Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Then my mom and I were called into the FBI building when he was caught and they were talking to us about him and they said, oh, we caught him for the same reason we catch them all is he fell in love.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: I'm Dr. Todd.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: And I'm Brian Curry and this is.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Magician's Workshop Magic.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Washington, DC you might know Brian as the Good liar, a magician and mentalist who's built a reputation for mind blowing shows without, without all the usual mentalist tropes. What makes Brian stand out is that he doesn't pretend to have psychic powers or read minds. Instead, he leans into the fun and mischief of being a good liar and the result is an act that's sharp, hilarious, and totally engaging. In this conversation, we're going to dive into Brian's journey, how he built his acting career and, and why he chose DC as his base and his philosophy on creating an authentic mentalism show. We'll also talk about his school shows and the upcoming Magi World Festival. Sit back, get ready for some fantastic stories and insights from the one and only Brian Curry. Brian Curry, welcome to the show.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: I'm very excited to have you on because as we were talking earlier, you are, you're, you're a local, a local guy, you know. So I'm going to start with all of the ridiculous tropes that you hear from every magician. How did you fall in love with magic?
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Well, I grew up overseas in countries where they don't speak English. And so I came back to America as an awkward, introverted middle schooler. Like, like every magic story you've ever heard, it starts off with an awkward, uncomfortable kid. And yeah, yeah, it's everybody. And so I, I showed a trick to some friends. My buddy John Hoy had a birthday party and I showed them a trick and they all thought it was cool. And so I immediately showed them how it was done.
And I went home and I said, mom, I need to learn some more tricks. And that's, that's what got it started. I have to say though, and this is, I was thinking of this story today. It's not a story I tell often, but I think what really got me into magic about two months later, I'd already gotten a bunch of books on magic, I'd gotten a Tony Hesini magic video, and I met this magician named Al Curlette and nobody's heard of alcohol. He's a, he's a, he's a magician who performed out in Leesburg, the Gig was at Cox Farms in Centerville, Virginia. And he was so engaging. And the kids and the parents and the families just laughed at everything he said. And he did good magic. And he was so fun that I was there with my mom. I think I was 13. We watched the show, we went around and we came back for his next show and then we came back for his third show. And at the end of the show, he walks up and he goes, what's the deal? You must have my act memorized by now. And my mom said, well, Brian loves magic. And he. We're just. You're so good with people. We were trying to figure out why what you were doing that was so engaging because you're so good. And so he immediately goes, want to be a magician? He went and he got his act out of his Leffler, his box, you know, his podium case. Yeah, he went and took out his act and taught me the tricks he had just done for that audience.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: A total strange kid.
He had no reason to think I was going to become a magician, but. And that's not the way the magic community is. We are very protective of our secrets. You don't go up to Copperfield and that was great. How did you get to that beach know that's. That's not a thing. But Al, it was he. And he was kind enough to give me his act.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: I don't know that I did much of it, but it was such a cool gesture that I don't know if I would have gotten into magic without.
Was such a cool. That was the. So you're asking when I got hooked. I think that was probably the moment for me when he did that. And I was like, yeah, this is a group I want to be a part of.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: When. When did you go pro?
[00:03:45] Speaker A: Well, I.
I always. I fell in love with Close Up Magic. I was a close at magic guy. I studied with this guy Peter Galinskis. I went to Denny Lee Magic Studio and I went real hard into Close up and I had a restaurant get Clyde of Tysons. I was there for over 20 years until they closed the building and they bulldozed it. I was there every Sunday brunch that I was available, including through college. So I was really into Close Up. But I knew that if I was going to make a living, I had to be able to be up on stage.
Denny Haney taught me that. And. And so I was determined. Even though I was capital T terrible on stage, I was horrible. In fact, I did one thing in high school just to try it. And then I started in college, and I had one really good play. I was in Buried Child, and everyone seemed to like that. My mom came up and she goes, brian, that's the first time I've seen you on stage where I didn't feel embarrassed for you.
Thanks, Mom.
I mean, she meant it. She had tears in her eyes. She was so proud of me. But it was like.
I was like, I don't think that's the compliment you think is.
So I was really. But I needed it, and I knew I needed it, and I was very lucky. I went to a JMU James Madison, where there. It's.
There were a lot of roles, especially for people who identify as male. There were not as many male people in the department.
So I got more roles than I should have based on my talent, because they just needed somebody.
