Fortunately, here in "lil rhody", there are a few places that feature jazz - with some damn good players, too - each Thursday the only 'statewide' newspaper has listings of 'who is playing where' for the weekend and they list it by musical genre - jazz, pop, rock, country, etc. ... there are usually about 4 to 6 listings for jazz each night of the weekend - Thursday through Sunday - ... One RI native who has recently moved back to RI and is playing locally is Mike Renzi, who has backed up numerous jazz vocalists including Mel Torme: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Renzi

Going back to the 'karaoke' thing, NYE we went to a local restaurant that featured two guys - one did Sinatra, the other did Dean Martin - both sang to music on their LAPTOPS !!! ...

t.