This is part 2 of meeting the people who make the Moisture Festival possible! In this episode we meet the bartenders, stage hand, and offices staff at the Moisture Festival!
This is a fun peek at the lives of the people that make the festival happen!
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Last week I drove out to watch my buddy play guitar at a casino. There’s a lot that you can learn by watching people who perform things that aren’t magic. Joe plays guitar, but he also does an act with comedy songs. In this venue he does a mix of the two. He plays cover songs, and throws in a comedy song here and there.
It was a slow night in the casino restaurant that he was playing in. He easily could have phoned it in and played some ambient cover songs and got his check and everyone would be happy. That’s not what he did. He played with energy, talked to the crowd, did bits and played a couple of comedy songs. And over the course of the hour I watched him play, I saw him win over the tables that weren’t initially watching.
The huge take away is to never phone it in. That doesn’t mean necessarily doing your show as planned, as sometimes that’s not what the audience needs. However no matter what you do, give them 100%!
-Louie
Way back in June I put together a quick little sequence with my Airpods. There’s nothing crazy here, it’s a sponge ball sequence and a matrix move. However it’s a solid impromptu sequence.
@louiefoxx Airpod trick! The 10 and 2! #airpod #headphone #appleairpod #apple #trick #10and2 #sleightofhand #louiefoxx #magic #magician #technology ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx
I think that needs more and a while ago at a magic club meeting someone had Ellusionist’s Self Vanishing Headphones. Here’s what the trick looks like:
They are describing the trick as a modern ball vase, however they totally missed what makes the ball and vase great. In the ball and vase you can take the ball out of the vase, you can’t take the airpods out of the case. I altered my case by drilling some holes in it so that it can actually hold the Airpods.
Now I’m able to do the classic ball vase where I take out the Airpods, put them in my pocket, they reappear in the case, then vanish from the case and reappear in my pocket. Now it’s a ball vase. That’s not what I do with the trick, but with the simple addition of adding some holes to it so that it actually holds the Airpods makes the prop soo much more versatile!
Whenever I get a gimmick, I always try to think of how it could be better for me and what I want to do with it. Being able to start my routine with the Airpods in the case is HUGE!
-Louie
When I was at an industry tradeshow on Wednesday pitching my show, one of the things I did at my booth was my card routine. This is the meat of the close up magic that I perform. It’s basically a multiple revelation of a signed card. It ends with the signed card as a sticker.
People at trade shows will usually put these on their shirt of badge and wear them all day. They end up being a walking billboard for me. people will ask them about the sticker and they’ll talk about me. I think I originally got the idea for having something visual that sticks around long after the trick from Michael Close. He talked about it in his lecture 20ish years ago and I think did a thing with a bill that turned to a bunny and left that with people.
When I’m at a booking trade show, especially when I’m new to the market, my goal is to get people talking about me. My sticker card trick is a great way to do that!
-Louie
One of my favorite ways to book gigs is through showcasing and trade shows. These are ways for me to meet people who book the shows in particular markets. On Wednesday I attended a trade show for librarians for a new geographic area for me. My summer this year is booked up, so I wasn’t there to book shows, but to meet people and start building those relationships that will lead to gigs in the summer of 2025.
All of the booths at this tradeshow were tables and had chairs behind them. The exhibitors were sitting in the chairs, or standing behind the tables. Since I’m basically unknown in the area I wanted to do a couple of things to stand out.
The first thing I did was push my booth back to the wall. That visually broke up the line of tables at my booth. Next I stood in front of my table, and that removed any physical barrier between me and the potential buyers. This allowed me to engage them and when I did close up magic for them, really let me showcase my personality better.
Having been involved with trade shows in other industries, I was prepared with a simple booth. I was amazed at how many exhibitors came up and asked to take pictures of my booth because of how professional it looked!
There are definitely better trade show booths out there, mine is OK.
There’s not much to it, the main elements are a banner and fitted table cloth. I’ve had both of those for a while and the total cost of both of them was probably less than $250. It may be a few bucks more now, but worth the investment as I use them all the time for all sorts of things, not just trade shows.
-Louie
As a collector of old props, I love finding truly unique items. Last month these items that belonged to Joseph Dunninger popped up on a used magic FB group and I snatched them up!
I got the items you see above and a copy of the email from the original seller. Things like this are hard to price as the lineage of them are hard to track down to prove they were Dunninger’s personal items.
That said, it’s not impossible. There could be a picture somewhere Dunninger wearing the tie tack or the cufflinks and that would prove they were his. It’s a long shot, but the story is great, and they are cool to have in my collection!
-Louie
A couple of months ago I had my first custom made vanishing birdcage made. Then a recently the maker reached out to me and offered to tweak it as he found a better way to make part of it and if I sent it back, he’d send me an updated vanishing birdcage!
The new cage came in the mail a few days ago and it looks great! It’s always great when I can have props made to how I want them, not having to work around the “off the shelf” model of props.
Finding this maker was a lot of work! Someone mentioned his name a long time ago, then I made a trip to Canada to see a show and his name got mentioned by another magician. Then a few emails and I got the maker’s contact and arranged a meeting!
I think we get spoiled by how instant and easy things are on the internet, that we forget sometimes you gotta put time in to hunt down people. I’m glad I put in the time!
-Louie
Right before I headed to Arizona a couple of weeks ago I came across Pete Biro’s Nutty Surprise at a magic estate sale.
This is a routine where walnuts disappear from you hands and reappear in a covered glass. Then it ends with surprise production of a giant metal nut!
Here’s Pete Biro doing it:
I took the set with my to the fair I was performing at and started playing around with it.
There are some moments in it that I really like and some things that I don’t. I’m not a huge fan of how the large metal nut is hidden. It’s not bad, but it work work for how I work. I also don’t like how the production was from the bag. I changed the load procedure to a body load and load the nut under the glass. I tried two ways of loading the nut, one with the glass covered and one uncovered. I thought the production from the uncovered glass would get a stronger reaction, but it didn’t. The revelation from under the glass while covered was stronger!
I have more ideas with this routine that I want to play with, and this is an interesting set of props that’s worth looking into!
-Louie
Finding vintage magic stuff out in the wild is fun! The other night I was at McMenamin’s in Tacoma, WA and spotted this Carter the Great poster!
This is an original three sheet poster and looks great for being about 100 years old! The marquee illusion in the poster is “stretching a lady” which is usually a comedy piece now, but I’m sure was a show stopper back then!
Keep an eye out there for magic posters in the wild, there’s a ton of them!
-Louie
When I clean up the office, I sometimes will find things I forgot about. I’m going to give you a bit of a backstory: When I was a teenager I went to Dave Goodsell’s West Cost Wizards Magic Camp. One of the instructors/leaders was Bob Markwood. A few years later Bob went to jail for molesting kids and you can read about his and him continuing to perform for kids as a registered sex offender at: https://www.insideedition.com/5402-kiddie-party-magicians-secret-past
When I was at magic camp Bob always gave me a weird vibe. I remember hearing kids talk about Bob inviting them to the hot tub and then the time he hung out in our bunk and I’m 99% sure he was drunk. I have a picture of him from that night somewhere.
Anyway, after the magic camp ended one of the kids send me a copy of a picture that I was in. On the back he wrote a note:
The “I hope to see you at Bob’s” was something I had forgotten about. Bob had invited us all to his place for a camp “reunion” a few months after the camp hand ended. Seeing that note really creeped me out and I’m lucky at how close I came being in a bad situation with a very bad dude.
-Louie
