Young Elvis Tribute Artist Matt Stone Puts Heart And Soul In His Performances

Young Elvis Tribute Artist Matt Stone Puts Heart And Soul In His Performances

Wellington teenager Matt Stone grew up watching the television show “Full House,” featuring John Stamos as the leather-jacket-wearing rock musician Jesse helping his brother-in-law raise three daughters. But never mind the girls — it was the music that captivated him.

Although Stone originally favored the music of Led Zeppelin, legendary rock ’n’ roll pioneer Elvis had always been “a character in my mind,” he explained. As he became more aware of the music and the legend, it became something he wanted to emulate.

When Stone, now 15, found a leather jacket upstairs at home and began singing “Hound Dog,” his career as a youthful Elvis tribute singer began.

He started off slowly, singing in the living room. Then there was that one time he broke into Elvis songs while reading Christmas books to senior citizens. “They loved it,” Stone recalled.

However, it was a fateful family trip to Memphis that included a visit to Elvis’ home Graceland in 2015 that really kicked it into high gear.

“I was out back at the guest house of the Graceland hotel,” Stone said. “My dad threw me in front of everybody, and I did a couple of songs. I made $80 in tips in 10 minutes!”

That’s when father and son knew they were onto something.

Stone started small, getting booked at the Brookdale senior living facility in Lake Worth. Today, he does so many shows for the chain that he can barely remember them all.

“There’s one in Palm Beach Gardens, two in Boynton… I love to see the folks smile,” he said. “Sometimes they don’t get that much out of their day. And it makes me smile, too, because I love to play.”

In late 2016, at Backstreets Neighborhood Bar & Grill’s open mic night, Stone played the rock classic “Stairway to Heaven,” along with some of the other music that had inspired him. They hired him. By April 2017, he was a professional.

“I started going to other places, and started doing Elvis shows,” said Stone, who uses a vintage Shure Super 55 mic, known as “the Elvis mic” for its similarity to the one used by “The King,” together with a portable PA system.

At Backstreets, he uses one of their guitars, but elsewhere, he’ll use one of his own. He has 14, but for Elvis shows, he uses the Epiphone EJ-200SCE. “I don’t recommend it,” Stone said. “It has been in and out of the shop so often that Guitar Center finally gave me a loaner and sent it back to the factory. It seems to have been OK since then, though.”

Stone has 140 backing tracks and more on his phone. An average one-hour show allows him to sing and play through 15 songs. In a classic Elvis move, he hands out leis. “They don’t fall off my neck like scarves, and they’re cheaper, too,” he explained.

His biggest challenge? “Well, it’s not booking the shows. My dad does that,” he said. “It’s that going to school kind of limits my time. School lets out 2:45 p.m., I get picked up at 3 p.m., and I have a gig at 3:30 p.m.”

So, will his parental chauffeur be buying him a car when he turns 16?

“I’ve saved enough money to buy my own car,” Stone said, matter-of-factly.

Money aside, the biggest compliment Stone has received came recently when he was approached after a show by a woman who had known Elvis in the 1950s, before the rock icon went into the U.S. Army.

“She was friends with one of his bodyguards, and she told me that, in different fields, I am better than Elvis,” Stone laughed. “There is nobody who is ever going to be better than Elvis.”

Stone’s favorite song is one Elvis did in the 1960s. “Elvis had declined a movie career, probably a mistake, and in 1968, he comes back dressed in black leather, and he jumps back into touring. Elvis didn’t write his own music, but if he really connected to a single song, really felt it, it was ‘If I Can Dream.’ That was the one, and that is my favorite.”

So, what does the future hold for Wellington’s young “Elvis?”

“My dad wants me, sometime in the future, to use all my inspiration from Elvis and the artists of the time to create my own show and my own sound — to effectively bring back that music,” Stone explained. “Music is going in a downward spiral. Machines are taking over the instruments. The machine doesn’t have a heart, so there’s no heart to the music, no soul. I want to put the heart and soul back into music.”

Although Stone doesn’t feel that recording a music CD would be cost-effective yet, he does have a couple of songs on iTunes and Spotify — or visit “Matt Stone: The Prince of Rock ’n’ Roll” on YouTube if you want to hear some of music’s missing heart and soul.

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