Elvis Festival is coming up! I am lifetime fan of Elvis…but who  isn’t, really? I recently had the opportunity to talk with the 2023 Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist World Champion, Cote Deonath to get some insight into the world of impersonating the King.

 

CD: I was in Australia two weeks ago, and the Australian culture is just so similar but so different. It’s such a culture shock, but you know Elvis had many things thrown at him on stage. You don’t really go through school for this job, right? You don’t really get prepared for the things that you experience while you’re on stage. But I was giving out scarves and there was a fan that threw some of their unmentionables on stage. And I just completely froze. I was like, you gotta be kidding me. This has never happened to me before in my life, and the audience was just dying, obviously laughing. And it was a joke because they were the size of a parachute.

CD: Bruno Mars, in my opinion. I know that he has a huge fan following, but Bruno has reinvented himself so many different times. When he first on the scene he was a teeny bopper, and he was a was a heartthrob. And really from there, he’s had this metamorphosis of becoming an R&B star. With all his different music eras, he’s constantly reinventing himself, and there’s an Elvis connection there. He used to be the youngest Elvis tribute artist.

CD: : I was in school to be a firefighter EMT. I went on a cruise ship one of my times off from college, and the old legends in the tribute artist business were like, “Okay, kid, you’re going to be a firefighter? No, Stick with us. You’re gonna live the life.”  And so, I got off the boat and this was 2016, I was eighteen at the time, and I told my parents I would really, really like to try this entertainer thing. I really wanted to see where it would take me. And it was good. I won Tupelo in 2017. A year after that, I made it to the ultimate Elvis contest. I started making waves. So, I mean it was good. But it was never really like, “Oh my God, I’m making a killing at this.”  It was like, OK, well, yeah, this is good for now. I work with what I love. I don’t consider it a job. When I started to produce, I produced my first show in 2018 and I was only twenty years old. We ended up selling 804 tickets for that show, and it sold out. With the money I made that night, I felt like I had stumbled on my niche, and I loved doing it. I loved getting creative and putting my own twist on shows. I was the first Elvis tribute artist to produce his own shows. Mind you, I was the first ever twenty-year-old ETA to have any power and change the norm of what you did in the industry. With hard work and determination, and people like Brian and Tom of the Nashville Elvis Festival and Tupelo Festival behind me really giving me a chance to showcase and put my talent in front of the Elvis fans, that’s really where I knew that there was weight to this. This became not just a hobby but a full-time job. Now I have my company’s licensing endorsed by Elvis Presley Enterprises, and we did ten events last year, which is unheard of in our industry.

 

CD: “Unchained Melody” is my favorite Elvis song, mostly for the fact Elvis was broken at that time. At that time, Elvis was not the best looking. He didn’t look like our Elvis at the end, but I mean, it still was Elvis. Most people think “Hound Dog,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “Suspicious Minds,” as the best Elvis songs. But I look at Elvis’s voice, and I look at him as one of the best vocalists of all time. He was the greatest entertainer of all time. And that song, it was like he poured everything into it.

 

CD: His charisma. He’s still oozing charisma. Over forty-five years after he’s been gone, that’s why people keep coming back. Elvis has a fan base that is unlike anything that you will ever see.

 

CD: Obviously, we got to talk about the jumpsuits because those are the most elaborate. If I had to pick a favorite jumpsuit, I’d have to choose his Peacock suit. It’s a gorgeous suit. If I had to pick a second, it would be the “Aloha from Hawaii” suit he wore in 1973. But those costumes make or break you, man; you must have a good costume. Elvis dressed sharp every night.