I fit that bill. And so I got a lot of flight time up on stage that I never probably would have gotten if I had gone to, I don't know, another school, William and Mary, or one of the other colleges that has a. As a pretty big theater department.
So you're asked. I'm sorry, your question was, how did it help me? It helped me in every way.
Everything I do is. I'm mostly on stage. I still do close up. I still do strolling gigs, and they're super fun. But most of what I do is on stage. And just getting up on stage, forcing. Being in college, getting up on stage in front of people, doing things that made me uncomfortable was really good for me.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: And then I transitioned that. I worked at a gig called Comedy Magic Society with.
It was produced by. Eventually, I was one of the producers and Barry Wood and. And Bob Sheets, who's one of my favorite comedy magicians of all time, and Mark Phillips, who's a corporate magician. And the four of us put this thing up at the Kentlands Arts Bar, and it was a weekly show, never made any money, but they let me take it for, you know, I didn't. I was free. So they. Oh, you want to. You want to run the lights? Yeah, you can go back there and run the lights.
Okay, you can do five minutes. Okay, you can do 10 minutes. And then after a year or so, they're like, okay, how long do you want to do? And so that was like my grad school getting to work. And after every show, we'd go across the street to Bonefish, and we would sit there for the next two hours dissecting each other's actual. Right. That joke didn't Get a laugh. What are you going to do next time? Hey, this isn't working. How. How can we make this better? Hey, I had a thought. Maybe if you do, you know, and it was such a cool community of professionals who were just obsessed with the minutia. So that's. That, to me, was a huge learning experience.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Wow. That's really. That's a great way to do it. It gave you a lot of on stage time, and that's what everyone keeps telling me. You want to get good, you got to put the hours in. Yep.
Now you. Eventually, I. I guess you were doing close up, and you. Then you started doing stage. What was your stage. What was your stage act? Kind of like? What was your.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: Well, I. I really got into stage first through school shows. I started doing elementary school shows, shows about math, science, or reading at elementary.
And that was my very first school show ever. I was in front of 800 kids.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Whoa.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: Which was about 750 more people than I'd ever been.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: Tough crowd.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: Oh, it was crazy. My sound system. I had one of those PV escorts, one of those old things just barely loud enough.
And I still remember I was terrified.
So that. That really threw me into it. And I was, you know, for a long time, I was doing over 100 schools a year, so that's. And a lot of schools have two shows, so that's hundreds of shows.
So that's where I learned to be up in front of people. And then I studied. I did a lot of workshops with Pump Fitch. Bob Fitch, if you don't know, is a. He was an actor. He was the original Rooster and Annie. He was a Broadway.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: Oh, my God. Oh, wow. Okay.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: He's a legitimate, like, acting star in. In, like, the Broadway circle. And he also is a magician. And so he would give these incredible workshops, and they were so good. I can't tell you how good they were, but it was. It was all but that. I learned a lot about stagecraft. I learned more from Fitch than I did from theater major on how to perform as a magician.
It was. It was cool. He teaches you all these, like, old vaudevillian rules. And then he's like, all right, let's talk about how to break him. You know, in vaudeville, you walk in left to right because that's how people read, right? And here's the way. In vaudeville, they teach you to walk on. You walk, your eyes lead you this way, then you come, and then you come out in the front. So we all learned that. And he's like, all right, you know Bob Sheets. How do you come up? And Bob would just get up there and play. And we learned that Bob didn't come. He came out from the other side, and he walked in like a weird swirly pattern and then walked out to the front.
I walked out shaking the hand of somebody, like, because I was talking about how much I like. On TV shows, like, when they go to commercial, they always lean in and talk to each other, and I go, what are they saying? So I'm, like, talking to the person off stage when they introduce me, and I'm like, I'll talk to you later. And I come out. And that's how I learned.
I tried. Now, unfortunately, I don't usually have wings to come out of, but that's one of the ways I learned that I could come out.
So once you learn the rules, you learn how they apply to you or don't apply to you. Stephen Bargettsi, who's done a lot of these workshops, he breaks every rule. Every rule. He. He turns his back to the audience. He cuts their applause off. He's mean to kids. He does all the best things, and then they're all break the. You know, the. The rules that you learn. So.
So the Fitch workshop was a big deal for me.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Wow. Okay, so you're doing that. When did you. When did you start pivoting? When did you create your mentalism? Act like it was that pretty early on, or is that kind of more of a recent? Kind of recent.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: I had. I was raised Catholic.
