — with concerns about her own health being one of the primary reasons why: “When you’re behind the bar, you’re five, six feet away from people — but when you’re signing someone up for karaoke, they’re, like, in your lap. So for me, I don’t know if it was mental or what, but it was a little scary.”
Anxieties about close customer proximity have forced some KJs to get creative with their policy changes. Kiki Park, owner of Kiki Karaoke in Los Angeles, developed an app with a friend of hers that allowed patrons to submit their karaoke choices remotely, rather than delivering them personally. “Not having someone breathe down on you and have a long conversation when you’re trying to run a show… has been a big game-changer for me,” she explains.
But whatever it’s taken for karaoke bars to adjust to the new normal, everyone interviewed for this article seems to agree: Karaoke is back, at levels equal to if not superior to where they were pre-pandemic. What’s more, KJ Shane says, patrons’ outlooks — and their karaoke picks — are generally more upbeat and positive than ever. “Everybody seems to be more happy,” he offers. “And the song selections, everybody seems to be doing more of the dancey stuff… In the past, I would notice people would want to be noticed more, and they’ll sing really long ballads. Long, drawn-out ballads. And now everybody’s singing really upbeat, fun dance stuff.”
And not only is Baby Grand fully open and thriving again after disappearing in 2020, but they just opened a private event space for the first time. “In time for corporate holiday parties,” Cortes notes.
