Showcases to book your show

Last week I went to a booking conference to work on filling up my summer schedule. One of the things that that happens besides a trade show where different acts have booths are showcases. The showcase is one of the best ways to schedule work as you can actually show potential bookers what you actually do!

This one had some awesome acts!

Depending on the rules where you’re showcasing, your showcase set can be between 10-20 minutes, with most being about 15 minutes.

My showcase at this conference was with my crank organ.

vintage street crank organ

Honestly, I was super nervous. The organ is newer to me and I don’t know it inside and out like I do my show. With my magic show almost everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong. That means I know how to deal with problems if they occur in my magic show. With the organ I’m positive that there’s a lot that can go wrong that I haven’t encountered. And of course problems tend to appear when there’s a lot riding on that show. Luckily nothing went wrong and I had a good showcase set!

I personally think that going to showcases is one of the best ways to book work. You can book a lot of work in a short amount of time. Most industries have some sort of showcase.

-Louie

Justin Willman – The Illusionati Tour

Ove the weekend my wife and I went out to check out Justin Willman’s Illusionati show in Portland. I’ll start with saying that I think his live show is great! He probably has one of the best opening tricks that I’ve seen. It wins over the audience and sets up his personality perfectly!

Justin Willman Illusionati tour

The other thing that Justin does really well is his use of the “close up camera”. All of the stuff that he does with it are enhanced by the camera, and not reliant on the camera. It’s all sorta interactive, it’s not just a close up on his hands while he does tricks. It’s all part of larger things. If you’re thinking of using a camera in your show, you really should go see Justin’s show.

Justin Willman Illusionati tour

The other thing that he does really well is letting spontaneous things happen. He’s the star of the show, but he doesn’t mind sharing that spotlight. That’s a huge contrast from a lot of “comedy magicians” where the second someone from the audience does something funny or interesting, they shut them down. It’s these spontaneous things that make a live show fun!

If Justin Willman in your town, be sure to check him out!

-Louie

Get Your Stuff Together First!

The other night I was chatting with a magician that I had met at a zoom magic show. He was asking me about working comedy clubs.

There were a couple of things, first he didn’t know his Laughs Per Minute (LPM). That’s a huge thing to know if you want to work in comedy. It’s a good metric to how funny your show is. To calculate this, count all of the laughs in your show and divide that by the length of your show. So if you get 90 laughs in a 45 minute show your LPM’s are 2. A stand up comedian will get about 6 or more, however most magicians won’t get that high. Magic has information that needs to be conveyed for a trick to work. As Bob Sheets once told me there’s comedy time and magic time and they don’t overlap.

Then I asked this magician for his website and video and he said his “site sucked” and his video wasn’t good. I told him that you NEED the correct promo if you want to level up or move into another market. I guess the other option to move into the market is to be soo good that you get work, but that’s a much longer and harder road to take. You’d literally be doing garbage gigs to hope someone sees you that books better gigs and then keep stepping up. There’s nothing wrong with this way, but it’s a lot more legwork than just sending out video and having bookers visit your website.

In a nutshell, my advice for levelling up your show in your current market or to break into a new market is to look at what people who are already in that market have for promo and get your stuff to that level and then start selling! If you reach out to a booker and they ask for a 2-3 min sizzle reel and two 5-8 minute unedited full routines, can you immediately send that? No booker wants to wait a month for you to send them stuff. Sure there’s the odd exotic request for an unusual piece of promo that may take you a couple of days to make, but the booker will understand if it’s truly a strange request.

I know this isn’t a fun answer to how to get work, but it’s what most people need to hear. If you don’t like your promo, how do you expect anyone else to?

-Louie

My 2024 Summer Library Show

Each year I do a unique library show. Sometimes material gets cycled back into the show, but it must wait till the third year (two years off) to come back into the show.

Here’s this years set list:

library magic show

If you look at the set list, there’s one spot where there’s three tricks. I could do: Dad jokes, mind reading or shell game. The variable there is if I can use a TV in the room, I do shell game. I there isn’t a TV that I can use, then I do either my Dad Jokes trick or Wayne Dobson’s Spectrumlist with the librarian doing the trick.

Here’s what this year’s case set up looks like:

library magic show

This is a pretty quick set up for the show about 30 minutes right now, but it will be 15-20 minutes after a couple of shows. I have about 4 extra tricks that I’ve packed with this show to make sure I have enough material. After this week of library shows, the set list will be locked in and I’ll ditch the extra material…well, I’ll keep one extra bit.

-Louie

Familiar Feeling and Crushing It!

What a difference a day makes!

On Saturday and Sunday I was struggling with my show at a venue that was very different from what I perform at. Then on Monday, I was performing at a convention for 550 people and the whole show felt really natural and easy.

magic show for a convention

Honestly, there’s a lot to be said about performing in a venue you’re used to. By venue, I really mean that the audience was seated for a show, versus a transient, standing audience who weren’t planning on watching a show.