I'm not anymore, but I was raised Catholic. And I knew when I was a kid, people who did mentalism mostly pretended that they were psychic.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: When I was a kid. And then Darren Brown popularized. Darren Brown's a mentalist from the uk. He's.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: Yes, love Darren Brown.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: If you don't know, pause this podcast and go look up some of his theater shows, if that's fair. Tacular.
So he popularized. I mean, maybe there are other people who've done it before, but he's the one who made it really popular to do pseudoscience, Right?
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: Psychology in this. And to me, I was more comfortable with that because I knew it was wrong to pretend to mess with people's religion. Felt wrong to me. And so I started doing the pseudoscience. And I would only do it for one or two routines, but they always played really well. And then I was doing one show where I was mostly a mentalist. I was doing a show with Mark Phillips called A Gentleman and a Liars, what we called the show, and he was the gentleman, I was the liar. And so after the show, I had someone coming up and they go, hey, I've been studying mnemonics for work, but when you memorize the deck, I just didn't think it was possible to do it that fast. So you're using mnemonics.
And I had just read an article on the world champion, and I told him a beautiful tale of how I was able to memorize it that fast.
And he left feeling like he had seen the greatest psychological memory expert in the world. And I felt like garbage.
He left my show dumber because. And it was my fault. It wasn't his fault. It was. I made him dumber. And I said to myself, is that how you want to spend your life? Like, this is not a hobby. This is what I spend all of my time thinking about. Do I want to leave this world having made people dumber? And so I decided I spent a lot of time thinking about it. And eventually I was like, what if I just tell them that everything I told them, even the pseudo psychology, at the end of my show, I don't tell them how it's done, but I tell them all the things I lied about. And almost, you know, they use, I tell them at the beginning I'm going to lie to them.
For some reason, they still believe me in the show. And at the end, I tell them what I lied to him about. So it, it cleanses my soul. I feel better at the end of the show.
I didn't make anybody dumber.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: That's fantastic. When I, I read the article about you with the GMU Journal, there is one story in there that is, that is true. And I, I, I gotta get your take on it. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna read the quote and then I want to hear your take on it.
All right? As a young magician working in the mall at Tyson's Corner in Northern Virginia, he became good friends with his boss.
I learned an awful lot about the craft from him, he said. A year later, the two men moved their show to Disney World, Florida. On the boardwalk, our first day there, some guys walked up and pushed him to the ground, put him in handcuffs and took him away. He was a con man who had been on the run for five years. Is this a true story?
[00:12:53] Speaker A: 100 true.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Absolutely true. You can ask anyone who is in D.C. everyone knew him.
We knew him as Patrick Holmes.
He, you know, his story is his story. I'm gonna let him tell his own story. But his story is kind of sympathetic when you hear his whole, like, lifeline, what, why he was in the military, he went awol, and then he thought they were after him, which they were. And so he. He stole a bunch of suits and hawked it in Vegas. Now he's wanted in Vegas. And so it was just this kind of series of horrible events. And then, so my. My mom and I were called into the FBI building when he was caught, and they were talking to us about him, and they said, oh, we caught him for the same reason we catch them all, is he fell in love because every four months, he was changing his name, his identity. They never would have caught up with him, but he fell in love with somebody. He stayed the same name for, I don't know, year and a half, two years. I don't remember how long it was, but long enough that they had a chance to catch up with him. And I happened to be there. I was actually meeting a magician named John Armstrong, who is now a legend.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: Community.
I was meeting him for the first time.
Patrick, his real name is. Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: Yeah, it doesn't matter.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: He's the name that I knew him by. Patrick goes, hey, this guy John Armstrong over there, he thinks he's really good at card tricks. You go show him up, Brian. Because Patrick thought I was, like, the best card guy because I was in the shop. I mean, the shop had nobody who could do anything. So to him, Tim, I was like, the best. You go show up that guy, John. And I met John, and I immediately was like, I am out of my depth. This guy could run in circles around me in sleight of hand. And we were meeting, and I looked over and Patrick was being thrown on the ground, and John said, don't worry, I'll take care of you. He was a couple years older than me, and so he took me back to. He was staying with Terry Ward. He let me stay with them until I could get a flight home. I will be forever in his debt. Wow. So Patrick went to jail. He got out of jail.
