PORT ANGELES — The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll regularly enters the building — via his songs, style and fashion sensibility — in cities across the world. Queensland, Australia, Penticton, B.C., Lincoln City, Ore., and the Bahamian capital of Nassau are a few of the places where Elvis Presley festivals, contests and cruises happen every year.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, Port Angeles is about to have its own “Evening with Elvis.”
Four Elvis tribute artists, aka ETAs, will converge on the Vern Burton Community Center, 308 E. Fourth St., for this first-ever event Saturday night.
Beginning at 7 p.m., they will sing, dance and serenade to benefit a pair of local charities: Volunteer Hospice of Clallam County and the Olympic Peninsula Humane Society.
Port Angeles’ party — coinciding with countless others as Sunday would have been Presley’s 77th birthday — will of course have abundant cake. It’s included with the price of admission, which is $15, or $12 for seniors and students.
Former Port Angeles Mayor Glenn Wiggins set this train in motion some months ago.
He was electrified by Presley — in the person of his son Bret Wiggins, performing in the Penticton festival.
Bret, a 50-year-old Seattle architect, wowed his father with his suits and his singing, as did Dino Macris, a Boeing Co. engineer who also has been paying tribute to Presley for a good 20 years now.
So Glenn Wiggins, who’d been wanting to do a charity fundraiser, invited the men and their outfits onto the North Olympic Peninsula.
Macris and Bret Wiggins have appeared together in a number of ETA competitions and are every bit as passionate about Presley’s legacy as when they were mere boys, beholding the King.
At the Penticton Pacific Northwest Elvis Festival held each June, Wiggins and Macris met lots of other ETAs, including Aaron Wong and Eli “Tigerman” Williams, both from Vancouver, B.C.
So, to provide a decade-spanning Presley experience in Port Angeles, Wiggins invited Wong and Williams, who he said are in their 20s.
These four are not your run-of-the-mill ETAs.
Macris has won the Seattle Elvis Invitationals three times and took first place at Penticton in 2006.
Williams won his first championship at Penticton in 2009 and finished as a top 10 finalist in the Elvis Festival at Las Vegas in 2011.
Wong recently placed as first runner-up at the Chinook Winds Casino Elvis competition in Lincoln City, a prequalifier for the world championship in Memphis, Tenn.
And Bret Wiggins, who began performing as a Presley impersonator at age 13 at Roosevelt Junior High School in Port Angeles, placed second in Penticton’s amateur division in ’09 and was a finalist in the pro category in 2010.
In Saturday’s show, Wong and Williams will churn out music from the King’s albums and movies of the 1950s and ’60s, complete with appropriate costumes.
Macris and Wiggins will tackle the ’70s, plus Presley’s more heartstring-tugging ballads.
The Presley tribute thing tends to pick up momentum as you go along, Wiggins said.
“It’s kind of seasonal,” he added, with numerous events around Presley’s winter birthday and then another wave in summer, near the anniversary of his death Aug. 16, 1977.
Macris remembers how his free time became increasingly devoted to all things King: First, it was a little karaoke, then acquisition of a sound system, and “next thing I know, I’m buying suits.”
As both Wiggins and Macris channel Presley’s later years, they promise they have the costumes and the pipes to pull it off.
“I’m going to do an ‘aloha’ show,” Wiggins said, with songs like “C.C. Rider,” “Suspicious Minds” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”
Presley’s covers will find their way into his set, too. “I’ll do ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’ and ‘Sweet Caroline,’ for sure.”
Macris, 55, is the deep-voiced balladeer, with “Release Me,” “Make the World Go Away” and “You Gave Me a Mountain.”
“It will be very powerful,” predicted the elder ETA.
It will not, however, be 100 percent serious.
These men are big believers in humor.
Macris wants people to get up and dance — and he plans on coaxing at least a few out of their seats.
“When it came to serenading the ladies, you could not beat [Presley],” Macris noted. And he knows that’s not done from up on stage, behind the microphone.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I’ll be out in the field.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
