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.

Eli Mattson plays outside in front of J. Jeffrey Taylor this summer.

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 good 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.

Mattson in what is sure to become a familiar scene for the 26 year-old.

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 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 you also realize he’s better than most of the rest – you think. Could you be right this time?

Next week he cracks the Top 10, and the vibe on the Internet grows stronger. He slides easily into the final five, and that, you think, is all a Wisconsin boy could ask for. But on the last night, Springer weeds through the contestants until it’s just Eli and the opera singer. You feel vindicated, you weren’t wrong about that voice.

He 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 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.

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

Eli 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.