He went back to jail. He got out of jail again, and then he was on agt. I didn't even know where he was. It just kind of left. I heard his voice. I. YouTube, you know how it plays. Next clip.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I had.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: I had already left. I was watching a clip, and I went to go get a drink of something, and I hear his voice and all the hairs on the arm. Like, I was like, Patrick. And he. To his credit, he's come clean. He now performs and he tells the story of, you know, on agt, he's like, yeah, I went to jail. I did a lot of really bad things.
Magic saved my life. And now he's out.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: Oh, my God, that's amazing there.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: So. So, yeah, that was a true story. And he was always, you know, he's done some bad things, I can't deny that. But he was always super kind to me.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: So that's. That is a crazy story like that. How you must have felt. How old were you when this was happening?
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Oh, I would have been, I don't know, still in high school. So I would have been 17 maybe. Okay, maybe I was lucky that I was there next to John Armstrong. I mean, there were other people at the shop who would have helped me get home. But, yeah, I mean, I. I had my very first cell phone. They were, you know, my old little razor that I'm getting. My. My very first cell phone.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: Oh, you were one of those rich kids with a razor. Okay, I see. I see what it is.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: This is. After razors were no longer.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: Okay. I had the off brand razor.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: Yes. I waited until they were no longer a thing, and then I got one.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Fantastic.
So how did you end up building your career and show in dc?
[00:16:18] Speaker A: Well, I started.
It was really just an artistic exercise because I already made my living doing school shows and some corporate.
And so I was reading this book called story by Robert McKee, which is a book all about playwriting or script writing for movies. And at the time, it was like the book on script writing, and it was talking. I've always struggled. I've always been nice on stage and totally forgettable.
Nice, friendly, kind, forgettable. At the end of the show, hey, that guy, what's his name, whatever, he was good, right? Like, that's all I would get. Whereas other guys were coming out. They were, you know, and then people would talk, remember their name for years. So I was on this quest to be more interesting.
And that's a whole nother podcast if you ever want to talk about it, because I went deep into the. Figuring out how to make myself more interesting on stage as an adult. Not even as a kid. This is my late 20s.
Anyway, so in the book, it talks about creating conflict by having two characters chasing the same thing. So there's a marathon. They both. There's only one prize. There's natural conflict or two loving two people after the same love interest.
And I went, man, how could I. How could I create conflict in a magic show? So I had this idea. I said, what if Because I, at the time, I already called myself Northern Virginia's most popular magician, which is such a stupid title because no one wants.
And I was like, what if I call myself DC's best magician and there's two magicians fighting for the made up title?
And I was like, all right, let's try that. So I wrote a show called the Magic Duel. I did it with a guy who used to be called Josh Norris.
We did it once and it played well. Like you could tell the audience was into the rivalry. And then I eventually ended up doing it with Mark Phillips for about five years.
And we, at first it was just for fun. It was just art for art's sake. None. I don't think either of us thought it would actually make us any real money. So we started it at this tiny little venue in Adams Morgan and then we had to change venues. So we went, we found the Mayflower in D.C. which is a beautiful hotel downtown.
And we started, we did it there for. I was, I did the show with him for about five years and then I passed the show on the mark. He's still doing it. And, and I started the Good Liar, which is my one man mentalism show. And it's so much fun. I love public shows and public shows are the hardest thing. You will make more money doing corporate. Absolutely.
Until you're Steve Cohen successful or, you know, there's some guys who make great money in public shows, but it's a grind. It's really hard. But it is so fulfilling because the audience comes to hear whatever it is you have to say. At a corporate gig, your job is to make their event better.
They don't really care about your politics or your, your religion. They just, you know, just dance monkey, make us happy and then leave. Whereas people come to your show and it's okay. Like when you go to see Penn and Teller, if they didn't have an opinion, you would be disappointed. Right? You want to hear, even if you don't agree with everything, you want them to have opinions. And so that's the fun thing about doing a public show.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: How do you go from being, being a performer and say, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to have this show. How do you market it? How do you get approved? How do you get people into your show?
[00:19:37] Speaker A: That is such an important question, such a hard question to answer.
I'll tell you what I did.
