One after another, the Elvis tribute artists strolled by, as we grabbed a bite to eat on the patio of a cafe on the main street in Collingwood, during the start of the biggest Elvis tribute weekends in the entire world.
The back of the stage, which was about 50 feet away from us and spanned across the street, was teeming with ETA's. As we were about to leave the cafe to go watch the great show going on in front of the stage, another ETA was walking up the street to the backstage area. I thought I was seeing Elvis himself ! My wife turned around and said, "Oh my God, who is that ?".
And then she recognized him. It was none other than Tim "E" Hendry ! If they have a look-a-like contest, Tim E's a finalist, in my opinion.
But all the ETAs looked great and we saw several different Elvis style suits. My personal favourite was the gold one, although we didn't see all of the 150 ETA's that were reportedly in attendance for Collingwood's big Elvis-fest.
We then went front stage to see the great show. Fabulous, just fabulous, is all I can say. One after the other, the ETA's performed an Elvis song or two with the absolutely terrific band (including horns) and two lovely female backup vocalists. They were all excellent and they rocked. And the sound was great. Stacks of speakers on each side of the stage provided a wall of sound up the main street of Collingwood.
And this was all free. It doesn't get much better than that.
I filmed a bunch of ETA performers during the two hours we were front stage, but there were four ETA's that really stood out, in my opinion.
Tim Hendry, from London, Ont., warmed up the dinner-time crowd with a cookin' "Polk Salad Annie" and then he was followed by Ben Klein, from Penticton, B.C., who did a great "Good Rockin Tonight".
But around 7:00 PM, Mike Bravener, from Fredericton, N.B., performed a terrific rendition of "I Need Your Love Tonight", that electrified the crowd (and the band too).
And then about 15 minutes later, came Dean Vegas, who hails from Australia and he sang Johnny B Goode, with some hot solos provided by the guitarist & keyboardist in the band.
There were so many other great ETA's coming up next (as we were leaving, Roy Evans, from the UK, was belting out "The Wonder Of You" that sounded a lot like Elvis to me), but we had to leave around 8:00 PM for another ETA venue and so we missed the remaining three hours of the free street concert. And unfortunately, we couldn't stay for the competitions on Saturday & Sunday.
Consequently, what we saw, was only a glimpse of how fantastic the Collingwood Elvis-fest is. I know that we missed so much more. But we had a blast for the short time we were there !
If you've never seen this before, or even if you have, you must come to Collingwood, Ontario next year.
We will, again and again, that's for sure, and we'll be staying for the weekend, so we don't miss anything !
Thank you to all the great ETA's and to the city of Collingwood for putting on the greatest Elvis-fest on the planet !!
Ken Adderson, Mississauga, Ontario.