You should always challenge yourself and try venues and situations that you don’t normally perform in. It makes you a better performer, or at least a more knowledgeable one. Know why your show doesn’t work is as important as knowing why your show works.

-Louie

More Thumb Tie Work

I’m liking the thumb tie routine that I’ve been working on the last two weeks. There’s a lot of big laughs in the routine!

One of the challenges in writing for this routine is that a lot of the “comedy” comes from me and the guy onstage being stuck together. I want to make jokes, but the reason for the joke funny can’t be because it’s “gay”. What I mean by that is if the only reason the joke gets a laugh is because it implies one or both of use is gay, I don’t want it. I personally don’t think anyone’s sexual orientation should be the punchline of a joke. That and I don’t have any sexual content or inuendo in the show.

The jokes have to be about the situation that the guy and myself are in. Writing with rules can be harder, but ultimately I think it will make a better routine.

-Louie

Sharing the Stage With my Own Props!

The last ten days I was sharing the stage with another act that used a lot of magic tricks. One of the tricks that they used was my Snake Wand Surprise!

snake wand surprise

I always love seeing my props out there in other peoples shows! This is the first time I’ve shared the stage with one of my props used by someone else. It’s a good feeling knowing that people are out there using my stuff and making a living with them!

-Louie

Doing a Bar Gig

I don’t do a lot of bar gigs anymore, I’m not opposed to them, but they don’t normally make sense with my schedule. Last week I headlined a comedy show at a speakeasy. It was a fun gig!

One of the skills you need for these gigs is to be able to follow any act. The act before me was a comic that was fairly blue, and I do a “TV clean” show, so there’s contrast and the audience has to shift mental gears from his style to mine. There’s nothing wrong with what he was doing, that’s his art. When there’s contrast like that, you need to come onstage with confidence, you’re bringing the audience into your world.

Before the show I always try to do some close up magic, that will have people in the audience already on your side!

close up magic

The “green room” was in a back corner of the bar and the cool thing was I could watch the show on the TV!

comedy show

Also I don’t normally have merch to sell at bar gigs, but I took some of my faux children’s books C is for Conspiracy: The ABC’s of Conspiracy Theories and pitched them from the stage.

bar magic show

They sold well after the show, so that was a bonus!!

Bar gigs have a lot of challenges, like sight lines, rowdy crowds, challenging stages, however I find them very rewarding as a performer. Because they are typically smaller venues you can connect with people a lot more than in a larger venue.

-Louie

Harrison Greenbaum Show

Harrison Greenbaum

Last weekend I drove up to Canada with my buddy Chris Beason to see Harrison Greenbaum‘s show. I had heard a lot about him, but never really have seen him perform. I had seen a version of his lecture at an online magic convention.

In the show he did six tricks in 90+ minutes. That’s about one trick every 15 minutes. He doesn’t get 15 minutes out of the trick in a traditional sense. Before tricks he has stand up comedy that segues from the previous trick to the next trick. This is the way to do it, none of the routines feel like they’re dragging out.

Harrison Greenbaum


Harrison’s show is also very much in the moment, and he does a lot crowd work (talking to the crowd, ad libbing with them, then using that info in the show). This makes the show feel like you are definitely seeing a unique show that will never happen again.

Harrison Greenbaum

Watching Harrison’s show is a good lesson in how much you can do with a huge personality and very minimal props. He doesn’t just stand in one spot, he moves all over the stage and really fills the space. It doesn’t feel like a bar show that happens to be on a stage, it feels like a stage show that happens to use smaller props.

-Louie

Magic and Comedy Show

On Saturday I performed my show for a sold out audience at the Spokane Comedy Club! When I’m performing at on the road at a public show, I always try to reach out to the local magic club. The Spokane Magic Club turned out in force for the show! It was great having them in the audience.

These daytime shows are a lot of fun to do. Years ago when I was in my early 20’s I opened for Brad Upton at a lot of comedy gigs. At the time I was doing a lot of school assemblies during the day. Brad mentioned that being able to get paid to do entertainment during normal people’s workday was like finding gold. At the time, I didn’t realize how correct he was. As I’ve gotten older and when I’m home, I got to bed at 9pm, the later gigs are more work. I still love doing them, however these 4pm shows I’ve been doing at comedy clubs are great, I’m done by dinner time!

Here’s my 55+ minute show from Saturday in 44 seconds:

@louiefoxx

55 minutes of comedy magic in 44 seconds! #magicshow #magician #comedymagic #spokanecomedyclub #spokanemagician

♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

Another thing that’s fun is that these shows put kids into an environment that is normally just for adults. That gives these shows a special energy that you don’t get at a community center gig and leads to amazing shows!

-Louie