I don't know that it is the answer because every, I've looked at all the marketing courses on public shows. They all say Things with such confidence. Here's what you do. You go to all the concierge and blah, blah, blah. And I've done and I believe that it has worked for that person. I really don't think they're trying to con me. I think it worked for them. But it doesn't work in D.C. because in D.C. i'm not competing against, you know, other magic shows. I'm competing against the White House, the Washington. When you look up things to do, I'm not going to be on the first five pages. Right.
So it's a different ball game. I don't know one way to sell 50 tickets. I know 25 ways to sell two tickets.
And so I, that's the approach I took. Now I started in a small venue so if we had 30 people there, it was packed. You know, we did that for long enough that we worked our act out. Mark and I did that together and we worked the magic duel out until it was pretty good and then we moved to a bigger venue which was, I think good because if we had started in that big venue, I don't, I don't know that we could have. We would have been too small for that venue and who knows whether it would have been successful.
So I would say start in a smaller venue and then work your act out. Grad your graduate to a slightly bigger venue. And is there, I don't know that there's any key to marketing. I do the. So when I started I did the half price ticketing model which is find every place that has email lists. Groupon. At the time, Living Social was the thing goals. You go down the list, any, any place that sells tickets and they want you to sell it at, at the time, half price. And then they're going to keep anywhere between 20 and 30%. So you're making a fraction of what people pay.
But that's how we started because we didn't have an email list. Over the years I've built up a nice big email list. I still use some of the sites. I don't. They don't ask for 50% off anymore like they used to.
I still use lots of different sites, not all of them.
For me, word of mouth has been key.
Bob Sheets, you'll hear me talk about him a lot.
[00:21:49] Speaker B: He was, I've heard the name for sure.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: He was like, he was D.C. magic when I was growing up in D.C. like we were all in Bob Sheets shadow. He was. And he's just a. Couldn't be a nicer guy and a great act. He Used to say his model for marketing was be good and be good enough that every show you do you book two gigs and if you can do that, you'll always be busy.
I later learned a quote from C. Martin. He said, be so good they can't ignore you.
And that's the same. My goal is to be good enough that people have to tell their friends.
And in D.C. that's it's kept me going this long. Knock on wood. Hopefully it'll keep me going for a while longer.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: Yeah. How did you, how did you build up your email list?
Did you just have people sign up at your show or do you like, as I know that's how a lot of podcasts, you know, they build the email list when they start. And I just, it seems like overwhelming.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: To be able to do in particular with the half price ticketing model that I was doing because they don't give you their emails.
So you can't just email and be like, hey, do you want to be on my list? Which I would love to do. I wish I could do that.
So I've done a lot of different things. You can do giveaways. Hey, if you guys sign up, you know we're giving away two free tickets to somebody tonight.
Now, today, these days I do, I have, I teach a trick after my show. I have two different things I do. So during the show I pause, I'm thanking the audience for coming.
By the way, guys, I have a barbed. I learned I never paid for a drink in college. Doesn't really fit in the show. But if you want to learn it, hang, come, come meet me by the host stand and I'll teach it to you afterwards.
And then the people who enjoyed the show will come hang out around the stand and I teach them a trick. And a part of that, look, I've got the instructions. Just scan the QR code, put in your email, you'll get the instructions sent right to you. And so now they're all on my email list.
That does pretty well for me.
Sometimes I have close up performers down at the bar after my show. And so I'll say, hey guys, there's, there's an after party. We have Rohan Jackson downstairs at the bar. He's an awesome close up magician. The magic is free, the drinks are not. Go on downstairs, check out some magic. And he can get them to post reviews and help get them on my email list as well. So those, those are the main methods I use now.
And I tell them, I just say, hey look, I, I, I think people like to root for an underdog.
I've been an underdog my whole life and I still am an underdog. So when I say, hey guys, I don't have Kennedy center budget, if you guys would be willing to tell your friends about the show, post a review. If you love the show on Google Yelp, TripAdvisor.
And I think people are like, yeah, this guy's not famous. Let's, let's spend 30 seconds posting a review form.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: Let's talk about Magi World. This will be my first magical festival.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: We call it, I call my part festival. Yeah, I've been doing this before Ring50 joined. I've been doing this for this since COVID the, the hotel.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: And said, hey, Labor Day is our slowest weekend of the year. If we gave you free rooms for the weekend, how would you help us get people in the hotel? And so we worked together and we put together the, the first festival Magic. It went well.
Every year since, it's gotten bigger and bigger and now I'm flying in people from all around the world.
