I’m amazed at how many magicians don’t go out and support live magic shows when they’re in their area. Personally, I try to go out and support as many people out there doing their craft.
A couple of weeks ago I had a bunch of magicians come out to visit me at the fair that I was performing at. I was bad at taking pictures, so I only have a pics of a few of the people that swung by.
If you have a magician passing through your area, buy a ticket and go out and see them or shoot them a note and offer to hang out with them!
Earlier this summer I started doing a packet trick in Spanish. The trick is Emerson and West’s Gourmet Mouse. What I like about this trick is that it’s very simple and I can do it for kids. The plot is easy to follow, you have three cards. One has a picture of a mouse, one cheese and one a slice of cheesecake. The cheese ends up disappearing and the mouse ends up changing to a picture of a cat (that ate the mouse).
The trick is pretty simple to speak in Spanish and that’s helping me connect with audiences that I’ve struggled with in the past due to language barriers.
To learn Spanish, I’m using DuoLingo and asking for help from people I work with who speak Spanish. I’m getting better, nowhere near conversational, but getting better.
A couple of weeks ago we went to a “drag brunch” and I’ve always said you can learn a lot from watching any type of performance, not just magic.
One of the things at this venue was the audio. They had two speakers running and the preshow music and host mics were fine, but they act’s music was only coming off of one speaker. That lead to soo much less energy being put into the crowd with the music when you can hear forks clink on the plates.
With my basic knowledge of sound, I can tell you whatever program (or cord) they were using for the music for the acts was sending the signal to the speakers with one side of the stereo output. When I was waiting for the bathroom, I was chatting with one of the acts and mentioned that whoever was running the sound needed to bump their music as it was only coming out of one speaker. The act asked me if I could fix it, I told them that “While I work in live events, it’s not my gig or my place to tell they sound person how to do their job….But if you tell them what I just told you, it would make it better.“
This is why you need a basic knowledge of things like sound, if the sound is bad, or not enough, you need to be able to communicate to whoever is running sound what you need. Frequently a lot of sound companies send out people whose job isn’t as a sound engineer, but more someone whose job is to load in/out the equipment and make sure that no one steals it.
The second half of the show was soo much better as the music filled the room much better. The “sound guy” had to work a lot harder than the first half because they had to turn the volume up for music and turn it down for the mics In reality, it’s barely any work, but a lot more than the nothing they were doing before.
The “need a penny” tray that I’ve been playing with for a little while has been getting good reactions. It was time to tweak the design to make it look better and slightly more deceptive. The new one (on the right) is next to the old one:
The two main changes that I made was that I beveled the edges of the tray and I printed the bottom portion in black. Here’s a few more views of it:
The beveled edged and black bottom make it look soo much thinner. This is a great example of why you should learn about all types of magic. Essentially I took some stage illusion principles and applied them to a close up magic prop to make it more deceptive. I guess reading Rand Woodbury’s Illusionworks book when I was a teenager finally paid off!
Last week I had a gap in my schedule, so I threw my crank organ in the car and went to the Pike Place Market to busk with it.
The market has a permit system and rule about how long you can be in a specific spot. When I got there, there was a piano player in the spot I wanted to use, so asked him how much time he had left and put my name next in line. The piano player was visibly annoyed that I got in line to perform at that spot. I should say that since he has a piano, he’s very limited on spots he can do. Me getting in line, cuts down the amount of time he can perform that day.
When he time was up, he angrily packed up his piano. I set up my organ and started to play, and I quickly noticed he was glaring at me from across the street! I took a pic, and you can see him circled in red.
He stood there for about half and hour, then walked by me twice after that to look at my permit. Here’s the moral of the story, don’t let anyone intimidate you when you’re street performing…especially in a permitted situation where there are rules!
A couple of days ago I finished reading the book There’s No Plan B For Your A Game. I was told it was good by another magician. This is not a magic book, but a “self help” style book.
For me one of the big takeaways is to act like you’re already doing what you want to be doing. For example, I want to work more theaters, so instead of wishing I could do more, I should be acting like I’m currently doing them.
What does that mean?
Aside from marketing to them as if I’m currently in that market, I should have my show up to that level. That means having all the things done (or working on them) for that venue. For example, I want to use projection for part of my show, so I’ve been breaking it in a library shows over the summer. I’m acting like I’m in a venue that has projection capabilities.
This book has made me think a bit more about how to take the next step.
I’ve had a lot of people ask me where I got my new Tshirt!
I’d love to sell them, but I’m not in the Tshirt business. I had sold shirts in the past with my Straight Outa Tarbell shirts and dealing with sizes is a pain in butt.
So if you want a Tarbell/Erdnase shirt, simply go on etsy and search “custom campaign shirt” and have one made…and do it with my blessing!
Last month I was at an AirBnB. I was sharing the house with a bunch of the other performers at the Ohio State Fair. Behind the painting on the walls we found strange “Alien Postcards” from October of 2016
The first one was behind the paint of an apple, then we started searching the AirBnb and found the second one inside of a picture of Groucho!
OK, so that’s what happened in real life, now how do I turn it into a bit for my show?
I started by telling the story.
I’m staying at an AirBnB with some amazing performing, acrobats, jugglers…and a mime. He’s not even performing here. But that guy never shuts up.
One night I was looking behind the paintings and found some “alien postcards”. When I mentioned it to my wife on the phone she said, “why were you looking behind the paintings”, not “what’s an alien postcard.
I was looking for my keys.
Here are the postcards. On the front they say, “Materials deployed for reflective and connective purposes”. On the back this one says, “Thank you for signaling that you are anticipating my transmission”.
The other says, “Thank you for sending the signal that you are invested in receiving this signal…You’re going to die…JK, LOL LOL…but seriously, we’re watching…no parties!”
So now I’m searching the AirBnB for cameras, and you know what I found? My KEYS!
That’s the story. I’ve embellished it a little bit added some punchlines. The nice thing about being in a house with other performers is that we could workshop the story a little bit.
The next step is going to be figuring out what to do with this. Is it a little stand alone bit, or is it a segue to something else. Like a trick with a key and/or postcards?
One idea is to have borrow a key, cover it up with a handkerchief and have that held by someone in the audience. Then 5 postcards are shown, each has a place where I’ve found my keys. These could be funny places, like in pie, or whatever. One is selected, and the key disappears and ends up inside of the postcard.
Last month I got to work with Billy Kidd for a week.
Billy does a great show, and has a strong stage presence and persona. Off stage she is super cool as well!
If you get a chance to check out Billy’s show, I highly recommend it! You can learn a lot about performing from it. Like how she talks to the audience, not at the audience, which is a skill a lot of people need to be aware of!
Sometimes the “professional sound company” was professional in the early 1980’s! This was the mixer that the sound company had for an event I was performing at recently.
You’ll notice that this mixer has no XLR inputs. Those are the standard inputs for microphones, so this was unusable by me. Of course the sound company didn’t have any adapters to get an XLR to 1/4. I think that this mixer is more for a guitar, than vocals.
So what did I do? I used their corded mic with a Microphone Holder and did the show with no music. Always having one of the Microphone Holders with my gear is frequently a life saver!
