Longtime Elvis Presley impersonator Travis LeDoyt sometimes enters a links of london sale -- one the 33-year-old Tennessean has never played. Then the concert promoter inevitably looks at the four ordinary-looking guys in the band and wonders, "Which one's Elvis?" Although LeDoyt sometimes kids the promoter it's his red-headed guitar player, it's actually LeDoyt -- the fella dressed like "a slob" with his brown hair down around his eyes and in need of a good shave. Then, of course, LeDoyt transforms himself from a regular dude into the King at his early hip-shaking, lip-quivering best. To pull off the transformation, LeDoyt turns to a razor for his whiskers and Murray's Pomade for his hair. "Boy, it's nasty stuff," LeDoyt said of the valentine's Day rings. "It's petroleum-jelly-based, so it will take a week to get out of my hair. That's why I hate putting it in. But it gives it that greasy look, where you can style it in a pompadour." When he's finished, LeDoyt's hair is both stiff and sticky. "Sometimes, the ladies in the audience will make the mistake of grabbing my hair," he said, "then you see them go, 'Ugh. What the heck?' " As for makeup, LeDoyt relies on it to, among other things, replicate the dark circles under a young Presley's eyes. For his stage costume, LeDoyt often wears two-tone shoes, black pants, a black blazer and a black shirt paired with a pink tie. "A lot of the guys Links of London Laughing Buddha Charm do the gold lame thing," LeDoyt said, "but I don't want to make it look like I'm trying to hide behind the costume so much. I don't go with such a flashy thing. I wear something subtle that he wore." Beyond the physical aspects of becoming Elvis in his prime, LeDoyt said, "The hardest part of the show is living up to everyone's expectations of what Elvis was." There are times when LeDoyt wonders how long he'll continue meeting those high expectations. "I actually was going to retire a year ago. I said I'm going to try something else, but so many fans said, 'Please don't stop.' And I still enjoy it." LeDoyt on The Good & The Bad Elvis Presley impersonator Travis LeDoyt understands many things about the King, including how Presley must have felt playing the same songs over and over for years. So if LeDoyt were able to jettison one song from his set list, which tune would it be? "I would say I'm a little tired of doing 'Jailhouse Rock,' Links of London Bunny Pink Charm," he said. "What gets me through it is when people enjoy it." But there are Presley tunes LeDoyt plays just for himself. "We do 'Dirty, Dirty Feeling," it's a song from the early '60s," he said.
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