And Last year the Ring 50 had the clever idea of saying, hey, Brian's already flying these people out. He's bringing in the performers. Why don't we do our convention concurrently in the same hotel? Literally just across the hall is where they're going to come do their lectures.
So everyone walks across, they come see the shows, they get to see.
This is kind of unique among magic conventions. Normally they perform for the magicians, and magicians, if you don't know, are the worst audiences.
Worst, Horrible. Mostly they just don't laugh at what normal people laugh at.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: You know, they'll, I've seen them clap at somebody's sleight of hand, you know, be like, wow, that was a really good center. That was just. Shut up. That's not, you're not supposed to clap there.
[00:25:55] Speaker B: You know that Elmsley count was hot.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's, it's so they're just a weird audience. So the cool thing about this convention is that you get to see them perform their concert show, their hour long show in front of lay people with lay people in the audience laughing, clapping, doing what normal lay people do. And then you go across the hall and you get to hear them teach. It may not be the same show, but they're going to teach you magic as well. So you get the best of both magic convention and a public show.
It's pretty awesome. So we have five performers this coming year, 2025. We have where I'm gonna try to do it in order. Andy Gladwin. We're gonna fly Andy out from the uk.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: So excited.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: I saw Andy. They did this, the weekend here in dc. I forget what they call it there.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: Was it called the Session or.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: No, that's.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: That's in England.
[00:26:43] Speaker A: Vanishing Week, whatever the vanishing convention weekend things are. And it was. First of all, it was awesome. I. I got to hang out with it. It was an awesome experience. And I saw Andy perform and I went, gosh, he's good. Like, I just didn't. I know him as the guy who's behind all the books, but I didn't have any idea what a good performer he was. He's excellent. So I'm super.
And his show, this is so cool. He's doing a show where the audience brings decks of cards and the whole show is using other people's decks of cards.
Clever premise. So we've got Andy opening us up.
I'm just gonna talk about the shows, the conventions got.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, please.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: And then on Saturday, we have Dave Coursero. If you don't know David Coursera, he's a great. Not only is a great magician, but he's a great mentalist and he's a marketing expert. So. And I've seen his act before. He's very, very funny. He's a strong act. But next door he's going to come over and he's going to talk about marketing and. And he's like, he's not a professional magician. He makes his money as a marketing guy for huge brands.
We could never afford to get him to talk to us if he weren't a magic geek who is coming out to do this thing. So he's awesome.
And then Saturday night, we have Lucy Darling. Krista plays Lucy Darling. And that's going to be fantastic.
Sunday we have. We have a family show. Two family shows actually, on 1. And 3 o' clock on Sunday, John Reed is coming down from New York. He is a Guinness Book of World Record holder for his balloons.
Oh, and he's spectacular. He's. He made a Transformer the size of a warehouse.
Like, I've seen a photo of it and it goes all the way. I don't know how he did it. It's incredible.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Out of. Out of twisting balloons.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: Out of oversized twisting balloons.
[00:28:23] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: This. They're like, they're. They're like this big, but they're.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:28:28] Speaker A: It was very cool. I'll send you a photo later.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I can't wait.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: But he. I, I saw him. Do we Knew each other at magic camp when we were kids, but I got to see him perform just two routines, and it was enough. I watched those two routines. I'm like, I want him at the festival.
If. If it's so. He's just so, so good. And then we're gonna finish the night, the festival with Eric Jones. And I am an Eric.
[00:28:50] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:28:50] Speaker A: Boy. Eric Jones is awesome. He's one of the. He's a. He's a sleight of hand expert all around, but he's particular with coins.
And it. For those of you who don't know coin magic, I can always tell a routine that was created by Eric Jones. It has its own look, its own style. There's only a couple people in the world I can say that about. He's got his own unique thing with coins, and it just looks like real magic. And he's an AGT finalist.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:14] Speaker A: I mean, the lineup this year is just. I don't know how level to ever top this. This.
[00:29:18] Speaker B: You got. You got some of the best. Unbelievable.
Are there. Are there still tickets for. Because I. I just got mine. How many tickets are we. Are we sold out yet or.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: Well, Lucy's individual tickets are sold out. If you're a lay person and you're not. So Magi Whirl still has tickets. So if you want to come to the convention and learn the magic and the craft of magic, get your tickets to Magi World. I. Hopefully you'll have a link somewhere. I don't know.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: I'll put it up. I'll put it. Yeah, no, no problem.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: So that's for Maggie World. And then that. If you're a magician and as part of Magic World, you come to all the shows. However, if you're not a magician, you. You can get individual tickets to everyone. I just said, except for Lucy, they're sold out.
