Magician as a kid and an award-winning double magician
Yeah, and I started out in magic and it became a dough back real quick. So I ended up winning
For a Canadian competition when I was
Around 14 years old. That's hysterical. Yeah
Fifties swing music. Yeah, really? Yeah, I did like
Started in a tuxedo and then I would tear away into like a leather jacket and white t-shirt and I did
Productions and I keep threatening him because I have footage on VHS are threatening to I need this footage
I mean, it's embarrassing footage now is 14 years old
But I mean, I guess it wasn't that bad. If I won the contest he was against all adults. That's amazing
Like I don't want I never won this podcast to be like, how did you get started in magic but like that to me?
It's just amazing
Cuz now you do all this like amazing geek and sideshow and like wow, the really wild magic you started with dubs
Yeah, I mean, it's just I mean and it was a natural progression
it doesn't seem like it but it just kind of slowly over time became what it is now is but dub magic is
legitimately one of my favorite guilty pleasures in magic because the first time a magician produces a dove
I know that there's a human standing on stage with ten more doves in their pants
Which is one of my favorite things to see what?
We even got together. I trained doves to fly back and I made
Harnesses and things like that for doves. I had 12. I will never own a dub again ever in my life. Okay?
I'm a reptile guy. I've never owned a bird. They like messy or crazy. No easy, no easy
messy, just I mean birds are just noisy like we
Last year, I was touring with Dan Sperry. Yeah, you know, we've got doves living in the bus bathroom and he's
Like he's like his cockatoo
In the bus with us just squawking and screaming spike is great. Literally any time I walk by his cage. He's like, hey, baby
Hey, baby
There's nothing greater than a more for the flirty animals
This is and so we just finished the lecture which was amazing because I think to me what was really fantastic and listening to it?
Was how much history there was I guess I I've seen a lot of these these lectures and iíve
Now participated in filming. I did not expect so much geek magic history, which was great because I'm interested
Well, I think it's important to to know your history
deserve credit
There's too many people in magic in sideshow and all this that they just they see something on YouTube and then they just do it
Instead of yeah, I mean the research behind it and finding out where it came from and and why are they doing it?
And I think it's it's it's kind of strange not to know the history. It's weird just to see it and take it
well
we're also a creative consultants and we
Create sideshow and magic for people so we definitely need to know our history. But we also put a lot into research and development of
Original effects and acts so when you put so much time into creating something unique to have somebody to just take it from you
oh, yeah with no regard is really frustrating and disheartening so
Even people who have stolen stuff from us. We put an offer out on the table if you stopped doing our material
We'll help you develop something original to you Wow
I mean and at the same time there is sometimes some things are very hard to research and there is such thing as
Lateral thinking and but at least put the work in at least try like make make the phone calls to Google it
I mean just this stuff must be incredibly hard to research some of it is but you'd be surprised sometimes a quick Google search will
will bring you on to I mean
Even if you're going into the magic cafe forums and I mean a lot of that stuff still dates back into the early
2000s that you can go back on you can look and there's been extensive
Conversations even into the geek magic and into sleight of hand and where it came from
It's it's you can find it on Google and I mean if you can't find it on Google there
I mean, it's a matter of getting the old books. I mean in and more asking like Todd Robbins
it's a friend of ours and he's
Historian in the sideshow. He runs a group on facebook called sideshow spectrum if you have any
Questions, you can ask. Yes, ask. That's all it takes somebody on there's gonna know the answer to it
I mean, there's gonna be some smart asses and remarks. But yeah, that's the thing is it's a it's an open forum
So you have 5,000 people on there?
figure out who knows their shit and
Privately message them
I guess I'm sort of realizing as I'm sitting here having this conversation with you that I don't
know what is on the cutting edge of geek magic or sideshow these days and you guys sort of are on that bleeding edge of
a lot of that stuff like
He credits Ryan as the most innovative
Person in the history of this genre sideshow. Mm-hmm and
We do we continuously create Ryan is a genius when it comes to creating
stuff that mixes both sideshow and magic and
We've had the opportunity to be consultants for David Blaine on his
Last special. Yeah and
I mean, yeah, as far as creating goes I've created a lot of stuff in there
There are other people out there
Creating but it's I guess like in magic - there's more performers than there are creators
Which I guess it's just just the way things go but there are people out there and in geek magic inside show that are that
Are creating I mean Andrew ass is still swing shift sideshow. He's creating. I know I mean there's
Ryan's affect the human meathead was a large rigid work that goes in the nose comes out the mouth
Yeah, Andrew loved that but wanted to create his own version of that
So he just a giant screw like a corkscrew that goes in the nose out the mouth
Which is by the way
the meathook thing is just astonishing to watch like how long did it take you to figure out like the
Circumference of the hook required or did you just like what Canon but this meat hook will do. No. It's all custom made
So I make my hooks out of stainless steel and they're all bent to
Fit my face perfectly and over the years. I've been able to make the hooks longer thicker and just be able to
Get you know
Just a bigger hook make it look better and the thicker a hook that I get the more weight that I was able to lift
From it to the point that I hold
Record a Guinness World Record for pulling a vehicle from the hook I have sinned
So I also hang from the hook, you know in our theater show. Wow, you do blockhead. Yeah. Yeah
Yeah, so, you know about the size of something that you can blockhead. Yes. Ryan can block had a sharpie
Really? Yeah, so we can go pretty like pretty wide on it. And are you working on the sharp ax?
Is that the next like four very fancy parties?
