Ash & Iron
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Ash & Iron
Richard Green | 30 Years of Magic, Faith & the Courage to Go All In at 60
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Season two starts with a guest whose story goes well beyond what most people think “magic” is. Richard Green has been performing magic professionally for 30 years, but at 60, a shift in his life pushed him to make another leap: making magic his full-time pursuit. We talk about what it means to bet on a new chapter of your life at 60—and why, for Richard, the goal isn’t applause. It’s creating an experience that feels impossible while still being deeply human.
Along the way, Richard takes us inside the world of magic—from sleight of hand and mentalism to comedy and stage illusions—and explains everything that changes when you move from the street to an intimate close-up setting. He talks about his work at Nashville’s House of Cards and what it takes to “blow your mind” in 20 minutes without pretending anything supernatural is happening.
But some of the best lessons have very little to do with magic.
Richard practices making mistakes on purpose. Why? Because eventually something will go wrong in front of an audience. We talk about failure, removing your ego, and learning how to recover when everyone is watching and there’s nowhere to hide.
One of the most meaningful threads is mentorship and legacy. Richard talks about learning from the magicians who came before him, bringing forgotten routines back to life, and traveling to Spain to spend time around the Juan Tamariz school of thought. What he found there wasn’t just more technique. It was an approach to the craft built around generosity, love for the audience, and the belief that the performer is there to give something to the people in front of him.
And then the conversation goes places you might not expect.
We talk about the stigma surrounding magic and Richard’s faith in Jesus. For some people, those two things don’t belong in the same sentence. For Richard, they’re both part of his story. We talk about how he reconciles the two, why talented performers charge what they do, and even how rage-bait social media can steal our attention from the real relationships right in front of us.
It’s magic, faith, creativity, failure, ego, mentorship, and more than a few unexpected turns.
Mostly, though, it’s Richard Green telling his story.
Hit play and meet him.
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Season Two Kickoff
SPEAKER_03All right, we've done it. Season two of Ash and Iron officially starts today. Right now, you're hearing it live. And uh I just want to say thank you to everybody, all the guests, all the listeners from season one. Thank you guys for being so patient with me uh and just making season one what it was. I'm excited to be back uh this season. I've got a wonderful guest in front of me right now, Mr. Richard Green. And I would love for you to just kind of introduce yourself, tell everybody a little bit about you, and we'll get into it.
SPEAKER_00Hi, well, uh my name is Richard Green, and I am a uh how do I Okay, I have been a professional magician for the past 30 years. Um, worked uh for years just working a regular job, doing magic on the side. Early this year had a big change in my life that took us a different direction, and decided at 60 years old that I'm gonna do this full time. And it has been one of the coolest things that I ever, you know, I never thought I would be doing this full time, but here I am.
SPEAKER_03So we're gonna get into this because I'm first off, I'm a fan of magic. Like I love magic. Now I'm not as knowledgeable, of course, as as the practitioners, but uh I just am fast, I've always been fascinated by it. I've always loved it. And uh so there's something in me that when I hear you say, I'm a professional magician, I'm sure a lot of our listeners too, it's like, oh, that's cool. Like there's like a there's like a cool vibe to it. Um what I want to I want to hear, like sort of where in the early years, like you're 60 now, so like when did you start? Like when did you really discover it? Like, how did you I want to hear the story?
How Richard Found Magic
SPEAKER_00Oh, sure. Yeah, I mean, like most boys, I got into it as a kid. Uh I grew up in the set, I mean, I'm born in 65, started watching uh magicians on television, and saw a magician in school. My granddad took me to see a magic show once that floored me. Um, when as a kid, my grandparents lived in Detroit, Michigan. And so I would get to see people like Blackstone Jr., Harry Blackstone Jr. and the great mind reader um Creskin, the amazing Creskin. Loved Creskin, man. Interesting character. And I'd see, but and one of the things about Creskin that struck me was he was a mind reader, but he would almost always, on every episode of his show, he had his own TV show back in the day. And on almost every episode of his TV show, he would do a card trick. And that blew my mind. So the next thing I do is I'm going through a store one day with my grandparents, and I see uh the you've heard the uh old line, the TV magic cards. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Those that was an actual product line that came out in the 70s by a guy named Marshall Brodeen out of Chicago, Illinois.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00Who had gotten his start as a corporate uh trade show magician and worked in the club circuit, but he was also Wizo the Wizard on the Bozo show when I was a kid. Oh, the bozo. The old bozo show out of Chicago. Yeah, Bozo the Clown. And so uh, but he made literally made millions of dollars, became a millionaire from selling magic kits to kids and trick decks and things. So I had all those. And that's what that's what got me started. But I was a kid and I didn't, we didn't live in Detroit. I actually lived and grew up in Western Kentucky. And there's not a whole lot of call for a you know six-year-old magician in Western Kentucky. Right. So um, and it was it was basically I was the nerdy kid in the family. Like all my family's into UK basketball and and they're watching the football games on Sundays, and I was annoying and I got in the way, and so I'm off in my room listening to by the time I'm 12, 13 years old, listening to Kiss Records and Alice Cooper Records and drawing pictures and reading Star Trek or watching Star Trek and reading um you know the original Star Wars series on in books before they came out as movies.
SPEAKER_04Nice.
SPEAKER_00Uh, The Lord of the Rings, all that I'm your typical nerd kid.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00In the 70s. And it for the longest time, magic was just a hobby for a long time. I never got real into it because I just didn't have access to things like we have access to these days, like with on the internet or magic shops or whatever.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so it kind of honestly, it wasn't that my interest went away, but the draw to it got I got distracted in other things.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh, for example, I discovered around the age of 12, 13 years old. Um, always knew I could sing, but around 12, 13 years, 14 years old, people started paying attention to my singing. And whether it was in church or whether wherever it was, um, next thing I know, I'm singing in a band in high school. And then I'm singing in this group or doing whatever. And by the time I'm 19 years old, I am singing in a rock band, and we're doing, you know, mostly local, we're just a local rock band playing gigs and stuff.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and my voice back then was good. As I got older and began to understand that the mechanics of how to be be a good singer, my my singing got much better over years. But that was my focus then, got away from magic for a while and got into music. So it didn't matter for me. I tell people, my grandmother used to have this thing where she would say, doesn't matter what you want to do, but you gotta have something to fall back on. And my granddad would joke, yeah, buy a mattress. Um, but he said, but you do have to pay your bills. He goes, I agree with you, grandmother, you have to pay your bills. So I went to college for three years, but I was bored with it because it's not, it was not my heart. I didn't want to, I never wanted to sit in an office and work a job.
SPEAKER_04Sure.
SPEAKER_00And it wasn't out of laziness, it was out of a desire because deep down I knew there was something in me that's screaming art. Whether it was music, whether it was performing magic, singing, whatever it was. It didn't drawing pictures, whatever it was. I wanted to do, I wanted, I was creative from the time I was a little kid. And one of the things that I've learned over life in 60 years is life doesn't necessarily reward creative people until they're successful.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. Well, how some people they don't even they don't even become successful until after they're gone.
SPEAKER_00Oh, and it's it's disgusting to me. It's sad uh because there are people who are incredibly talented, live their whole lives thinking they're failures. Yep. And I I don't know when it hit me, but the one I had this realization at some point in my life I'm gonna do the art for the art's sake, whether it was music, whether it was doing magic, whatever it was. I'm gonna do it for the sake of the art itself for my own pleasure. And if people like it, great. If they don't, there's nothing I I can't force somebody to like what I do.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that what that did is for me as a magician, is it shifted my focus on the kind of magic I would perform.
SPEAKER_03I want to I want to get into that more here in a second. Okay, you you go ahead and keep going, but I I want to circle back to the types of magic here in a minute.
SPEAKER_00Okay, okay. So, but anyway, um that that was my life for years. I got and then I moved to Nashville, move uh probably around 1990.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00About a year later, uh met my wife, um, who, my first wife. Uh, we ended up getting married, about we dated for 11 months and then got married. Uh, almost immediately started having kids. Uh, and but some by the time I'm 27 years old, I'm this long-haired, you know, uh never made it anywhere, rock and roller, who uh who's got a wife and and a daughter, or to them, well, by two by then, and decided, you know what, I really don't want to pursue the music anymore because I'd come to realize that the music industry, the industry and the business side have so much more control over the creativity and the artist side that it it kills the fun in the music. I wanted to be an artist, and I'm not talking about your typical Yahoo who gets on America's Got Talent, and they say, Well, you're an artist. Dude, no, he was he was making butter last week in a factory. Don't tell he's not an artist. Got you got to give him time to create the art to become an artist, but he he can sing, he's good at singing. But the artistry comes over time, I feel like. That's my personal opinion.
SPEAKER_03Sure.
SPEAKER_00You're not immediately an artist just because you can do something. I think it takes time to craft the art of it, and that's when the artist truly comes out.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Almost, almost every uh artist that I know, it's like there's a grind to it. There's like years of, you know, I don't know what it's like now because I obviously haven't toured in forever, but it's like, you know, there were there were long, long days, early mornings and late nights, yep, loading and unloading vans and just like traveling forever and not really sure what you're gonna have for dinner. And yeah, normally it was a hot and ready pizza that somebody graciously gave to you because they thought you were fueled on hot and ready. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and and eating, you know, whormel chili out of a can. And and oh yeah. And it for me, what it was was I I didn't mind because I wanted to make art. I wanted to make beautiful music. I it the dawn it dawned on me some point in my late 20s when I would go to auditions, because there would be a band looking for a singer, and I would go and I would be told, dude, you outsang everybody else we auditioned. But you don't have the look. Ah, that's lame. Okay. Well, life got its revenge on them because grunge killed rock and roll for a while. Um, I don't think I don't think of grunge as the same level, but if you look at the average grunge band, none of them look pretty.
SPEAKER_02Nah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and all the pretty boy bands were gone.
