Tag: john shyrock

Portland Magic Jam – Day 2

The second day of the Portland Magic Jam (last weekend) was a lot of fun. The day started with Daniel Garcia‘s lecture, which was great! I’ve used his One Card index since I worked with him in November. It’s great, if you need a folded card index, it’s worth looking into!

daniel garcia magician

The highlight of the convention for me was watching David Kay perform for a room of 75ish kids plus adults.

silly billy magic show

For someone that’s a “kids magician” his knowledge of comedy techniques goes way beyond 97% of children’s magicians that I’ve seen. There’s soo much that any performer can learn from watching his show!

Also, working with Paul Draper the night before was great, and Paul and I are working together this week in Seattle at the Moisture Festival.

paul draper mentalist

The convention venue (Portland Airport Holiday Inn) was garbage. My room had blood on the blankets, which is great if you’re a vampire! They new a convention was coming in, but didn’t appropriately staff their restaurant for use. The first night the turn around time for food was crazy long. For the second night, I drove to Costco which was a couple miles down the street and bought a bunch of pizzas for all the hungry magicians!

magic covention

Then the evening show was John Shyrock, Daniel Garcia, and Rhy Thomas. The show was great!

rhys thoma
john shyrock

This is a solid day of magic and learning!

-Louie

Portland Magic Jam – Day 1

The first day of the Portland Magic Jam started with the registration and dealer room being open. Then, a bit later David Kaye did a pre-lecture about what to look for in the show he was going to do the next day, which then would be followed by a post show breakdown of what we just saw.

david kaye magic

I think that’s a great format if you’re going to do a show and then talk about it. One thing that I noticed is how much David knows about comedy. He’s a kid show guy, but all of the principles he talked about are for any age group!

Next was John Shyrock who also did a show/lecture. He did a 20 min close up show and then talked about it.

john shyrock magic

John does some really strong magic, and there’s a lot to learn from his use of music (even in a close up show). He brings a lot of bigger theatrical techniques to close up magic!

Then it was the evening show which was just three acts. I was the MC and did a spot along with Paul Draper and Richard Turner.

Portland magic Jam

It’s had to do an MC spot on a small stage with no curtain, where a lot of equipment is being moved around. The spot I did was kind of a hybrid MC filling time and a scheduled spot.

The closing spot was Richard Turner doing close up tabled card magic.

richard turner card magic

To be 100% honest, I’m not sure how I felt about Richard Turner’s show. The card magic is great, but to me (this is my opinion), he really came off as a dirty old man the way he interacted with the two people onstage. The card magic was amazing, but his patter is from a different era, that’s not a modern style, especially for a town like Portland.

After the show, it was hang out time!

magic convention
magic convention

The late-night stuff is where all of the fun, weird, amazing magic happens! Also with this convention taking place at an airport hotel, there were some people who missed a connection at the airport and ended seeing some crazy magic tricks! I think it made their delay much more fun!

-Louie