Not long after Michael stepped out from behind the bar and breathed new life into Jim Reeves' "He'll Have To Go," but before Eileen and Elaine's sassy and sexy duet of "These Boots Are Made for Walking" elicited wolf whistles, saloongoers at the French Gulch Hotel were transfixed, utterly enraptured, when Mickey grabbed the mike to work his karaoke magic.

"If I were a sculptor, but then again, no," he warbled, as the mike disappeared into his floppy, graying mustache while his lanky frame became cataleptically contorted. "Or a man who makes potions …"

By the time Mickey risked a hernia to reach the "Your Song" crescendo – "I hope you don't mind; I hope you don't mind …" – not a peep, not a click of silverware on porcelain plate or clang of bottle on table top could be detected. French Gulchers of all ages and states of inebriation stared with open-mouthed awe, not unlike that of the stuffed deer looking down on diners from the walls.

In a tiny Shasta County town with one boot steeped in Gold Rush lore and the other forging a path toward renewal, karaoke night mines the past and present and unites a rural community challenged in recent years by fire and flight to the suburbs.

After the sun fades behind the foothills, no other entertainment option exists for townsfolk if they aren't willing to make the winding 17-mile drive east to Redding. French Gulch's other establishment, the E. Franck & Co. saloon, closes around 5 p.m. or whenever the mood strikes owner-barkeep Johnny Felsher, who's 74 and doesn't move so fast anymore.

So Friday Night Karaoke it is. This tradition dates all the way back to 2008, when city-slicker refugees Michael Smith and John Pearson bought the 1885 hotel and hung a glittering disco ball next to the Wild West sconces, yellowed newspaper headlines and bearskin rug. Other nights boast live music, from old-time country to classic rock, and featured cuisine – Wednesday is Taco Night, and the Sunday brunch convenes in the swankier dining room – but the nexus is the 16-foot burnished wooden bar that predates even the Gold Rush.

"The whole town sees this as a place to hang out and get crazy," said Diane Jue, whose granddaughter, Dani, serves as mistress of the karaoke machine. "Prior to this, we didn't have any place to eat and nothing to do. We like what the owners have done with it."

When Smith and Pearson first came to town after tiring of the urban sprawl of Tacoma, Wash., they had only the vaguest inkling of what was in store.

"We'd been looking for a B&B for three years, and this was not what we had in mind at all," Smith said. "We wanted a fancy mansion-type place that needed a restaurant. But we were on our way to see other properties when we saw this on the Internet. Hey, this looks like a little cowboy town. Let's have a look, just for the fun of it."

Here's what they saw after making the turn off Highway 299 just past Whiskeytown Lake: charred stubs of trees dotting the hillside after the 2004 fire that destroyed 22 houses and three businesses; a main street (called Main Street) with boarded-up storefronts but nicely kept houses with manicured lawns; an empty space where the Catholic church had been before teens self-identified as "devil worshippers" torched it in 1998; a post office bearing the sign "Population: 325 (Give or take a few)"; an elementary school with an enrollment of 16 students (give or take a few); a fishing-friendly park attached to Clear Creek; and a bar-cum-museum where only liquid calories are consumed.

Where others might have seen a quasi-ghost town, Smith and Pearson saw potential. It took, they said, no fewer than 12 visits to French Gulch to finally take the plunge and buy the place, lock, stock and kitschy knickknacks from the previous owners, two fire education specialists at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area who couldn't make a go of it any longer.

Their major worry: How would a town so set in its ways accept a gay couple introducing such highbrow concepts like corkage fees and fancy entrees like fettucine Alfredo with sun-dried tomatoes, black olives and fresh garlic?

Quite well, it turned out.

"We were worried about the redneck part of it," Smith said. "But it's a redneck community that has a lot of diversity to it. There's a little bit of everything here. At first, (people) weren't going to accept us. Then, all of a sudden, it was fine."

More than fine, actually.