SPEAKER_03Well, it was like uh I saw a reel recently of a guy who was saying that the ugly people make all the bangers. Oh, yeah. And he was like, he was like reverencing all the bands from the 70s and he's like, and then Backstreet Boys and InSync and Britney Spears came along, and then the whole scene shifted into oh, we need to market this from a visual side as well because radio is no longer the predominant consumption method.
SPEAKER_00Well, and if you think about it, nobody does a record anymore, everybody does singles. And I grew up in the day where when you bought an album, you listened to the whole album and you knew every song and you knew what order they were in, you knew who sang on it, who played on it, you knew everything about it. I mean, growing up, my first, okay, I think this is an interesting story. I think people will appreciate it. I was about to turn 12 years old, it was 1977,
Vinyl Records That Changed Everything
SPEAKER_00and I grew up in a family in western Kentucky where everybody listened to country music. Now I don't, I didn't hate country music, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. It wasn't what I liked. And so I decided for my birthday, because I kept getting asked, what do you want for your birthday? What do you want for your birthday? And so I finally said, I want some rock and roll records. And the fur so my birthday comes, and my mom had gone. We lived in a small, small town in western Kentucky called Clinton. Small town. Uh the county is so small that at one point my brother was elected sheriff. And people say, Well, that's pretty cool. Your brother was the sheriff. And I'm like, eh, county's so small, it was his turn. Um it would the way he does not like when I say that. Um sorry, Mark. Everybody hear it now. Yeah. But he it's just this really small town, and there was nowhere to go to get a record in the town. So my mom had to drive 25 miles over to a town called Mayfield, Kentucky, where there was a record shop slash electronics store where you could still buy the old huge cabinet stereos. And where your stereo and your television was actually a huge piece of furniture in your living room or your di wherever. And uh, she bought me two rock and roll records for my birthday. Okay. This was now keep in mind, this is my mom who grew up in the 50s and 60s buying me a rock and roll record. That's a big deal. So she got me to buckle up. I'm ready. Casey and the Sunshine Band. Love it. And uh Leo Sayer. Oh wow. Do you remember Leo Sayer? I know. I've heard I've heard some stuff.
SPEAKER_03So basically borderline rock and roll.
SPEAKER_00It was pop. You know what I mean? It's like but it wasn't country, right? I didn't, I was 12, man. I didn't know. It was just, it was stuff I'd heard on the radio, so I was like, oh, this is cool. So I'm listening to it, and you know, but it was all, it was basically disco meets pop, you know, love song stuff, and whatever. But I was just glad it wasn't rock, it wasn't country because it was mine. This was mine. Here's the problem: the records skipped, both of them had skips on them. And so mom, the next week, she had to go back because she would go back to Mayfield once a week to get groceries. And we go back, we take the records back, and the guy said, Well, the rule is you bring it back, we have to replace it with the same record. So she gets the same, we get the same two records, take them home, put them on. The replacements both were messed up and had skips out. And I'm like, This is insane. This is crazy. I said, Mom, can we take them back and see if they'll let us get something else? So we take them back again. We said, Look, this is the second time we live 25 miles from here. She's a single mom raising kids. She didn't have time to be run into Mayfield every other week to bring back records. And so the guy let us change it for something else. So he said, just go look, whatever you want, we'll just change it out. I said, Okay. So I'm looking through the records and I'm looking, and keep in mind, 12 years old, Star Trek fan, Twilight Zone, comic books, um, you know, and I find two records that just went, oh, this looks like it'd be cool. And I got um the first one I picked up was Destroyer by Kiss. Nice, such a good record. Um, and then the second one was Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits.
SPEAKER_03No, that's so sick.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And so I took those records home. And you ever seen those scenes in a movie where they show the protagonist and something insane happens to the protagonist, and you get that forced perspective thing where they're moving forward and everything else is moving backwards? Yep. And it gets that weird. That happened to me that day. It's like the Zoom thing. The first time, first time I put on Destroyer and those that that strain of guitars at the beginning after the news report and the guy leaving the bar, the sounds of the guy leaving the bar, and the news report with Gene Simmons as the reporter telling about the pile-up car crash on the highway. And then you get that, and I just was like, oh my God, this is amazing. And it was next thing I know, I'm on my bed. My mom comes in, I've got a tennis rack in my hand, and I'm jumping up and down on the bed, pretending like I'm Paul Stanley playing. Oh my God. That was it. I was done. Never again did I ever have to go find who I was musically. That's all that that day I discovered myself music.
SPEAKER_03Well, I thought you were gonna say she busted in, drop kicked you, and you never listen to music again.
SPEAKER_00No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, but I but I heard I heard the three words that I heard many, many, many times for the rest of my time I lived at home, which was turn it down. I thought it was Detroit Rock City, but that was constantly hearing Turn It Down, all the time. And it went from KISS and Ted Nugent got involved, and and uh then I started getting into Foreigner and uh Pink Floyd, and uh thanks to my cut, one of my cousins who was a big Pink Floyd fan, and that was the end of it. But here's the thing I one of the things I noticed was none of these bands were trying to be like anybody else. Okay, this is one of the things I noticed early on. They were all just being themselves, creating their own stuff. It was new, it was fresh. Nobody had done anything like it before. You know, you start listening to bands like Rush, Pink Floyd. Oh, dude, yeah. Dude, Rush were these guys were the cream of the crop, man. But they were also they were writing and creating music, not having any clue, and then Zeppelin. Oh my gosh. Oh my goodness, blood Zeppelin. And what happens is over the time you begin to realize these guys are making music because they're creating it from their soul. And as they're creating this amazing music, they don't, you know, you other bands, you know, one hit wonders, maybe have a few records that do good, yeah, and then on to the next one. It's been over 60 years for some of these bands, and we still listen to them every day.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, it's you you bring up an interesting point because ironically enough, uh my first two records, because uh when I was seven, I asked for a record player for my birthday. I still have a picture of me like super stoked standing next to it. It was one of the ones with the big lid that opened up on the top of it. Yep. And the first record that I got was uh actually a comedy record. It was stand-up from Bill Cosby. Okay, yeah. And uh, you know, the bullet in the furnace. Why is there air? Why is there air? I had that record. And uh so the idiot mittens when got me in trouble so many times, bro. But anyway, uh, so there was that stand-up record, and my brother and I used to lay in bed at night and listen to it just giggling so hard we'd get ourselves in trouble. Oh yeah. So it wasn't turn it down, it was guys quit it. Knock it off, go to bed. And then uh my second record, ironically enough, was Kiss Greatest Hits. Oh, yeah, yeah. And uh it had so many good songs on there, shout it out loud. Oh yeah, just some it was awesome. And so, so ironically, one of my first records was also Kiss. Um, but for me, what was what's interesting is to look back is we went from uh entire albums of just masterful songs, oh yeah, to as long as we can get one good song on it, we can sell the whole album because of the single, you know. So yeah, um, I think the last era of music that I can recall off the top of my head where it was just masterful was probably the early 90s. Yeah, every song, like like Alanis Morse set, Jagged Little Pill. Oh, yeah, and it was like every single song was just a banger. Yep. And it was like, dude, and again, she didn't fit the stereotypical mold of Britney Spears or whatever. Um, but it's like uh yeah, something happened in the early 90s. It I guess it would have been boy bands, right? Boy bands kind of probably really took the scene in the early 90s, and it really changed things.
SPEAKER_00And and you know that the the first song that got played on MTV was Video Kill the Radio Star. That's right. And I'm I honest to God believe that. I think that's what did it because it no longer was about the artistry of the music, the music and the musicians, it became about how they look.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And oh, did you see this guy and you know, or this girl, whatever, or she's so and more cleavage and whatever. I mean, it was just it got the the artistry and the artisticness of music was pushed aside for the aesthetic of the look. Yeah, and you know, I mean that that's why I mean, I think about, and this is not even remotely close to the kind of music we're talking about, but I look at the fact that like you get somebody like Susan Boyle who gets on America's Got Talent, and they're ready to laugh her off the stage because of how she looked. She made me tear up. Unbelievable voice.
SPEAKER_03She's one that sang the opera song, right?
SPEAKER_00I I don't even remember the song she sang. I just remember it was just I'm pretty sure it was like a opera piece move. Yeah, I teared up.
SPEAKER_03I remember listening to her. Yeah. But it's like, yeah, how do we how do we get back to that? You know, it's uh it's funny. Like I I I bring you in and you're a magician and we're talking about music. I love it. I love it.
