Sing karaoke for a cause with Mike McCready

Have you ever dreamed of being in a band with Mike McCready? I know, what a stupid question. Who hasn’t had that dream? I know several of my rock ‘n’ roll fantasies involve Pearl Jam’s main ax man shredding alongside me on stage.

Well, if you are like me and you would jump at the chance  to share the stage with Mike McCready Saturday afternoon your dream could come true at the Crocodile.

McCready will be performing with the Chris Friel Orchestra as part of a karoke event raising funds for the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation and if you like karaoke you could be chosen to be the band’s singer. McCready and Friel go way back to McCready’s days in the band Shadow and if Friel’s name sounds familiar it’s because he was a part of last year’s Hootenannies for Haiti and a healthy gulf, he played drums on Pearl Jam’s demos for the album that would become Ten and he is the drummer for Goodness. There’s no word on what songs the Chris Friel Orchestra has in its karaoke songbook but with a pedigree like Friel’s and McCready’s guitar versatility the songbook likely features quite a bit of versatility.

It will cost you $10 to get into the Croc to watch McCready play 12 songs with the orchestra and 12 luck karaoke singers. If you would like the chance to be one of those 12 singers you can pay $25 for admission instead of $10 and your name will be added to the pool of potential vocalists, out of which 12 singers will be chosen at random.

The CCFA is an organization dear to McCready because not only has he raised thousands of dollars for the CCFA throughout the years with his annual UFO tribute concerts, he also suffers from Crohn’s disease. Saturday’s karaoke event, which happens between noon and 4 p.m., is McCready’s latest bit of Crohn’s activism. A few years back he helped get legislation passed that required business owners to allow people with Chrohn’s access to their bathrooms and he recently recorded a few PSAs to raise awareness of the disease.