No, I mean it's we are sure I think over the last few years we kind of put more focus into
into making it fun and funny and you know
I think when we were younger it was about making it more extreme more creepy and more dangerous and I think over the last
Five six years. It's become about making it fun to watch
So as even though it's intense
Even though it's disturbing
We spend a lot of time writing to make it palatable to make it funny
to make throughout these vignettes to music and these moments that people walk away with
With just a nice visual in their mind. Do you like that grew out of your consulting?
I actually think it had a lot to do with the fact that if your creepy gothic only that one
Direction your demographic is small
Yes, very small you had comedy into that
You make it more palatable your your whole demographic opens up, you know, we've done church shows. We've done kid shows we've done
Opening for large bands comedy clubs. We have so many more options to where we can perform because we
Took that gothic creepy thing and brushed it off
It's it's really interesting because I started as a goth I was a goth in high school and well into college
I'm still a guy. Oh, absolutely
Yeah, I mean you go out dressed to the nines to get bread with in art
This is an eyeliner and it's it's really neat because you have made it in this
interesting palatable like I've been telling people about you all night and just we need to we need
These people there's it's fun. Then did you find that your consulting came from created is consulting something that you set out to do?
No
I always thought like because people always said to me like how long can you do this act before?
You your body's not gonna be able to swallow swords
Focus to yourself anymore. And I said well when I when I get older I'll just
Creatively consult for other performers and he's got like seven or eight books
Filled and then his iPad files and files of different original concepts that we haven't released, you know
We were told
When we were living in Canada like that. Oh don't release magic tricks. There's no money in that. Don't do it like
We just kind of told there's no real money in there's nothing to it. We moved to Las Vegas
We met up with Rick lakhs and becoming friends with him and we ended up releasing some magic through a penguin magic
Yeah, so we released at least three mentalism tricks through there. We've got turning heads
I've got the organic choice one called mute
And those are all mentalism effects that I just had written already and we were talking about mute last night
I think I might even check it out. You should definitely check it out and even like organic choice a weird story behind it
It's essentially a book test in a receipt form
So it's a receipt that you can carry around in your wallet and somebody can memorize any item off of it
And then it's a progressive anagram to to get the item that they've selected
And it's yeah, and as we started to learn that we could release these tricks
I mean I interrupt you for two seconds the whole concept of that
mmm
Ryan wrote the progressive anagram in his sleep woke up in a panic
Wrote it all down and then I did the graphic design and the building of the receipt
Yeah, I had most of even like I don't know if you've ever worked with a progressive anagram, which is essentially word math
yes, and and
somehow I had written most of it when I woke up and
It's a very strange thing
we don't we don't perform mentalism, but his brain is
Amazing for mentalism. Yeah, because you you're not just a sideshow. You know, I hate saying it that way. You're not justice
I hear you're not just afraid he's like we were talking here. We were talking last night about like how
Excited you are about so much magic. Amber, like a huge nerd about magic leads
we were
hanging out last night over dinner and you were talking about like how you loved Leonard green and like all of these things and and
Hitting me with God. He really is. I mean if there's any church that I would go to it's the Church of Leonard Green
I would pray with you. Oh, man, we go to the Church of wonder ground
So what you're not creating magic for the stage for your for your show
what kind of magic do you enjoy other than that because this is I again, I don't want this podcast to be like
Oh, well can imagine do you like I don't like that but you to or so your show is so different so we find
when I write magic to release it, it tends to be tends to be a lot of mentalism, but when we consult for other people
it tends to be kind of the strange magic and that's because that's what people
seek us out for
So somebody wants something strange and there show something a little bit weird something a little bit creepy
We tend to get hired for those kind of things
So we've written several things for Justin Flom someone that he recently did on a TV show
World space it's best where he had a spectator
Swallow a bunch of thread and then he cut open her arm and he pulled the thread out of her arm
So that that concept comes from an old trick called a yogi thread pull on the drama for the drama
threat mystery where the
performer eats thread
Take a scalpel cuts the stomach open impulsive threat of a stomach plane do a version of that unlike Dale abridging in the Naknek
1996 Street magic special he did the original version of that witch
But he did a nice little subtlety on it where he he pulled the thread out of the kids shirt
And that trick there is prep work
So you have to do stuff beforehand and the very uncomfortable painful stuff to be able to do that effect
so what we did is we created it so that you can do it to an audience member no prep work nothing and
It works great. You can also do it to yourself and it's the same visual effect, but there's no piercing involved. That's really cool
Yeah, that's just a body exclusive. I think he still has two years left don't
We and that's we finally get sawed out for
For the creepy weird stuff, but once we're brought on to a project then people quickly realize that I mean amber
And I do have extensive knowledge in magic and this is grown up doing so we we both do card work as well
I do coin work as well
We also do prop building foam
resin, all of these things wiring really diverse skill set and it has to be when you're being
Brought in as a consultant. I mean some of the best consultants out there if you look at Lisa and Rico and Danny
they're designer bizarro and when they're coming into a
Coming into a job. You never know. What's gonna happen you you're brought in for one project
But who knows if you're gonna suddenly need to run a servo or a wire to?
Pull something or do something there and you need to have that diverse skill set to be able to to make it happen your job
As a consultant isn't only creating its problem solving. Yeah, that's the biggest part of it
I think and I think that's what magic creation is is problem solving and if you're good at problem solving you'd be a good magic
Creator because really if somebody comes to you with an idea and they say I want to make this thing disappear and appear
Over there at the very simplest form now
You're all you're doing is are solving the problem and that's it. You're figuring out how to make this happen now