Growing up, Anthony was shy. At age 20, he realised something had to change…

Earlier this year, at the Parkes Elvis Festival, for the first time we sang the same song together, which was Don’t Cry Daddy. Afterwards, this guy came up to me and said, “I was in tears, thinking of me and my own son.”

I’ve performed for thousands of people and that was amazing. But when I called my son up on stage to perform with me, to have him next to me, that was the real career highlight.

Anthony: Oddly enough, music wasn’t a big part of our household when I was growing up, but me and my sister, who’s four years older than me, used to go and watch Dad do his Elvis shows on the weekends. He’d do clubs that had big auditoriums and we’d sit in the crowd or backstage. It was fun for us and Dad was proud to have his kids see him perform. People ask, “Was it weird that your dad was an Elvis impersonator?” But it never was: it was just his job.

Dad was a jack of all trades at that stage. He was a black belt in karate and ran two karate schools. He was also doing his Elvis work and owned two restaurants, one of which was Elvis Pizza, where he also used to perform.

One of my first jobs was waiting tables there. They’d have functions with 60 or 70 people and I’d be serving the food, then the show would start and Dad would come out and I’d help with the sound while waiting tables. People would go, “Are you going to do the same as your dad?” I’d be like, “No!” Me and my mates were into techno and pop back then.

I was a shy kid growing up and when I got to the age of about 20, I realised that I needed something to break me out of my fear. It was 2017 and I knew there was an annual Elvis contest on the Gold Coast coming up, so I entered. I thought that if I could get up and sing in front of a thousand people, I could do anything. I sent in an audition video and was accepted. Dad came up with me. I finished in the top 10. I have this photo of Dad hugging me when my name was announced.

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I started performing on my own, but there are hundreds of Elvis shows out there, so it’s a matter of what you can do that’s different. As far as we could tell, there were no Elvis father/son combinations. The first show we performed together was in 2018 aboard a nine-day themed cruise called “Elvis Meets The Legends”, which sailed through Vanuatu and New Caledonia. There were lots of Elvis entertainers on board, but when we did our show people were dumbfounded. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing. And we thought, “Hang on, this is special.”

When we perform together now, I come on first as the younger Elvis, singing his 1950s songs, when he was more rebellious. And then Dad will come on and do Elvis’s 1970s stuff, like Suspicious Minds, which is one of Dad’s favourite songs.

The best moments we have are when we’re offstage before our show and the music starts and they’re about to call my name and we give each other a hug. It’s a role reversal because when I was young and he was about to go on, he’d say, “Son, give me a hug” and we’d high-five. Now we do that for each other. We pump each other up and then go and do the show.

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