SPEAKER_00That's okay because it's part of listen, music's everywhere you go. Magic's everywhere you go. Yeah, well, to a degree from well, it is for me, but it it's it's the fact that no matter where you go, you watch a you watch a video on Instagram. There's music in the background, and there's I'm I'm I'm posting videos on Instagram, and there's music in the background or making posts on there. There's always music, um, mostly related to the theme of magic to kind of enhance what I'm trying to do. But it's all about to me, music is one of the gifts God gave us to help express our emotions and our souls. And you know, it it's it's I'll never forget one of the most one of the times I was the most emotionally moved by a piece of music. A friend of mine had said, You've got to check out this concert. Um, it's on video and you can buy it. And I said, Okay, so I'm gonna go find it. And it was the early days of YouTube, and I went and found the video, and I immediately went out and bought the video the whole concert. Wow. And it was Steve Vai. Dude. The GOAT with the, I think it was the Copenhagen uh Orchestra. Okay. I never heard I never heard them. And it's just him on stage with this orchestra over in uh in Scandinavia somewhere performing. And he has a song that he wrote called For the Love of God. And I start listening to this, and I've got my headphones on and I've got it plugged in and I'm listening to it. And I'm just sitting back listening to the band the orchestra playing and the just sweetness of the music. And it because it's just this very sweet, beautiful melody. And then the guitar kicks in and comes starts playing along with it. And I all of a sudden realize I'm crying. Yeah. It wasn't a I didn't think about this. I wasn't it just happened. I'm I realized, my God, what is going on? I'm like, oh my gosh. I had started tearing up. It was so moved, it just did something in my soul that moved me to tears. I was so emotionally moved by this piece of music. And that's happened a few times where you're listening to something so beautiful. And, you know, going back talking now, going, let's circle it back to magic. One uh one of the best magicians who ever lived was a guy by the name of Eugene Berger. Eugene was out of Chicago, fantastic
Why Magic Should Move People
SPEAKER_00magician. He was uh never did a lot of complicated sleight-of-hand magic. His whole thing was about stories and presentations. And uh he used to say for magicians, he would tell magicians this in his lectures you have to be more than one level, more than one layer. You have to move people emotionally. And he said, if you want to find out how to move people emotionally as an artist, as a performer, go to a Dolly Pardon concert. She has funny songs, silly songs, uh, sweet songs, beautiful songs, uh, songs where everybody can sing along, but then she has songs that might make you angry. She has songs that might move you to tears, songs that may make you feel sadness, because it was just like this layered texture of different things moving through. And what's funny is as you listen to the songs, the songs that she sings tells her story. And it over time that started getting in my psyche and in my my spirit about I'm a magician, but it's not about tricks. It's about life. Uh, when you come see me perform, I tell stories. I tell people I have two jobs, and I have two skills in life that I am great at. Not because I was gifted to be great, but because I worked my tail off to be great. And that is I'm a profess I'm a magician and I do magic and I tell stories. And I combine those two things together, and my show is a mix of my story and then me sharing stories of some of the greatest magicians who ever lived as I'm doing their magic, because if somebody doesn't do it, it's gonna be forgotten and left behind and nobody gets to see it. That's cool. It's almost like a time piece, a little bit more.
SPEAKER_03Oh, it is like you're kind of going through and sharing that's really cool. All right, let's let's circle back real quick. You had mentioned earlier uh about types of magic. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Could you give uh just everyone listening that maybe isn't into magic, give
Types Of Magic Explained
SPEAKER_03us a a little bit of uh a brief education of like what are the different types of magic, and then maybe some examples of like what that looks like because maybe they've seen it but didn't know that that's what it was or whatever.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so some of it's obvious, some of it's not so obvious. Um, most people think, well, it's all sleight of hand. Well, some of it is, some of it's not. Uh, and when I say some of it's not, I'm not talking it's supernatural or anything like that. It's just all magic that you see performed, whether it's David Copperfield, David Blaine, Chris Angel, any of them. There's nothing supernatural going on. Let me just stress that first of all. Okay, there is no supernatural powers. I didn't spend one of my favorite lines was from the great skeptic magician, amazing Randy. I could sacrifice a goat to do a card trick, but there's so many easier ways. Um I just I always love that line. That's good. Um so we'll just set the record straight. We're not talking about black magic. We're not we're talking, we're not talking about white magic, we're talking card tricks, coin tricks, light of hand. Oh gosh. I thought you did white magic. No, no, no. I'm just an old white guy doing magic. That's what I am. But so anyway, there when you look at magic, you've got uh manipulation magic. That's where you see the guys on stage with the music playing, and they're just doing things with their hands like this, and then producing coins, producing cards, uh billiard balls, changing hands. That's called manipulative. Pulling handkerchiefs out of their mouth. Well, that's that's not necessarily the manipulative type because you're manipulating objects with your hands. Oh, I see. And it's and it's that's why they call it manipulative magic. It's not manipulating people, it's manipulating objects.
SPEAKER_03Got it.
SPEAKER_00Uh, then you've got Mendelism, which is what it is. It's mind reading. Uh, or apparent mind reading. Uh, what's uh the real popular guy? Uh is it? Ozzy Wynn. Ozzy Wynn is one. Ozzy Wind is actually more of a fantastic, amazing card magician. Oh, you're thinking of Oz Pearlman. That's who I'm thinking of. Oz Pearlman, yeah, yeah. Dude. So Oz is really good. That guy is probably the best, isn't he? Yeah. Well, I don't I'm honestly, I'm not the one to say. Sure. I've not because I don't I've seen a few men. Listen, I got some friends that would make you believe they can honest to God read your mind.
SPEAKER_03So, and you know what, you brought up a good point. It's the people, and this is in all fields, right? It's the guy in the spotlight is good, and most people will give him their respect, but it's but he's not the best.
SPEAKER_00Not necessarily.
SPEAKER_03And it's and I would say that's probably true in music, that's true in everything. So I could see, I could definitely see that. Okay. I I uh all right, so you've got mentalism, you've got manipulation, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Sleight of hand, sleight of hand is where you see magicians doing card tricks, coin tricks, spongeballs, things like that. Um, it's that's typical sleight of hand. You've got um, oh gosh, what else is there? I mean, it's not what's funny is there's comedy magic, which is doing magic with j telling story, funny stories or jokes or whatever, trying to make people laugh. The point of the magic and the performance is to get people to laugh. And it's more like it's a comedian who does tricks.
SPEAKER_03And what would you call, what would you call the type of magic where it's like uh, you know, sawing the table in half and the person's inside of it, and like like what it like what are those? That's stage magic, stage illusions, empty chair and in there cover on it.
SPEAKER_00Now stage illusions, illusionists, stage magicians. Uh there was some fantastic, amazing stage illusionists. Uh, if you've never gotten to see him, Lance Burton, I saw him live one time in Vegas. Oh my gosh, hands down, in my opinion, one of the best that ever lived. Wow. And he still performs some. He actually, I unless I'm mistaken, I think, based on everything I know, uh, because Lance and I aren't close friends or anything. I we know I know him and I've met him a few times, uh, but I think he's running the family farm up in Louisville, Kentucky. Oh wow. Yeah, because he's he spent 15 years in Vegas, made his money, his parents both passed away. He inherited the family farm and he moved back and he's just living the simple life, and then occasionally doing like um shows on the road with a group of people, and he'll do like six or seven shows a year, I guess, and does it because he loves it.
SPEAKER_03So there's uh there's also um I guess card magic would be it's kind of its own category. Cardistry, but it's like subcategories too, I think. And then um my favorite, which is street magic. Like okay, yeah, I love street magic. I just think there's something special about um not being on a set and it just feels more magical because it feels very like vulnerable. Like, and I just think it's so and and I've seen you do some really cool street magic type stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's all well, it's all the same. It's just you're talking about the venue. Right. Now, we're not talking about what kind of magic they're doing, we're just talking about the venue where they're doing it. For me, I'm my main gig is I'm we have a restaurant here in Nashville called House of Cards,
House Of Cards And Mind-Blowing Close-Up
SPEAKER_00which is I jokingly refer to the House of Cards as the Magic Castle in Hollywood's Southern Little Sister. We uh it's a uh 1930s speakeasy style restaurant and bar, and but we have magic, and there are a couple of tables where magicians uh will perform at the tables for 20 minutes, and then we rotate in and out and perform, do about a 20-minute performance. We don't come to your table, you eat at your table, and then you come see us because we want you in our domain. That's we are able to hold court for a few minutes, and our goal is or well, I'm I'll say it this way. I can't speak for everybody there. My goal is to so blow your mind in 20 minutes that you walk away questioning reality. That's because why not? I'm a magician, I should be able to do the best, most amazing magic ever. And and again, nothing supernatural, no weirdness going on. I didn't spend 30 years learning to, you know, 40 years learning to do this so that I could, you know, claim some supernatural power. I don't because, you know, but uh but it's also but I also want to leave them something deeper. I want to do, you know, we were talking about moving people emotionally with music. I have a card trick that I used to do. I don't do it as much anymore because it's a very long, drawn-out piece. And it was never meant to be, but over time it began to become something different. You start it with it one way. I see this thing performed by a friend of mine who uh his name was Aldo Combe, and he Aldo passed away a few years ago. That's the thing, is I'm outliving a lot of my heroes, and now, you know, I I jokingly refer and say that most of my favorite magicians and heroes are dead now. And so I feel like, you know, there's a responsibility for me to take what they left, find what I can that fits me and my style, and then keep it going for the next next generation so they see it. And but anyway, Aldo did a piece that I saw him perform. I loved it. He taught it to me, and I wrote it, I created a different way to present it. And I have had grown women just begin to weep when I do it. It was never meant to be that kind of a piece, but for some reason, because of the theme of the piece, which originally started out as talking about happiness. And it was never about a card trick. The the end of the card trick actually reinforces the concept of happiness is a choice. It's not something that you're getting you're given on, you know, as a gift. It's something you have to choose to have. And I've I've had grown women sit and or guys just sit there and just stunned. And then and other times people are screaming, and it's the typical, you know, TikTok response video with everybody. I saw a video somebody sent me of a young guy doing a card trick, and I and the whole room when he does the reveal of the thing, everybody's screaming, and it reminded me of when you go to the Nashville Zoo, you would hear all the monkeys yelping at one time. That's what it sounded like to me. And I'm like, I, you know, honestly, I don't see, and they're running around each other, and it's like, good grief, dude. You just pour food out there and they're going crazy. Um to me, when I'm performing, I there are a lot of times it's almost uncomfortable because I'm expecting you as a performer, you want something in us as performers demands applause. Because applause is we appreciated what you did. Yeah. And I will do this what I feel is an amazing piece, and I look out, and all I see is a room of people going like this. That's awkward. That is awkward, but I've had to learn to accept that's their applause. That's their way of saying you that I have no idea. That's that is cool. You just knocked my socks off. And so it's this, you know, I'll do this, I'll do a piece where you almost have to go, you know, okay, well, now that the applause has died down and people are like, oh yeah, we're supposed to applaud. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. If I gotta ask for it, you know, don't, you know, that's milking it. I don't want to do that. But we just and at the end of the day, my goal is if I feel satisfied as an artist and they loved what I did, that's a good day. That's been a good day.
