His name is Derek McOmber, originally from Port Orchard, Washington, but around campus he is better-known as “The Singing Guy.” Aside from being the man around campus known for serenades, McOmber is a 30-year-old senior management information systems major who also holds a bachelor’s degree in digital entertainment and game design from ITT Technical Institute.
McOmber has scars on both of his eardrums from recurring ear infections when he was a small child. The infection were lead to him nearly losing his hearing.
McOmber said when he was younger, he had to learn to mimic voices in order to sound anything like what he wanted to. He can’t hear between certain frequencies now.
“Whenever I used to sing as a kid, my mom would say ‘You don’t sound anything like it. You need to stop singing; it’s terrible,’” McOmber said. “So I started mimicking voices.”
Starting from his first impressions of Muppets and Disney characters, McOmber developed his own singing voice.
Today, he listens to his headphones consistently on walks, singing along for all to hear. He is normally heard before he’s seen, whether on his way to class or back toward his home off of Jackson Avenue.
McOmber transferred to Ole Miss last fall from Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College. After many days of riding the bus to get to campus with his headphones in, a desire to exercise and a new rule from the buses eventually pushed McOmber into local fame around the Ole Miss campus.
He began singing on his bus rides to and from campus after performing in Rebels Got Talent last fall semester, but by the end of the semester a new rule was enforced on the buses: no music without headphones.
“They basically said I couldn’t sing on the bus anymore because it was distracting to the bus driver,” McOmber said. “I said there were no rules against that, and then came the ‘no music without headphones’ rule. They considered my singing music without headphones.”
McOmber continued to ride the bus without singing until near the end of last spring when he wanted to get more exercise without going to the gym, “because it’s the gym.”
He decided to walk around campus instead of taking the bus.
With experience teaching voice acting and hosting karaoke at the Palace Casino Resort in Biloxi, McOmber decided to jazz up his daily strolls.
“You know what, I’m just going to start singing,” McOmber said. “I wanted to increase my lung capacity, and also I just enjoy singing.”
McOmber said he had to consider his audience when selecting songs for his walks.
“I mainly just started picking out songs that, one, wouldn’t get me in trouble singing on campus, and two, that everyone would know,” McOmber said. “These are mainstream songs that I’ll be singing. I try to switch it up. I have a playlist.”
McOmber’s singing playlist, which includes around 120 songs now, features a variety of tunes, from “Gettin Jiggy With It” by Will Smith to “God Bless the Broken Road” by Rascal Flatts and “Hakuna Matata” from “The Lion King.”
“I sing a bunch of different songs because it helps me learn, actually,” McOmber said. “I go to conventions as a guest to teach voice acting. (Singing around campus) helps me learn more about my voice.”
McOmber said he realizes his singing around campus might make him look different to most students. He said he doesn’t have many close friends at Ole Miss, but thinks that’s mostly due to him being much older than the average student.
“When people are afraid to come talk to you or even say ‘Hi,’ it makes it a little harder to become friends with people,” McOmber said. “Some people might think I’m weird. Well, I’m doing something that no one typically does at all because people are afraid to be noticed. The idea is to try to bring people to understand that they can be themselves and not care about the judgement.”
One of McOmber’s friends from Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, Logan Wade, said he wasn’t surprised when McOmber became known as “The Singing Guy.”
“Derek and I had a few classes together at (MGCCC), and he stood out as one of those unique individuals because he was always positive,” Wade, a senior marketing and corporate relations major at Ole Miss, said. “He always had something to say that was funny or witty.”
“It’s funny because I had heard everybody talking about a singing guy around campus,” Wade said. “One day I happened to be walking to my next class and I was like, ‘wait, is that Derek? Okay, he’s the singing guy. That makes sense.’”
When faced with the question of whether or not he thought he was a good singer, McOmber said that wasn’t ever really the point to why he sings.
“I feel like I’m a decent singer,” McOmber said. “It’s not about whether or not I have a great sound. It’s about whether or not I make people happy with what I can do. I can be the best singer in the world, but if I can’t make people enjoy the sound that I make, it’s not going to make a difference whether or not I feel I’m better than someone else. I just do what I can and hope for the best.”
