Gentleman Robert, wearing a pinstripe suit and maroon fedora, crooned the words to “It’s All in the Game.” He wandered the room, singing to a few dozen people at a church on skid row.
Jonathan James Brown donned a cowboy hat and sang the Muppets’ “Rainbow Connection,” enunciating each word just like Kermit.
Linda Harris spun circles through the room, dancing with friends. Later, when her name was called, she grabbed the microphone and gestured with the confidence of a diva as she sang “I Hope You Dance.”
For 15 years, these moments have arrived every Wednesday, courtesy of Pastor Anthony Stallworth, his wife, Lucy, and a karaoke machine bought by Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. The stars of the evening come from the neighborhood’s hotels, shelters and sidewalks.
Performances are ragged, raw and often inspired. On some nights you won’t find a more electric room in Los Angeles, and the crowd bears witness to a brand of musical epiphany seldom seen at a cutting-edge Echo Park club or the stage of the Hollywood Bowl.
Pastor Tony, as he’s known throughout the neighborhood, came up with the idea: “We’re a place where the homeless can come, they can sing a song, they can feel like somebody after being rejected everywhere else, get a free cup of coffee — and people applaud for them.”
The show begins at 7:30 inside the Central City Community Church of the Nazarene, a storefront at 6th and San Pedro streets. The karaoke is held in a nondescript sanctuary, packed with chairs and two tables where singers select songs from thick binders. At its peak, about 100 people pack the room; it’s standing-room-only.
Every karaoke night, Pastor Tony holds an optional prayer session in an adjoining room. One sweltering summer night, a dozen people gave voice to their troubles. A young woman prayed for nothing but strength; she was homeless and was kicked out of a library where she was studying. A disc jockey, blinded in one eye and vision-impaired in the other, prayed for audio gear so he can earn a living.
After hearing the prayers and conveying them to Jesus, Pastor Tony led this offshoot flock to the karaoke room to do a group Electric Slide.
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Much of my time as a music critic is dedicated to discovering artists and trends, and appraising concerts and recordings, but I’ve made a point every so often to go to places where songs can resonate with an unusual depth.
Some of the music I’ve experienced in this church has nestled its way into my psyche. When I recently heard the soft metal classic “Carry On Wayward Son” over a gas-station speaker, I didn’t think about Kansas’ rendition. Instead I saw the aging metal head from skid row, playing air guitar and bringing a surprising urgency to the line, “Lay your weary head to rest.”
The repertoire in each three-hour show is wide-ranging.
“It’s a little bit of everything, some do country, some do rock ‘n’ roll,” said Lucy Stallworth, the evening’s disc jockey and emcee. A few rap songs get tossed in — at least those that pass a prohibition on lyrics containing profanity or sexual content. Lucy stacked the scribbled karaoke requests as a woman yowled her way through Christopher Cross‘ “Ride Like the Wind.”
A few minutes later, a missionary group from Colorado stood up to perform Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and sang in harmony the opening lines — “Mama, just killed a man” — which made Lucy laugh.
“We don’t really have a rule against murder in song,” she said. “Maybe we should.”
Jennifer Campbell is a skid row poet, and when she performs here she prefers what she called “dusties — old music from the ’60s and the ’70s like Mary Wells, the Temptations.”
She considers karaoke essential to the neighborhood’s well-being: “It’s a healing agent. Every Wednesday, we can look forward to gathering here peacefully.”
John Malpede, who for the last 26 years has run the Los Angeles Poverty Department, a nonprofit activist theater group on skid row, sees the emotions tapped during karaoke carried beyond the church doors.
