Elvis Will Be In the Building — at the Santa Barbara Lobero

Ever since watching Uncle Jesse’s version of “Jailhouse Rock” on a rerun of Full House at age 12, Matt Stone has been an Elvis “superfan by every stretch of the imagination.” Now at 20 years old, Stone is recognized by Elvis’s estate as “one of the top Elvis tribute artists on the planet.” Accompanied by The Graceland Band on Tour, Stone is stopping in at Santa Barbara’s Lobero theater in celebration of the King on Thursday, June 6 at 7:30 p.m.

Stone charismatically demands the stage as he struts and wiggles around in his true-to-life white jumpsuit. “I really work hard to make sure that I’m representing Elvis in the most authentic way possible and without any sort of caricature or pop culture understanding of Elvis — doing Elvis as he originally was, not how the media or TV shows might portray him now,” Stone said.

After Stone saw John Stamos as Uncle Jesse impersonating Elvis, he immediately went to Youtube to find Elvis’s original version of “Jailhouse Rock.” Since then, Stone has committed himself to studying and analyzing Elvis to honor his legacy.

“I’ve read just about every piece of Elvis history that I possibly can,” he said “I’ve got many collectors’ books and collectors’ albums, and just listen to every show I can get my hands on.”

Although Stone has played guitar since he was 5 years old, portraying Elvis wasn’t exactly second nature for him. “When I first got started, I didn’t really have the voice yet,” he said. I couldn’t sing at all and that was something I had to work at.” With some vocal training and a lot of devotion, Stone slowly started to sound more and more like Elvis.

He would run through songs line by line, recording himself “to make sure that [he] had the intonation perfect and phrasing perfect to the point where [he] couldn’t hear a difference anymore from [himself] to the recording to make sure that [he] wasn’t interpreting it in [his] own style at all.”

Stone’s commitment to his role and admitted “workaholism” made it difficult at times for him to separate his own identity from that of Elvis. “People definitely thought it was a little bit strange. I wasn’t bullied at all, but I guess it wasn’t uncommon for somebody to call me Elvis,” he said. While everyone else was wearing jeans and hoodies to high school, Stone was wearing pink collared shirts and slicking back his hair, As Austin Butler reportedly did for the 2022 film Elvis, since delving into the character, Stone has ended up adopting the Elvis twang pretty much full time.

By the time Stone was in his early teens, he was performing at retirement homes, restaurants, and open mic nights but didn’t know he wanted to pursue impersonating Elvis as a career until his first theater performance at age 17. “There was just something about the whole allure of being in that sort of setting,” Stone said. “Over the past two years, I’ve worked to make the show as visually authentic as possible.”

On the day of a show, Stone prepares by listening to the music of whatever era of Elvis he’ll be portraying that day and singing along in the car. Doing his makeup and applying his sideburns and hairpiece can take up to an hour-and-a-half to get “all the little facial details right,” he said.

Stone enjoys being on tour and bringing the show to new audiences, but tries to be home in Florida with his wife and 10-month-old baby as often as possible. His goal is to keep the best version of Elvis’s legacy alive and introduce a new generation to his music.

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See ‘ELVIS: In Person’ starring Matt Stone with the Graceland Band on Thursday, June 6 at 7:30 p.m. at the Lobero, lobero.org/events/elvis-in-person-starring-matt-stone/. To learn more about Stone visit mattstoneaselvis.com.