SPEAKER_03All right, I'm gonna ask you some questions. Okay. Has there ever been a time that you can think of that pops to the top of your mind where a
When A Trick Goes Wrong
SPEAKER_03trick has gone wrong or sideways? And what was that experience like? And like what what did you do in that moment?
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_03Or are you not allowed to share those? Because I know some of this stuff you're not allowed to, some things you can't say.
SPEAKER_00Well, and and remind me and I'll explain why. Sure. Okay. Um one, of course. You know, we we're all we're human, we mess up, we make mistakes. Um something didn't go where it was supposed to go, and you you uh you blow it. Um, I don't I've had some great teachers who taught me some valuable lessons over the years, and one of the lessons they taught me was no one knows what you're gonna do. So if they don't know what you're gonna do, how would they know if you made a mistake? That's true. And if they don't know you made a mistake, they didn't recover. So one of the things I do when I'm pre when I'm practicing is I practice making a mistake. Now people say, well, but practice makes perfect. That means you're gonna practice the mistake, you're gonna do the mistake. No, you have to cover all your contingencies. What what's the worst thing that could happen? And what if it happens? What would you do? So I practice how to get out of those situations. The other thing is they said you gotta take your you gotta take your ego out of it. Um because if you make a mistake, it's not the end of the world. They don't know. Just recover and move on. You know? I've had some where I have had a couple of times where it was so bad, I just say, Well, you ever had one of those days? Welcome to you all had a front row seat to mine. That's awesome. So let's just move on. And I just move on to something else. They don't care. That's cool. Because if you're at the end of the day, if the if my job is to entertain them and mystify them and amaze them, and I've done that and I blow it once. One, I've had people go, dude, did you really mess up? And I go, Yeah. And they go, Wow, you're you're just human.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Go figure. Yeah. I wasn't born magical. Dude, I wasn't the seventh son of a seventh son lit born in the seventh month on the seventh moon. I mean, it's none of that kind of goofiness. Um, it's a card trick. Move, God, help me, man. No, move on.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh, it's not the end of the world. You're not gonna die.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh oh, that was the other thing I learned is if you mess up, you're not gonna die. That's true. You know, it's not gonna kill your career. Um, I've heard horror stories about some magicians messing up. One of my uh, I hate to say the word favorite, but one of my favorite horror stories was there is an international convention and competition of magicians that takes place every year. It's called Physm. Physm stands, it's F-I-S-M, the Federation Internationale de Société Magique. Nice. And at this competition, it takes place in a different country every year, or every every time. Um, one of the most recent ones was in uh Quebec back a few years ago. And but it was this was back probably, I think, late 90s, early 2000s, that they had one where a guy came out and he made this big buildup, and there was this big thing all week about he was going to do Houdini's water torture same chamber escape. And it was a big deal. And he comes out and they've got this gigantic plexiglass box that's about eight, seven, eight feet tall, wow, full of water. They go to put him inside of it, which means they have this uh this folding bore, you know, top on it that has two holes in it for his feet to go through. They manacle his feet together in there, they elevate him up and pull him in the water, and just as he starts his escape, the glass breaks and water goes everywhere. Oh my gosh. And he's hanging in there looking like an idiot. God bless him. I felt horrible for him. Um, yeah, sometimes there are mistakes. Yeah. And that wasn't him. Like it is not like he wasn't his fault. Well, maybe, I don't know. Maybe he didn't check his props. I don't know. I don't know. But one, that's why I don't do big things like that. Two, I I don't, I'm not great underwater. Um you know, it's what's the old joke? I'm gonna I'm gonna perform underwater. Look, I'm underwater. No, yeah, um that was dumb. Um for those of you just listening, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Let's paint the picture for you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I just put a put a cup over my head. Um no, it it's mistakes happen. Things are gonna happen. It's not the end of the world. Move on.
SPEAKER_03And then let me ask you this. Um, what is what is your favorite type of magic to do?
Performing The Masters Again
SPEAKER_00Oh gosh. Um, other people's. I know that's probably not the answer you were looking for, but let me explain what I mean. Sure. Um, you know who we all know who Yo-Yo Ma is.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, I do. I don't know if they do. One of the greatest cellists who ever lived. I love classical music. I'm not just into rock music. I love classical music. I love a lot of different genres of music. Um, not necessarily country, but a lot of other different genres of music, uh, jazz, blues, um anyway. Yo-yo Ma is probably one of the greatest cellists who ever lived. And Spence has spent his entire life mastering the instrument of the cello. I am not aware of whether he has ever written a piece of magic of music in his life. What I do know is he has made a uh made a career playing the music of old masters. Music that you may have heard, music you may never have heard. Music you may have never heard it unless he played it. Right. So I don't ever want to dare compare myself to him. He's a master of his craft. He's a oh gosh. Uh hearing him play cello. Legend. Whew, it's amazing.
SPEAKER_03He's the he's the Michael Jordan of cellos.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and so I kind of think in that same vein, in the world of magic, there have been some incredible master magicians in past performing things that mystified and amazed your great great great grandparents. Right. But because those performers are gone, that magic's gone to a degree. Sure. But it's not, it's just nobody's per doing it. And I I will spend sometimes days going through old books, uh, going through books online, going through books on uh, you know, PDF of old books, um, just pouring through, trying to find something that I can go, oh, I've never seen anything like that. Let's read into that. And if I feel like it's something that I can pull out and and work with and craft into something entertaining and perform for people, I will spend days, sometimes weeks working on that piece until I've crafted a piece where um uh I can do bring that same piece back to the present and share it with modern audiences.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh, for example, there is a there was a famous magician in the early 1900s. Uh I'm I'm almost, I think he was Hungarian. Uh his name was Max Katzbright.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00And Hungarian Jew moved to the States during 1800s, early eight or late 1880s with his family. And he was um would perform on the streets and stuff as a kid. He did our acrobatics and juggling and all this stuff, but found his niche in magic. Okay. And by the time he's 25 years old, he's I think it was around the time he was 25 to 30 years old, he's averaging five hundred dollars a night. Wow. He had performed for Roosevelt, President Roosevelt, President Cleveland, um I mean uh Harding, he had performed for the family. Of the Geddes, the Rothschilds, the Vanderbilts. Wow. He had performed for Kings and Queens. In fact, a guy that I know up in New York named Steve Cohen wrote a book about him. It's about this thick. And it's called Molini. His name was Max Mullini. This boy's a stage name he went by. Max Mulini called Molini, King of the Magicians and the Magician of Kings. Which I love that. That's such a good title. And Molini had beautiful magic. Well, one of the things he was known for is he would show up at the people's homes and he'd be dressed as well or better than some of the people, some of these millionaires in the finest clothes money could buy: fur coats, uh, ivory handled cane, top hat, the whole nine yards. And he would show up though with nothing with him, except a couple of things. And they'd say, Well, Mr. Molini, where are your props? And they would, and he would have them take him to their kitchen, and he would get everything he needed for a two-hour show out of their kitchen. Wow. Going through their cabinets, their, their, their cupboard, their pantry, finding everything he needed. And one of the one of the pieces he became famous for doing was he would do a trick with sugar cubes. What? And there are now there are more modern versions of this that people do with coins and cards. And I thought, I want to show people what the original looked like, what it looked like when they did it back in the old days.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And he would literally put four sugar cubes out on the table and just cover them with his hands. And then he had a magic phrase that he said that unfortunately, which was not intentional, today it would sound derogatory. So I don't use it. Sure. But he would cover them with his hands and just wiggle his fingers, and when you lift his hands, the one that was here is now over here. Wow. And then he'd move his hands over here, and that one's now over there. And he never, it was like he never touched a thing. He just waved his hand over it and boom, they would move.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_00And I spent weeks learning this. And it's the second piece in my show now. What I do. And I because most of what I'm doing is close-up magic. Sure. But it's not like you and I sitting close up. It's me at a table with a group around almost like miniature theater, maybe 20, 30 people. And this is the second piece. And what's funny is that I just it's Molini's sugarcube drink. I thought, well, this will be a nice addition. I've gotten booked for expensive paid shows because they freaked out over the sugar cube drink. That's cool. And I'm going, this is so cool.
SPEAKER_03It just goes to show you uh, and it and it's just like any field, it's the fundamentals, it's it's getting the basics down that makes someone truly great. It's like you can do all these flashy tricks, and they are impressive and they they definitely get applause, I'm sure. But it's like going back to the simple coins, cards, sugar cubes, whatever. It's like you master those, oh yeah, and it's almost more impressive because of how simple it is. It's harder, it's harder to imagine there's any gimmick or anything involved with that. You know, it's like what what could possibly do that? You know, and so your brain gets stuck.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03And then it's and then it makes it that much more amazing. Yeah. Is there is there a uh type of magic that you're just like, man, I wish I could do that? Like it's so cool. Like or or you appreciate it so much that you're like, the amount of time it would take for me to get good at it now is probably better for me just to stay where I'm at. Like it has it, or am I off on saying that? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Well, no, no, no, that's a great question. Um I wish I was better at sleight of hand with cards.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00No, let me explain what I mean by that. I can do some, I can do some wonderful card magic. Um, but there are some guys out there. Okay, I'll just I'll throw this out. So there are people ask me all the time, are there schools for magic? And there's not. There aren't, you know, there's a few places you can go to learn where maybe they do like a summer camp. I know they have Tannins, has uh magic camp up in New York. Um there are some amazing magicians that got started there. Uh there are places that magic shops that maybe have classes or whatever, but there's no official school. There are, however, though, schools of thought when it comes to magic. And the most influential school of thought in magic in the world is in Madrid, Spain.
