JUDY PUTNAM

Putnam: Lansing man sings his karaoke heart out to fight loneliness, cancer, set record

Judy Putnam
Lansing State Journal

LANSING – Tim Beam might not be the best singer on the Lansing karaoke scene. It would be hard, however, to best him when it comes to heart and persistence.

Beam, a retired Oldsmobile worker and a local actor, is trying to set a world record for the most consecutive days singing karaoke. And he’s doing it while fighting advanced stage lung cancer.

“Music builds up inside of you, and you’ve got to vent it,” he explained.

Tim Beam listens to karaoke at Reno's West April 17, 2019. The Lansing man sang karaoke for 372 consecutive days in his efforts to set a record.

Beam, 69, said he’s loved karaoke since the 1980s. He leaned on it as he grieved for his wife, Kathryn, who died from lung cancer in 2013.

After another loss of a close friend, a local DJ suggested he set a goal of singing on consecutive karaoke nights to set a Guinness World Record. There's no such record now.

At first he did seven nights in a row. It’s a lot harder than it sounds, he said, as he had to ferret out local nightclubs and restaurants that offer the entertainment. Usually, an establishment offers it just a night or two a week, so he had to keep moving from venue to venue.

In 2017, he made it 135 days in a row. Then he fell ill.

“One hundred, thirty-five days and I was sicker than a dog,” he said.

He’d been recently losing weight from his thin frame. He ended up in the hospital where he got a tough diagnosis: non-small cell lung cancer. And, worse, his cancer had spread. 

He’s been in chemotherapy for more than a year now and had some radiation on his adrenal gland. While he still has tumors, it’s stable.

Beam, a Vietnam vet, tried but couldn’t kick cigarettes.

Tim Beam tracks his songs at Reno's West April 17, 2019. The Lansing man sang karaoke for 372 consecutive days hoping to set a record.

After he got into cancer treatment, Beam said he started his karaoke streak again. He made it 40 days until a bar he was expecting to be open the Monday after Easter Sunday last year decided to close to give its employees a day off.

His second streak ended.

He started counting again on Tuesday, April 3, 2018 and sang every night at a karaoke event until April 8, 2019. That's 372 days in a row.

“If I hadn’t lost the day after Easter I would be over 400 days,” he said.

His style of karaoke is called kamikaze, where the singer doesn’t know what the DJ will play and might not even know the song.

He's no stranger to the spotlight. He's appeared in numerous local plays including 20 at Riverwalk Theater over the years.

Beam mostly sings in Lansing but has gone as far as Grand Rapids and Jackson to find venues. He helps run a local Facebook page dedicated to karaoke.

His streak would have been broken far earlier if not for the intervention of a West Michigan woman who offered him a Thanksgiving karaoke opportunity at the Sparta Civic Center where she and friends gathered for the holiday.

WZZM-TV in Grand Rapids had earlier aired a feature on him and then a plea for help finding a Thanksgiving venue.

Her generosity kept his streak going.

Beam jokes that he gave up drinking a long time ago, but spent the year hanging out at bars.

Lately, his strength has been flagging.

“My oncologist says I’m doing great but the chemo wears you down,” he said.

His record-setting efforts ended earlier this month at one of his favorite karaoke spots, The Avenue, in Lansing.

He hopes to present it to the Guinness Book of World Records soon. An earlier submission was rejected as being too vague and hard to prove.

This time Beam has carefully documented his 372 events. He writes down the songs he sings and includes verification by DJs as well as copies of his calendar.

He said it’s helped him fight loneliness as well as the cancer.

“It got me out of the house and got me out with friends,” he said.

And he adds, he has no regrets.

“I’ve had a wonderful life. I’ve got nothing to regret,” he said.

His song on day 372?

You guessed it.

“I Gotta Be Me.”

Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at (517) 267-1304 or at jputnam@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @judyputnam.

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