Door County Year In Review: Mattson Makes His Mark

The street is crowded with tourists. You weave through the shopping bags ricocheting off their hips on a July afternoon, and you hear a voice booming through the village. You’re drawn to it – a deep, earthy tone that stops smartly short of a growl and immediately strikes you as something more profound than your run-of-the-mill tourist trap Jimmy Buffett wannabe.

You quickly recognize it as the voice of Eli Mattson, the young local boy who has been playing coffee shops, bars, parks, and all stops in between in your hometown since he was a teenager. Back then you heard his voice on the album he released – the one that has sat on the counter of the local bookstore for years now – and figured he was bound to be discovered, maybe even bound to be a star. Surely, you thought, a voice like that in a young man couldn’t go unnoticed for long.

Seven years later he’s playing in the village square, and you think you must not know a thing about good music because there has to be a reason he hasn’t found a home in the industry. Maybe you’re tone deaf. Maybe you’ve just been giving him the hometown benefit of the doubt.

But then the kid takes another shot. He heads six hours south to Chicago to try out for a show on network television, America’s Got Talent, and puts his voice on display. In the span of weeks he goes from small-town prodigy to the subject of blogs and fan sites all over the Internet and television. Maybe, you think, you weren’t so mistaken.

He makes the top 40, then slides easily into the top 20.

"Wow!" you think to yourself. You’re satisfied with the showing for the Door County-claimed kid. But after a pause you also realize he’s better than most of the rest – you think. Could you be right this time?

The following week he cracks the Top 10, and the vibe on the Internet grows stronger. Then they whittle it down to five, and he’s still there and that, you think, is all a Wisconsin boy could ask for. A hat can be hung on such a showing, and a peninsula made plenty proud. Anything beyond this is icing.

But on the last night, Springer weeds through the contestants, and other favorites drop until it’s just Eli and the opera singer. As he smiles broad on the stage, you feel vindicated – you weren’t wrong about that voice after all.

Mattson finishes second, by a hair. He was robbed you think, but a moment passes and you realize the finish scarcely matters. He’d already made it past the brigades of doubts so many of us never even challenge, let alone overcome.

Seeing him on stage, having outlasted hundreds of other contestants, awaiting the final verdict with just one competitor left beside him, he reminded you that life doesn’t simply find you. That eventually you have to put yourself on the line if you want to pursue your dream and embrace the risk of failure.

They might have rejected him at his first audition. It might have ended there, on the edge of tremendous disappointment.

Mr. Mattson walked that line, the line separating devastation and joy. Going there was a journey beyond the point most of us are willing to go.

Eli (the last name has become superfluous by now) took a shot, made himself a future, and he made us all proud, if only by virtue of living on the same piece of soil. But most importantly, he reminded us that so often, you just have to be willing to take the first step.