Shawn Klush will come to Akron fresh from a real Applachian Spring – he took a month off from his hectic schedule “they have me going everywhere man”  to “enjoy the Spring moving in, in the beautiful Poconos.”

He’ll come to Akron fresh from kicking back at his folks place with “wife and kids, Great Dane, three cats and a motorbike. I get up and count ‘em every morning,” he said. 

Klush has a natural laid-back approach. He laughs easily and often and his speaking voice lulls hearers  into  thinking  they  are in the presence of The King, without losing any of its own personality.

He loves motorcycles and has a small Harley-Davidson;  he’d  buy a bigger, if life gave him more time to ride it. “Maybe when I’m 60.”

Shawn has played  Akron before, memory clouds exactly when,  but May 17 will be the first time with The Imperials. Though he has worked with some of Elvis’ closed friends, musicians and singers such as The Jordanaires and DJ Fontana, The Imperials and Klush will be appearing on stage together for the first time in Akron, fresh after a Spring Break.

When he steps onto the stage, Elvis will light up buildings. There will be a dinner and live auction at the Radisson Hotel Akron City Centre followed by a concert at the Akron Civic Theatre.

This is Akron Symphony’s major benefit fundraiser –  Fanfare  2008:The Ultimate Elvis Experience. 

Not only the nation’s top Elvis tribute artist, Shawn Klush, but the King’s legendary backup singers, The Imperials Quartet, will headline the evening.

Klush, newly-crowned “World’s Greatest Elvis”, and The Imperials appear at the 8 p.m. concert and the evening kicks off in earnest with dinner and live auction at 5.30 p.m.
Klush rose early to be the top Elvis tribute, hence his resemblance to the young King.

From the small coal-mining of Pittston, Pennsylvania, he won $5,000 for first prize for a ‘Worldwide Elvis Competition’  in Montreal in 1996. He then went onto the Las Vegas show ‘Legends in Concert’  where he starred as Elvis in Branson, Missouri, as well as Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Last August, in Memphis, he won Elvis Presley Enterprises’  first ever Ultimate Tribute Artist contest and the BBC made him their ‘World’s Greatest Elvis’ in an international competition a month later.

 Although he loves to perform Elvis, he is first and foremost an Elvis fan.