Juan Tamariz And The Spain Invitation
SPEAKER_00And I know you've talked, you and I talked about this a little bit. Sure. Um the number one most influential magician on the planet is a guy named Juan Tamarith. It's T-A-M-A-R-I-Z. And one about oh gosh, 60 years ago, um was doing card magic that nobody had seen. Amazing, beautiful. And he look and when you when you m see him, you're thinking, this guy? Because honestly, first time I saw him, he is one, he had really like snaggly teeth that were like badly needed dental work.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00He's got thick glasses on. He's not attractive at all. He's like, there's nothing attractive about it.
SPEAKER_03That'd be people write bangers.
SPEAKER_00He had long straggly hair, you know. Uh, all would wear a purple silk in one of those collapsible top hats. Oh, yeah, yeah. And and he was just as goofy, and I'm thinking, who is this guy? And then he performs, and you're like, oh my God. Like, seriously. I have just seen a master. Oh my gosh. And first time I ever saw him perform, there used to be uh um every year the night before Halloween, Wednesday night, or no, Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, sorry, they would have a TV show on NBC called The World's Greatest Magic. And you'd have some celebrity host. They had Robert Urich and John Ritter, and oh, what was the other guy's name? Um I can't think of the name right off the top of my head. But anyway, um, Alan Pick. He was he did it for a few years. And they would have the magicians who had won different levels of magic awards through the Academy of Magical Arts slash the Magic Castle in Hollywood. And the first year they had it, Robert Urich describes Juan Tamarith, who at that time I'd heard his name, but I didn't know anything about him. They described him as he had been voted by magicians the greatest great greatest close-up magician of their time. And then he said, Maybe the greatest who ever lived. Wow. That's a big deal. That's a tall order. That's a real tall order. And then they show him, and I'm thinking, this guy? Yeah, that doesn't look like him. And then he does this card trick that involved a little car. He called the trick a coch uh cochetito, which is the little car. And he never touches the cards almost. It's him just dealing the cards out, and then people are moving the car back and forth, and the car always stopped around a group of cards, and that would narrow it down to that group of cards, and then he would take those and he would move it, and he would end up the car found the chosen card. Wow. It's the craziest thing I'd seen. And I'm like, okay, but I just kind of moved on. I'm like, that's a great trick. That's really good. It wasn't until years later, as I got older, got more into my as this was probably I was probably about 27, 28 at this time, 29, and I had gotten back into magic and started uh, and it was a long, I won't go into the long story about how I got back into it, but we um his name kept coming up on stuff. And but I was into other performers, and I'm very much drawn to I don't look at a specific style of magic. I look at certain people and I study what they do, and I'm drawn to their magic, and I try to pattern what I'm doing after what they're doing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And not trying to imitate them by any stretch, but I find that rather than going haphazard all over the world trying to find all these different pieces, um, my my view was always listen to this guy do what he's doing. Not imitating.
SPEAKER_03Well, there's a difference between honoring someone's art form and then just straight plagiarizing, right?
SPEAKER_00It's which I didn't want to do. Right. I didn't want to do. And especially when you got Eugene Berger, who was my first major influence in magic, uh, saying, never perform something I teach you the way I do it. Because that's coming from my heart. You have to do something from your heart. And that's good. That's so good. It took a while for me to get that. I mean, I heard it, and I and and you know, I understood, I comprehended what he was saying, but it took a while for it to drop from here to here to get it. And when I got it, it changed everything. But um, so you could see me perform a piece of his magic. It would not, it would not be the way he did it. But you could see his influence. Sure. Uh, but anyway, so over the years, I start getting some of Tam Reese's books. And I'm reading his books and I'm watching his videos, and I'm going, this guy is a beast. Um, he could do things with a deck of cards that would scare you. It was so good. And through time, I found out he had this meeting that we'd meet together once a year in Madrid, in Spain, a little town northwest of Spain, of Madrid called El Escorial, San Lorenzo de El Escorial. And which doesn't sound anything like the way Antonio Banderas would have said it, but that's okay. Um and I thought, well, that would be cool to go hang out with those guys because I'm looking at the list of the people that go to this, and it's like a who's who of the greatest magicians alive. Wow. It's like if you walk in, it would be like walking, because I've been to magic conventions. Anybody can go to a magic convention. Uh, and they have people that are performing and people that are lecturing, but this was not like that. This was, they would have four topics, and everybody could get involved. And so imagine walking into a restaurant where all that's on the menu is different styles of 250 an ounce grade A Wagu beef. Wow, yeah. That's what it's like going at this thing. But what does that say about you? Well, right, we're not there yet. We're not there yet. Um, and I'm just going, well, I'm just dreaming. Oh my gosh, this would be amazing. Because you got Roberto Jobi from Switzerland, who writes the greatest books on card magic today. Um, who you've got Magic Christian from Austria, who is the president of the Austrian Magic Circle, who uh Piatnik Magic had a whole magic line of card tricks and stuff because of him.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00Um, you've got um uh Rafael Benitar, who is not only one of the greatest card magicians alive in Venezuela, he is also one of the world's foremost authorities on Renaissance era uh loot. Oh, really? He plays guitar like a fiend, man. He's amazing. And we're talking about guys who you give them something and they become uh they become uh enamored with that thing and they pour their whole soul into it. So we're talking the best of the best of the best. Well, okay, over the years, I end up getting asked to join the uh the resident magician staff at House of Cards when it early early on when it first opened. And through the years, they start bringing in different magicians to come and work. We got a little theater there. And over the course of time, I get to meet and over the over the years become good friends with two guys. One of them's from Spain, one of them's from Argentina, and they're like brother, they're they're like brothers. Um, Alan Marchese, his real name is Alfredo Marchese, and Juan Luis Rubiales, who I was mentioning to you earlier, who's on record as having fooled Penn and Teller faster than anybody. Wow, yeah. And these guys become to him like good friends. And we were having lunch one day, and I'd mentioned to him, I'd man, I'd love to come meet Juan. I'd love to come meet Tamaries. And I said, I just don't think it's ever gonna happen. And you know, we just we were just having conversations. And I wasn't trying to milk it and trying to get them to to, you know, trying to manipulate them to get them to invite me. I really wanted to go. And if they said, would you like to come? I'd love to come. I'm just being honest. Right. July of 23, I'm at a family get together in Gatlinburg, and my phone buzzes, and I get look down at it. And by the way, this is gonna answer your question. Sure. No, no, no, you're good. Any kind of magic I'd like to get better at. And I look down and it's my friend Alan, uh Alfredo, and he says, What are you doing in October? I said, Well, I'm hopefully working, doing, you know, I'll be working and doing shows and stuff. And he goes, Can you uh block off certain days? I said, Yeah, are you guys gonna be in town? And he goes, No, no, no, no. You're coming to Spain. Wow. And he had had lunch with Juan Tamarita right around that time. At least this is what I think I remember. I it it was a blur. Sure. Looking back, I I may be totally making this up. Sure. Just try and recall as best I can how this went. Yeah, long story short, I had gotten invited to come to this group. Wow. Okay. Now, I'm gonna be honest with you. That's like saying, uh, we need a hot dog on the kids' menu because there's just too much wago beef. But I'm at the restaurant. That's right. I'm on the menu. I love it. I'm there. And I went in 23, 24, and 25. Uh each year got to know different people a little bit better. Um, it's it's one of my favorite times of the year is going to hang out with these guys. Um, I have part of me feels like I have nothing to offer them because it's like, it's like saying, you know, it's like being a neophyte. You get around these guys and you feel like I've been doing this for a long, long time. And I get around these guys and I feel like I know nothing. And I'm watching them do things that technically I can't do or have never done before. Sure. And at my age to start trying, I would feel like a beginner again. It'd be it'd be tough. And, you know, I'm watching a guy who is a Scottish uh movie director and creator of film and documentaries named Paul Wilson, who's from Scotland, who lives, I think, I think Paul's in Vegas now. I I don't remember exactly. But um doing things with a deck of cards that I didn't know you could do with a deck of cards. It's insane to watch. They're amazing. And I'm sitting here and they're just like, hey, you want to come over and hang out? Let's go. We're gonna go get a beer. We're gonna go, you want to go? And we're gonna go grab some coffee and just bring, and including me. And I'm just like, I this is the most surreal. I'm just a kid from Kentucky, man. How did I get here? Friend of my old friend of mine used to say, if you're ever walk walking down a highway in the south, and you look over and you see a turtle sitting on a fence post, know that he didn't get there by himself. Yeah, that's true. Somebody had to put him there. I don't know why. Um I am a Christian, I'm a follower of Jesus. I'm not perfect at it, not good at it. I've still learned still learning every day. Um it's only by the grace of God that a kid from Kentucky ends up hanging out with the top master magicians on the planet. That's crazy. The whole time I'm there, I'm like a giddy little kid who's grateful to be alive. I don't know how I got
The Price Of Mastery
SPEAKER_00there. I really don't. God knows. You know, I and and and I'm sitting and I've made friends all around the world. Um the the if I could do what it to so going back to circle back to answer your question, you have to understand the level I'm talking about. Sure. This is like um one of my one of my favorite old stories was a lady walk is with her family and she's walking through a restaurant and she looks over and sees Pablo Picasso sitting at a table by himself drinking coffee. And she walks up and she says, Mr. Picasso, um, you're my favorite artist. Would you please would you mind drawing a picture for me? And he said, Sure. And so he she he takes out a napkin and a pen and draws a simple little picture for her and goes to hand it to her and he said, That'll be five thousand dollars. And she goes, What? He goes, that'll be five thousand dollars. And she goes, Why would you ask me to give you five thousand dollars? That took you two minutes. And he goes, No, ma'am. It took me fifty years to get to a place where one you know I'm Picasso, and two, to be able to draw that good in two minutes.
SPEAKER_03It's not a time thing, it's an experience thing.
