Wizard Karaoke Co-owner Mike Stearns, left, and Disc Jockey Eli Madrid aka ‘Betty Malefique’ host karaoke night recently at the American Legion in Los Alamos. Courtesy photo
By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com
Mike Stearns has done it all – disc jockey at radio stations, sports reporter and publisher at newspapers, a Naval religious programmer, Methodist minister and now karaoke business owner.
Stearns opened Wizard Karaoke in 2019 but then hit pause during the pandemict. Now that the pandemic has subsided, it is time to turn up the music.
Stearns and his team of karaoke jockeys travel throughout New Mexico to entertain the crowds. On Thursdays they are at American Legion Post 90 in Los Alamos, but they also travel to Albuquerque, Pojoaque, Taos and Santa Fe. To keep on theme with the businesses’ name, everyone has a medieval stage name. Stearns is the “Wizard”, his business partners are Lance Thornton or “Sir Lance”, and Terry Bohannon aka the “Dragonslayer” as well as karaoke jockey Eli Madrid aka “Betty Malefique”.
Madrid hosts Thursday’s karaoke in Los Alamos and has developed a following called the “Betty-tinas”, Stearns said.
He said Wizard Karaoke offers 290,000 songs and plays them with a professional sound system.
“We’ll make you sound good,” he promised. “You don’t need to worry about the sound. Just go up and be a rock star and have fun.”
Stearns emphasized that having fun is really the whole goal. While he said most who take the stage have pretty good singing voices, “that’s not what we are about. It is about having fun.”
It’s music that pushed him into the karaoke business, Stearns said.
“The reason I decided to go into karaoke is I enjoy the interaction with people and music has always been a big part of my life,” he said.
“It’s an amazing audience participation sport … and that’s what makes it great,” Stearns added.
Stearns was born in Albuquerque and his first job was working at KRRR radio station at age 13. He said he did a little bit of everything including being a disc jockey. He continued to be a disc jockey at KVSF when he was 17 years old and helped with sports broadcasts.
A career in music and radio went into hiatus when Stearns joined the Navy for four years. After leaving the Navy, he returned to KVSF until the station was sold. His next career was a Methodist minister in New Mexico and then Oklahoma. Having children, however, required a higher salary so Stearns entered the newspaper business. He worked at several papers in Oklahoma before moving to Texas where he worked at a radio station and owned a karaoke business.
After four years living in Amarillo, Texas, Stearns said he decided to come back home to New Mexico.
He said he decided to get back into the karaoke business because, “I wanted to do something that gave people joy. I always found that music and karaoke become a natural outlet for that.”
Stearns added that he created Wizard Castle, LLC, and several other karaoke jockeys do shows under the LLC’s umbrella.
He explained that a lot of people helped him throughout his career and “I wanted to pass that along.”
In addition to the shows, Wizard Karaoke offers its services for private events such as weddings, birthdays and bat mitzvahs.
To learn more about the show’s Wizard Karaoke hosts, visit its Facebook page or call 505.5222.7853.