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Doc Thompson, 60, still gets the
jitters when he steps onstage to host California Karaoke, a singing
show he started 10 years ago with his wife, Nancy. Although he
only performs a handful of songs himself, the mental-health-pro-gram- Is Doc your real name or a stage name? My real name is Buzz, but that sounds like a little boy. Doc is a nickname that was tacked on because I have a Ph.D. in psychology. How did you go from psychology to karaoke? I always wanted to be an entertainer. I worked as the program director of mental health in Fresno County for a number of years and opened a private practice, but my wife, Nancy, and I felt we were just not seeing each other enough. We went through a series of events that resulted in a complete change of lifestyle. We liquidated everything, moved to the Central Coast in 1989 and started a video store in Cayucos. I learned about karaoke in 1990 and bought a machine. Did you start singing right away? No. Both of us were terrified of the machine. We’re shy people. Nancy tried it first. In the dead of the night, about two weeks later, I started using it. And then what happened? We started California Karaoke and Nancy and I have been doing shows for about 10 years now. We sold the video store five or six years ago. We do about 13 or 14 shows a weeks depending on the season. We have four fully developed karaoke systems. How many songs is that? Close to 4,500 in our library, and we’re constantly expanding. We have country-western, pop, blues, rock, rap, reggae — everything.
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What do you usually sing? Nancy has a pretty good library of songs she can sing, but I’m a two- or three-song wonder. My favorites are “Mack the Knife,” “Love on the Rocks” and “Blueberry Hill.” I also like ‘The Battle of New Orleans.” Is there one song customers request all the time? “Love Shack” by the B-52’s. It’s a real audience participation song. There’s hardly a night when someone doesn’t request it. Do you get sick of hearing it? No. A person who has the nerve to get up there and sing wins my admiration and respect. I’ve been doing this for 10 years, but I still get nervous. When I used to lecture at universities, I would get cottonmouth and the flutters. Stage flight is an understatement. How do customers overcome their stage fright? We have a rubber chicken as an incentive. A rubber chicken? It’s a rubber chicken keychain. We picked it because a dead chicken symbolizes “I’m not chicken anymore.” We give it to people who haven’t sung in the venue before. You would be amazed how many people will sing to get the rubber chicken. How many is that? A lot. True story: Once a woman who came to one of our shows was in the Yosemite Valley at Yosemite Falls, when someone came up to her and asked her where she sang karaoke. At first she was confused, but then she saw the other woman had a rubber chicken keychain, too. It’s almost like a brotherhood. Is the brotherhood growing? Right now, we’re trying to expand onto cruise lines. No one has gotten back to us yet, but I’m a persistent fellow. I work hard to make my dreams come true.
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