SPEAKER_00I deal with this all the time with cus with with people wanting to book me. They'll say, How much would you charge to do an hour show? And I tell them, and I hear like I'm I'm waiting to hear the the when they pass out and they're on the floor, passed out, going, you know, and they'll say things like, Well, god surely you can't be kidding. Wait, we only had this budget. My my first line is well, one, where did you come up with that number? Yeah, what did you think it was gonna cost? Um, I you know and they're like, Well, you're doing an hour, yeah. Okay, um, there's a there's a saying in the tattoo world good tattoos aren't cheap, and cheap tattoos aren't good. Yep. And the same thing holds true for magic. And I'm even I'm gonna paraphrase it a little bit. Great magicians aren't cheap, and cheap magicians aren't great. Sure. So at the end of the day, here's what you want. When you're gonna hire somebody to do magic at your party or whatever, do you want people going, wow, that was a great party, but God, that magician, he was a or do you want them going, oh my god, that guy was amazing. Yeah, I don't know where they found him, but he was, you know, is that worth $1,500, $2,000 to have people say that? Or would you rather have them now judging you because you're too cheap to get the good stuff, you know? And and and that's what I tell people. Look, if you don't have a budget for it, don't ask. Yeah. You know, I I'd rather, I like I've got friends who they'll say, well, how much do you charge? And I'm like, you don't want to know. You don't want to know. Yeah. And because I I'm not cheap, but it took me 50 years of my life between starting with those little card tricks when I was a kid and then spending 30 years of my life as an adult mastering the craft that I do. It took me 30 years to do a 45 minute to an hour show where at the end of the show people are at their on their feet. You don't do that doing this kind of stuff, you know. How'd you do that? Watch me pull a watch me pull a coin out of Johnny's ear. No, no, no, no, no. And it's and it's not just the magic, it's the stories, it's the things that I do during that where because my goal is I want people sitting, not just through the magic, but through also those the combination of the magic and the stories, sitting on the edge of their seats.
SPEAKER_03You're not paying for a series of tricks, you're paying for an experience. Exactly. And that experience comes with years and years of life and practice. Yep.
SPEAKER_00And it's and and and and how would I baking, if you will, soaking and cooking under the tutelage of some of not kidding. I couldn't tell you how much money I've spent throughout my life that sometimes couldn't really afford it. But have a wife who's willing to let me do to go spend time with some of the greatest magicians in the world because I know at the end of the day I'm gonna become better as a result. Even if I pick up one thing that I literally I would pay $1,500 to fly to Spain, hang out with those guys, and pick up one thing that makes me 2% better.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's one of the things I've learned people don't want to do. They want to know just accept me as I am. No, be better. What's it? What are you willing to pay to become better?
unknownExactly.
SPEAKER_00What are you willing, even if it's just 2% better? What are you willing to pay?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, and that's and so yeah, I'm gonna go to Spain every year. Now, the sad thing is, and we were talking about this earlier, Juan just passed away um last Tuesday. It's still fresh.
SPEAKER_04Sure.
SPEAKER_00And there was a concern we didn't know if this year was gonna happen or not. It looks like it is. Um, and there's some conversation going on about what it's gonna be like. Are we gonna honor what he used to do, or do we want to take this year and honor him? And some are saying yes, some saying it's too early. Um regard my whole thing was they said, Well, what do you think? And I'm like, Honestly, you guys are. My brothers. You guys have become some of my best friends. I just want to see you guys. We've just lost our father. That's what it feels like.
SPEAKER_04Sure.
SPEAKER_00I only was around him three different times. It was for about five days at the conference. Last year I got invited to go to his birthday party at one of the most exclusive clubs in downtown Madrid. That was cool. And I'm hanging out, and you see Anthony Blake, who's the number one mentalist in Spain. And you see Jorge Blas, who is a he's the David Copperfield of Spain.
SPEAKER_03That's great.
SPEAKER_00And I'm getting to see all these guys, and we're all just hanging to go out because we've all been poured into by one. And we're just, we love him. We oh God, we just loved him and honored him. And and so, you know, I I'm I don't know the point of why I was getting into that, but just to make the point of um it's been a rough week. And and but but all of that, he's become like a he had become like a father to all of us. And uh I was talking to a good friend of mine who's in Hungary, who's become a good buddy, and he said, I feel like I lost my dad again. And and I know how he feels.
SPEAKER_03I know how he feels, you know, um mentorship is something that is special, like and it is um, I would I would say it falls into the same category as like coaches, teachers. I mean, that's what they are, right? They are coaches and teachers technically, right? And it's when you're that in that relationship with somebody, there's a vulnerability there that doesn't exist and with other people. Right. And and it is very personal and it's very special. So I definitely uh I definitely can relate to that.
SPEAKER_00Well, I've had, you know, what's funny is over the years I've had some magic teachers that were like, you know, you almost felt sometimes like you were wasting their time because the way they would like just little you you begin to as you begin to get as you get older, you begin to be able to read people a little bit and you start feeling like I'm wasting his time. He's gonna give me a little bit, but he's not gonna give me the good stuff. With wine, it was always the best stuff, and you never felt like you were wasting his time.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_00Ever, ever. Um it was a very crazy comparison, but it was a very Ted Lasso kind of if you've seen that show, yeah. It's uh that's one of my favorite TV shows. It's so good. I love that show. And it was the whole thing of uh um and Eugene was the same, Eugene Berger was the same way. Eugene used to say the goal of a teacher should be to have students who completely surpass them and become better. Because if it's not, why are you teaching?
SPEAKER_03Right. It'll stop with you. Wow, that's heavy. And it sounds like Juan recognized that and wanted to further what he had spent his life developing.
SPEAKER_00There there seems to be among magicians a concept that we don't share our secrets, even with each other. And Juan's whole thing was no, we do share our secrets with each other. Be generous with your secrets, with each other, not with
Love And Generosity In Magic
SPEAKER_00the public, sure, because we don't want to ruin it for them. Well, decide. But it's it's it's about make helping each other get better. And in Spain, oh my gosh, it's it's a totally different world in the magic world in Spain compared to here in the States, where it's all about the secrets and protecting your secrets, and these are my secrets, and no, they're not, but that's what whatever. All right, I ain't got time for it. Um, but the other thing is that it was about um, because I asked one, I said, Well, in your opinion, what is the most important thing you have to have to be a great magician? And he looked me right in the eyes and he said, Love. I said, Really? And he goes, You have to he goes, you can love your magic, you can love yourself, but if you don't love the people you're performing for and do this because you want to bring them something out of love for them, he goes, You're just showing off.
SPEAKER_03Ugh. It's a very selfish, it becomes a very selfish look at me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People can sense that, I think.
SPEAKER_00It's did you ever see Mad TV? Yeah. Remember Stuart on Mad TV? Oh, yeah. The little, you know, look at me. Hey, look, look, look what I can do. Yeah, that's that's true. He's the exact that's the that is the epitome of a lot of a lot of magicians I see today. Look at me, look what I can do. Who cares? Dude, what what are you what's in it for them? Why should they waste their time to watch you do what you can do? Um, you know, it's like watching a juggler. I've got nothing against juggling, I think it's an amazing skill, but I can only watch it for so long before it just starts. Okay, yeah, we know you can do this, do something else. Um, you know, it's not that they're not fantastic at what they do, but okay, now I've watched you do this, I've seen your skill, you're great. What's in it for me?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, and and I that's that's why I go back to you have to love them the way the one talked about it. What he was saying is you have to give them something deeper. And you have to make them feel like to me, magic is about bringing people together to share an experience that they're not gonna get anywhere else. You're not gonna get this watching a TV show, you're not gonna get this watching a sporting event. You'll you'll get a similar feeling of it in a sporting event, but what are you doing? You're just sitting there watching other people do it. It's still spectator sports. Sure. That's what most magic is, is spectator sports. It's look what I can do. Let me show you what I can do. Oh, I have you pick the card, but you're just a prop in the show, too. No, it's gotta be something deeper than that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's gotta be.
SPEAKER_03I wanna I wanna go back to a a couple of the previous statements that you made, kind of segueing off something you just said, or
Being A Christian Magician
SPEAKER_03or something one said rather, is that you know, it's you've got to have love. And you had mentioned a couple times, like when you were talking about music, about um being in church, like singing in church, and then you had mentioned you were a Christian, yeah, uh, as am I. And uh those two worlds feel like they might be in opposition, like Christianity and magic, and like as a Christian in magic, what has that been like?
SPEAKER_00Um, I don't have a lot of problems with it. I don't have I don't get a lot of bad experiences with it.
SPEAKER_01Um if people can think for themselves, they get it.
SPEAKER_00This is just an art form. It's rock and roll. It's just an art form. It's like, well, I but here's the thing. In the 80s, dude, I dealt with the same thing because I was playing in a Christian rock band. Yeah. I walked into a church one time where the pastor you I knew it happened. I knew it happened. I knew this happened. He literally changed the sermon for the day because I walked in the church. Because his message that day, message that day, uh became one of how long hair was a sin. Well, guess what? There was only one person in that little church with long hair, and it was me. And I know the reason he taught on that or talked about it was because he had seen me walk into the church. It's ridiculous. It it made me angry, it made me sad because I never walked in that place again. Never did.
SPEAKER_03I think it's really cool when I see Christians in places that the general population doesn't normally expect to see Christians. I love that. I feel so excited. Like when you go into a tattoo shop and you see like a uh a tattoo artist who's very, very outspokenly Christian.
SPEAKER_00It's interesting you say that because the guy who does most of my tattoos is actually studying now to become an Orthodox, a priest in the Orthodox Russian Church. Oh, that's cool. And he real amazing guy, sweetest guy in the world. I love this guy. He's become a good friend. Um, we don't see each other as much as I'd like to because he lives about an hour or so away. And it's a it's a bit of a drive, and we're both working all the time. And and um, but yeah, like 90% of my tattoos came from him. And it's just you hang out with him, and you've got, you know, you're not listening to you know, heavy hard rock music with vulgar language and stuff in it, which because that's not what I want to listen to when I'm listening to hard rock. Um, he's listening to Gregorian chants or or Johnny Cash Records or something, you know, something just it's just you know, you're sitting there getting a tattoo by a guy while in the background, homie, you know. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so weird. This is fun, it's fun and weird at the same time. And but um, but yeah, it's it's it's but I got again, I got the same thing in music. It's you know, why what are you doing with long hair and and a you got a tattoo? Oh my gosh, you know, that was the 80s. You know, it was like it was I don't know anyway.