The French Gulch Hotel has weathered the economic storm better than many restaurants. Sure, the bed part of the B&B has been a hard sell – they offer just five rooms now – but Smith has opened an appointment-only hair salon in what had been the sixth room.

"This town, which looks like it's out of some old movie, has gone out of its way to help us," Pearson added.

The community pitched in to help the hotel buy a better karaoke machine to facilitate those impassioned power ballads. It also showed support by contributing memorabilia commemorating the 2004 fire to line the dining room and saloon walls.

A few months into his ownership, Smith took a calculated risk and removed the accumulating shrine to the fire and replaced it with a whimsical farrago of kitschy historical items.

"I told them, 'Yup, I've heard everyone's fire stories and I won't forget it, but it's time to move on. It's a new decade,' " Smith said. "And it worked."

Not that French Gulch has forgotten about the fire. Ask any resident. It remains lodged in their long-term memory.

"Aug. 14, 2004. That was a very bad day. It was 9/11 for French Gulch," said Leah Hill, officer in charge at the post office. "It started in Whiskeytown and – still gives me goose bumps – went right through town and kept going."

Some residents rebuilt. Others took insurance money and fled. Some lucky enough to have the fire avoid their houses still shudder at the close call.

"As soon as I saw the color of the sky go from blue to an orange tint, I got up on my roof and and set up sprinklers to save it," said Vicki Sharp, out watering her expansive lawn in a one-piece bathing suit on a hot afternoon. "It'd be gone otherwise. People take better precautions now."

Most French Gulch dwellings, be it on Main Street or carved into the hillside, now feature denuded buffer zones around the property. "It isn't called a lawn now," Hill said. "It's a 'defensible space.' "

Do they worry about the next fire? Of course they worry. But longtime residents are a stubborn, hardy lot. They aren't about to pack it in and move to Redding or parts farther afield, as most of their kids have done after high school. They endure the fires, the closure of the county library branch, the general store going out of business, the lack of employment.

Perhaps they stay not so much for what French Gulch is as for what it's not. It's not traffic-choked suburbia. It's not a fast-food alley. It's not crime-infested, save the aforementioned unfortunate devil-worshipping incident.

Or maybe they stay for what French Gulch was. Walk through the swinging doors of the E. Franck & Co. tavern, est. 1850, and you can feel the embrace of the past. In fact, it's so laden with mementos tacked on the 2-foot-thick adobe and stone walls that it at times can feel suffocating. Walls are lined with vintage clothing, antique firearms, mining implements, Gold Rush currency and all manner of medicinal bottles and cans, including the anti-flatulence agent "Kodol Dyspepsia Cure" (slogan: "Digest what you eat – Makes the stomach sweet").

Bumper stickers (the unironic "Nixon for President") and hand-stenciled signs ("If you can't talk without using the F-word or filthy language, you will be warned. If that don't work, you can leave") adorn every available inch.

The most animated throwback in the joint is Johnny himself. He's the latest in a familial line that has owned the bar since the Lincoln administration. The shorthand genealogy is that the Franck brothers built it in 1850, married into another prominent local family, the Foxes, and produced heirs to run the bar, including George and Bernice, who did so for half a century. Johnny is Bernice's son-in-law. He took over in 1996.

Bernice is 96 and still kicking but, alas, can no longer perform her signature bar trick – folding a dollar bill in half, piercing a tack through it, then, using a silver dollar as ballast, heave it ceilingward and make it stick. Scores of dollars still dangle, remnants of her tenure. Johnny has tried to emulate Bernice but just can't deliver the goods.

"You're damn right it takes talent to do that," he said, looking up. "I've seen her do seven in a row without missing. I could only do 1 in 10 and got tired of picking up the bent tacks. That's a 12-foot ceiling, by the way. Bernice used to take (the money) down every year and have a party."

The party, after 5, has moved across the street, where that's not a goat being tortured – it's just Mickey channeling Elton John.

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