SPEAKER_03One of my uh good friends, he he's the uh light heavyweight champion and was the heavyweight champion as well. He was the first two-time karate combat champion. Oh wow, and uh he's currently the active champion in the light heavyweight division for karate combat. But every time he gets a victory, he's like, I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And it's just like, yeah, let's go. And I love I love seeing him in a pit where he just got done knocking somebody out and praising God, you know, that he gets to to do that.
SPEAKER_00And it's like to me, I where I get listen, let's just be realistic. The same people that give me a hard time, which doesn't happen often. Sure. It doesn't happen that often. When it does, it's the same type of people that give me a hard time about doing magic that gave Jesus a hard time about calling himself the son of God. Sure. Right. Religious people.
SPEAKER_03Well, yeah, and and it's you know, it's Harry Potter's evil, and you know, ram trucks have a ram on them, so they're apparently evil now. Oh my god. You know, and I think that people, you know, give a lot of um quote unquote power to things that are powerless. Yeah, yeah. And uh it's it's kind of ridiculous, you know.
SPEAKER_00It's like they're kicking over every rock trying to find a demon. And it's like, dude, go, you know, with it's funny. I was reading a thing the other day from a pastor, one of my favorite pastors is a guy named Paul Ellis out of New Zealand, fantastic writer and thinker. And he talked about how, you know, we get caught up in where Jesus said, If you're not, if you don't follow my commandments, you can't be my disciple. Okay. So they go back to the Old Testament, to the commandments.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I gotcha, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Well, what were Jesus' commandments? Love God. Love one another. Not just love one another, but love you, love your neighbor as you love yourself. Those were the only two commandments he gave. Because they fulfill all the other ones. Yep, yep. Which is they literally do. You every one, all the other ones can be summed up, because he said this himself. All of the law can be summed up in these two. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. And then you add, there I think there's one more though that we that we miss, and that is the great, the, the um believe. Believe on him who was sent by who his father sent. Believe in me. Believe in me. That's the that's so you got three commandments. That's it. Easy peasy. As as followers of Jesus, those are the only three legal commandments we've been given to do. Love God, love your neighbor as yourself, and believe, believe on him who he was sent by the Father. That's it. I love it. That's not that hard. So when you start adding all this other stuff to it, one, you start not doing those three things.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because if you're gonna, if when Jesus said, believe in me, and that's one of the commandments, Paul even talks about that. Sure. That that uh our commandment is to believe on him who was sent by by the Father. And if we if if you're doing something other than that, which is holding people to a law that was for a specific group of people for a specific time and reason, then you're not one, you're not loving your neighbor as yourself, and you're not loving God because you're not doing what he told you to do, yeah, which is love. Love, great, all these things, the greatest of these is love. And so, you know, people start giving me a hard time. It's like, eh, whatever. I uh I here's the thing. One of my favorite lines in the in the New Testament is at the end of the Last
Escaping Rage Bait And Shallow Ties
SPEAKER_00Supper, the story of the Last Supper, the night before Jesus was arrested and crucified. And it says that he walked away from the table, he went and got a towel, he wrapped an apron around himself, brought in a basin of water, took a towel, and it says this line that a lot of people miss, um, or just don't think about. Knowing who he is, knowing who he was, he didn't need anybody to justify him or or declare him to be. He knew who he was.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00When people give me a hard time about me doing magic and get especially when they get angry about it, one that's telling me, dude, you don't even know who you are. That's true. Who are you to judge who I am?
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, we we see a lot of that, especially right now in social media. Okay, like uh the thing I noticed uh a lot over the last year is that like on Facebook, for example, on your mobile device, if there's at the bottom of the screen, there's like the different menus, the home menu is so polarizing and is meant for you to scroll down and get mad about people you don't even know. And uh it's funny because I don't I don't actually get mad one way or the other because I don't stand too hard on politics, I don't stand too hard on whatever. Um, but that seems to be a lot of what they advertise there. And uh, if you click on friends, that's just the people you follow. And it's nice to just go through that list. So I don't even go on the home page because I'm like, it's just there for engagement. I figured that out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, I figured that out recently, and I started switching over to the friends thing because I I don't want I don't want uh an algorithm to determine my attitude. Yeah. Um it's funny, I just came across a thing literally yesterday on from a social engineer, a social scientist who um studies psychology and how people think and things to do and not do and how you do. And one of the things he said is avoid negative social media.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Pick one news stream that you watch maybe for 10 minutes, and that's it. Get the news, leave the rest of it alone because it's all opinionated and it's trying to force your opinion, and it's trying to either reinforce it. It the algorithm doesn't care what you believe, it's looking for what you believe so that it can feed that to rage bait you to do.
SPEAKER_03I I just don't have time. You know what's crazy or energy for it. My closest circle, I don't even follow any of them on Facebook or Instagram or anything. Yeah, my closest circle because we text each other, we call each other. Yeah, and I love to keep it that way. Yeah. And I don't want to get into a false sense of like, oh, I saw your posts, so therefore I know what's going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to, I want to not know what's going on. So I feel that desire to be like, I need to reach out to them and and see. So I don't follow any of my closest friends on social media.
SPEAKER_00I do, I do a, you know, a few. I just I just don't have time. I don't have time. And and that was one of the things I do also is is that life, and it's probably hard. Um it's it's I've spent many, many years where you try to get close to certain people and then they just kind of brush you off and you then you become guarded. Um, I have a I have a hard time getting close to people. I really do. I'm not, and I mean it's a that's a bad thing. That's not a good thing. Sure. Um, because my tendency used to be to just throw my heart out there to become somebody's friend. And then when they were like pushed away, I'd get hurt. Sure. And then realize I don't want to do that again. And so I would hold back and guard myself. But then occasionally I'll realize that I'm doing it again. I don't want to be, you know, right. And so um the guarded part of me, I still want people, I want to be friends with people. Yeah. I think I'm a pretty cool guy. And it's not, to me, it's not always about the magic. It's not always about, I don't want to always talk about magic. I don't always want to talk about other things. I want to say, how are you doing? How are your kids doing? Absolutely. What's going on in your life? Tell me about the other things. Um, I've I've got a couple of friends that I hate spending time with because all they want to talk about is the thing they're doing. As if that's the most important thing. No, no, no, no. How's your wife doing? Well, she's doing okay, but did I show you this new thing I'm working on? Yeah, I get that. Dude, no, it's not about, you know, it's it's it's and there's a lot of that out there. Oh, it's everywhere you go.
SPEAKER_03I experienced that quite a bit too, and on the music side of things, you know, it's like everybody's like, hey, I got this idea for a song. Yeah. And I'm like, great, work on it. Yeah. Hey, you want to record it? No, I don't. I don't want to record it. Yep. Nope. I'm doing okay. And I've I've purposefully unfriended people, and and when I changed my number, I didn't give my number to certain people just because the only time they ever hit me up is when they want something. And I don't want that.
SPEAKER_00I've had people like that. Oh gosh. I had um, oh my gosh. I was going through one of the worst times in my life. And I won't go into what it was about. Sure. Going through one of the most horrible times I've ever been through in my life. And this guy reaches out to me and said, Hey, I saw your thing, whatever, what's going on? Blah, blah, blah. And I said, Okay. So, well, it's this, this, and this. Oh, that's tough. That's tough. You want to get together? Sure. So we get together, we're gonna have coffee and just hang out. And he spends the entire time pitching me on something that he's trying to sell and get investors in. And I'm like, Yeah, do do I hurt and and then I call him out and he got mad at me for calling him out. Yes, and I'm like, that we've known each other for 30 years. And I'm like, and I just looked at him, I said, listen, with all due respect, which right now is not much, um, because I'm blunt. I I can sometimes be too blunt. Um I said, we're done. We don't have a friendship. This is a marketing, this is a uh uh relationship of convenience. And I it's no longer convenient for me.
SPEAKER_04Yep.
SPEAKER_00Because you you literally did not listen to a word I just said. Because if you did, I would hope to have some empathy from you, some compassion. And all I got was, okay, yeah, I'm sorry you're going through that. Let me show you this gig, this deal I've got for you to help you give me money. Ah, sorry. Yeah, it just and I I blocked his number, blocked, I canceled, blocked him on everything because he starts getting mad at me now because I'm now I'm his enemy. And I'm like, Yeah, that's that's foolish. No, you need to grow up. So, anyways, the reason I brought you on today is is I wanted to show you this trick I've been working on. Yeah. Help me. In a heartbeat, man. I don't care. Let's do something. But but look, it's gotta be, it's gotta be more than that, too, though. Absolutely. It's like, let, dude, be real with me. Let's be just people. You know, let me put Richard Green, the modern conjurer, which is my brand, on the shelf. Let me leave that at home right now. Um, let me just let's just be Rick and Todd. Yeah. Hang out and go have a beer, go smoke a pipe. You know, that's just man. Get the old church wardens out. Church warden is not just a smell, folks. That's all right. Uh it's it's be dude, be real with me.
SPEAKER_03Let's be just two guys
Conventions, Legends, And Late-Night Sessions
SPEAKER_03hanging out. It's it's so interesting that that we're that we're kind of wrapping up the podcast on this note because I've realized that most of my closest friends I have nothing really super in common with. Like their main thing is not really my main thing. You know what I mean? Um and it and it's interesting. Like, for example, like with Sam, it's like he is a martial artist, a mixed martial artist. I I've only been in one fight my whole life, and it was back in like fourth grade. You know what I mean? So it's like I have no desire to fight anybody, yeah. Uh, and uh that's what he does for a living, and it's such a it's such a cool dynamic because I think it does give us that freedom from that because he's not like big into beard stuff and he's not big into music, yeah. And so our common ground is our faith, it is our families, it's what are you up to? You know, and I love that, and I wouldn't trade that for nothing. And um yeah, it's it's refreshing that to have relationships like that. And so, for like, for example, uh early on when we first started talking, it's like I have zero desire to learn any magic tricks. I know this one, which I'm pretty good at. I'm pretty good at that one. You do that one better than I. But uh, you know, and I think that's that is special, you know, because our common ground isn't magic.
SPEAKER_00Here's the thing it's because you can get together and celebrate each other's wins without getting offended that you didn't get that same win for yourself.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00That's the problem in magic, is is like, wow, that's really cool. You got that. Why didn't I get that gig?
SPEAKER_03What is the uh what is the magician's Grammy? What's the equivalent?
SPEAKER_00Um Is there one? Fism might be one of them, but but that's like. So huge. And most of the kids winning that are Asian. Um, the uh that's a joke, it's not true, but they're just very good at the city. Spanish guys are winning the card stuff. Oh my gosh, crazy. Um, but then you got like the the Academy of Magical Arts, which is the Magic Castle out in Hollywood, and then where they do that, and that's their clubhouse or whatever, so to speak. Um, there's been some disconnect there for a little bit, but it's they do a big awards thing every year. But that's more that's more uh like members of the group who do lectures there, they're competing against each other for lecturer of the year or performer of the year or close-up magician of the year, whatever. That's more of that. We other than that, we have like there are two major international magic societies, more like fraternal organizations. One of them is the International Brotherhood of Magicians. Uh, we call it the IBM, not to be confused with the computer company. Right. And then the other is the Society of American Magicians, which was started by um several guys, one of which was Houdini. And the SAM was started as a fraternal organization for professional magicians. The only amateurs or hobbyists that were included were guys who had books written, who had stuff that they created that the professionals said, no, we want to include you guys. Let's get in here. But the average Joe couldn't get into it. Well, now you can. And it's just you you either join one or the other, or you join both. And I've got friends who are members of both. I'm an SAM member myself. Um, and but like they'll do a convention. Like uh this year, the SAM's convention was in uh Appleton, Wisconsin, which is where Houdini grew up. Oh, okay. And last year, last year in 25, it was in Nashville.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's cool.
SPEAKER_00And but they have a competition, and then they have people that compete against each other with a show, and it's it's sometimes good, sometimes it's just like, oh, is this over yet? Um, I'm ready to go home. Um when I go to those things, I don't give a hoot about the competitions. I don't care. It's it's it's almost discouraging for me because I'm seeing these guys do incredible, amazing stuff that I that you could not do outside of that setting. It's not realistic. It's um it doesn't apply in real life with performing. They're not doing there, they might do it on a television spot on like the on the the Tonight Show or something, but they're not gonna do it in House of Cards in real time because there's so much involved that would not work in a real life spot. Um but they won that award. So it's it's excuse me. It is to me when I go to those kind of things, it's not about I don't go for the for the um and most of these conventions have magic dealer rooms where magician dealers like magic shops, creators, producers of magic props and stuff, will sell their wares. Um, I usually pick up a couple of things here and there, maybe spend a little money buying some stuff. I go for the one o'clock in the morning sitting in the bar and we're all doing card tricks and laughing and having a great time. And you get some guy who's like one of the old masters who's well known in magic and a certain genre of magic. For example, bar magic, bar magicians. That's like a big, that's a big field that I just I got influenced early on by a lot of great bar magicians, JC Wagner, Bob Sheets, who's a friend of mine now. Um, gosh, oh my goodness, the list is too long. Michael Skinner, who uh was the um, he was actually a restaurant magician. He when I say restaurant magician, most people think of the guy who walks up to your table, does 10 minutes and walks away. Michael would walk up to your table, sit down, have his have his mat, and perform a sh private show for your table for about 30 minutes. Wow. And that's cool. Excuse me. He was performing at the Lily Lane Tree restaurant at the Golden Nugget for like 30 years. Only guy.
SPEAKER_02That's cool.
SPEAKER_00He was it was him, and it was because um, oh gosh, what's the guy's name? Uh, Wynn, Steve Wynn, who owned half of Vegas at one time. Um Steve saw him on television, on the Carson show, blew him away. He goes out to LA to the Magic Castle to see him performing. And while he's there, it happened to be the week that, and Michael Skinner is one of my absolute heroes, uh, was known for having a repertoire of over 900 magic tricks that he could perform on a moment's notice perfectly.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_00Amazing guy, constantly rehearsing and practicing. And Steve Wynne sees him at the Magic Castle. It happens to be the week that somebody, the first night he was there, Michael's there for a whole week, doing two or three shows a night, doing close-up magic. And somebody dared him to go the whole week without repeating a trick. Wow. And Michael's response was buckle up, boys. And he went the whole week without repeating a trick.
SPEAKER_03That's crazy.
SPEAKER_00But it got so bad with magicians coming back every time to see the shows, they finally had to say, no more magic, no more magicians coming, only late, only audiences coming from the you know, non-magicians because you guys are plugging up the room and you can't get anybody else in there. And but he kept the challenge up. That's crazy. Went the whole week, and Steve Wynn apparently was so impressed that he goes to him and he he offered him a gig. Um, and it was like we're talking late 70s. It was like a ridiculous amount of money to come to work. And he worked for the next 25, 30 years in Vegas for Steve Wynn. No, it was 20, it was 20 years because it was the late 70s and he passed away in 98. Um, unfortunately, he had uh he was schizophrenia. He had schizophrenia, he was on medication for that, and it just took his toll. He was 58 years old when he passed away. But um, oh my God. Just I've seen videos of him when he was in his A Day. Scary how good that guy was. That's cool, amazing. And but anyway, so all that to say, we you're getting together with some of the masters, and that's what I live for at these things.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Is getting together and getting to know these people at a different level. Not just getting to know them as people.
SPEAKER_04Sure.
SPEAKER_00And yeah, I love your magic. I've seen your videos, dude. I don't want to see your card tricks. Talk, tell me about you. Where'd you grow up? You know, what were your parents like?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00What was it like growing up? Did you know you were gonna be the guy in Bar Magic when you were, you know, yeah, I don't know. It was just a kid doing card tricks over in Spokane, Washington. Yeah, now I'm the number one guy in Vegas. That's crazy, you know, crazy stuff like that.
SPEAKER_03So if somebody wanted to reach out to you, how would they do that? Or do you want them to?
How To Book Richard And Support
SPEAKER_00No. Oh, dude, but book me. Book me for shows, man. I love performing. I love performing. I have a website. Okay. It's the modern conjurer, t-h e m-o-d-e-r-n, c O N J-U-R-E-R.com. The modernconjurer.com.com. And there's a lot of stuff on there that you can find pictures of me performing. Um, you can find uh a list of places I'm gonna be. I always list my uh upcoming itinerary where I'm gonna be performing. But at the bottom, there is a form you can fill out and email me and ask questions and talk about your event or whatever you have. And I I listen, I love, I tell people, yes, I'm not cheap. Sure. Okay, I do this for a living because this is how I feed my family, this is how I pay my bills, it's how I cover my mortgage, things like that. But um at the same time, I love doing stoke stuff for people. I love performing. And it's not an ego thing, it's a I love sharing the art that God has put in my hands to do for people. You know, it it's it's to me, Michelangelo got to lay on his back for how many weeks painting the Sistine Chapel? And some people were probably like, God, I can't believe you did that. And he goes, No, I got to do it. Yeah, I get to do this. That's cool. That's how I feel about it. I get to do this. This is a gift God's given me. And listen, I had to work my butt off to master that gift. Yeah, but it's something he put in my hands, and one of my favorite stories from the Bible is, you know, Moses says, Okay, you want me to do this. How do I do this? And God says, What's in your hand? Well, I got a staff and I got a rod. Use those. That's all I have. I dude, I have two things. I can tell stories, and I mean, you can tell by the fact we've been in here almost two hours. I can tell stories and I can do car, I can do magic. That's cool. That's all I have in life. That's all I need, though.
SPEAKER_03One one final message to leave to our viewers and listeners.
SPEAKER_00By Chattanooga Beard Products.
SPEAKER_03That's true. Yeah. So I will give a shout out to our sponsor of this podcast, uh, is Chattanooga Beard Company. It's my wife and I's business. We make all the products ourselves, and uh, we are very blessed to be able to uh ship products to all 50 states, believe it or not, which is crazy, you know.
SPEAKER_00And before you knew it, you and I knew each other, I was a customer. That's awesome. I was buying from you back probably 21, 2021, 22, around that time, and started getting the beard wash and the beard uh um conditioner. Yeah, and then went to the beard oils, and I'm like, well, this is and um and I think the part of the reason I got I I stayed with it because there's all there's a lot of competition out there with this stuff. Sure. But part of the reason I stuck with it was because of that personal touch you added to things with the little cards and the notes and the stickers and things, and then also the fact just that you're local. Yeah, like I want to support a local business. It's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_03And so anyway, yeah, no, we appreciate it. And and uh Chattanooga Beard appreciates it. So if you want to continue to support the podcast, definitely buy the products, it definitely helps my family and I out. This is this is what we do for a living to pay our bills and and to support our kids. So we appreciate it. And uh with that, we will close. Richard, thank you so much, brother, dude, for coming in and uh being a part of this. And dude, I love I I can't wait to hear more from you. And you guys will be seeing Richard around, especially with Chattanooga Beard, uh, here very soon. We got some exciting news that we're gonna share, uh, not today, but soon, and it's gonna be awesome. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. Thanks, man. Thanks, brother. Yep.