Or you can get an all access pass. So that gives you a ticket for the whole weekend. It's like 95 bucks or something. Or 99. It's. It's a fraction of.
[00:30:08] Speaker B: It's unbelievable. That's a crazy deal for who you're seeing any. Any one of those acts. I would pay that much money to seeing those individually.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: Especially in D.C. we've got like 20 of those left, so.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: So. But if you're. You're seeing this, go check the website.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: Hopefully this will be up this Sunday. So this.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: So it won't be sold. It probably will sell out in the next two months. Probably not before.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: From here on out, we'll get like individual. In mostly individual tickets.
[00:30:37] Speaker B: I want to talk a little bit more about like the, the nuts and bolts. What should I expect? Like, what would you tell somebody who's never been to a convention before to kind of prime them to get ready to maximize their experience?
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Well, the, the, this convention is a little unique, I would say.
Most conventions you go to expect a lot of card tricks.
You're going to see more card tricks than you've ever wanted to see times 100.
This convention I think is pretty unique because it's not quite that. But usually at a convention there's like a hangout room where you just see people jamming. You will see that at the bar at the, the Capitol Hilton during the festival. You go down to the bar and by the way, there's free magic every night from 8 to 9. We, we have a magician wandering around, but I don't even need to bring the magician because the magicians at the convention are more all too eager to show you a card trick.
So you're just going to see card tricks all over the bar, you know, and other stuff too, close up.
The convention itself, the lectures, they each have their own. They did a really good job. Ring 50 is in charge of Magi World. They did a great job of having a nice variety. So, you know, Dave Coro is going to talk about marketing and I think he'll also teach some magic. Lucy, Carissa, I assume, is going to. I don't know exactly what's in her lecture. I've seen her penguin lecture. It was incredible. Yeah, she'll probably. I imagine that Lucy will talk. I'm sorry, Carissa will talk about character, which is obviously one of her strengths.
John Reed will talk about doing family shows. I know he's, he does a lot of school shows and he's very, very good at them. So hopefully he digs into that.
Eric Jones will talk about close up, sleight of hand skill stuff. Andy will talk about whatever he wants. You know, whatever. Whichever tricks he wants to.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:32:29] Speaker A: So listen to all of it for those parts. It's relatively small. It's a group of magicians in a room and it's kind of informal and you get to actually meet the. It's nice because they always take questions if you ever want to dig in. If you're like, hey, I don't know what an elms a clown is, they will usually say, here, let me show it to you and then meet me after the lecture and we'll work on it type of thing. So that's what? That's what to expect this year.
I don't know if it's announced yet, but I think we're gonna have a Magic Mike night, which is very cool. It allows the people at the convention, not the headliners, the attendees, the doctor taunts, to get up and sign up to try to do like just like it's like an open mic where you can get up and do your five minute routine in front of a group of peers and friends who will hopefully help you if you would like it. If you want critique, there will be no shortage of people.
[00:33:24] Speaker B: You'll find critique. Yeah, that'll be the best part.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: Critique. Sometimes you do want flight time, then you just don't ask people what they thought and then. And you get a chance to get up on stage.
[00:33:31] Speaker B: Well, good, because when you said Magic Mike night, I thought for a second, I. Because I'm not ready. I haven't been working out for the summer. It's just not that I'm not ready yet. Yeah, I got my room at the hotel and I'm sure there's still blocks available for the.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: Sure, there are still rooms. It's their slowest weekend of the year. So I suspect you're really okay.
So I suspect you're going to be okay on rooms.
It's a block away from the White House. Like, you walk out the front door, you turn left, there's the White House. It's very, it's very cool.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: So I want to do kind of three rapid fire questions and just answer it as the best you can. Favorite mentalism book?
[00:34:07] Speaker A: Oh, Theater of the Mind.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: Okay, maybe.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: Gosh, there's so many good ones.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: I know it's. It's hard to pick just one. You, you only get. You get one choice.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: What would you, what would you pick for mentalism books?
[00:34:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Really like theater, Mike. You know, I really like Kennedy.
He goes by Ken Dine. Yeah.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: It's great. It depends on what you're looking for, but I think Theater of the Mind has a nice range. It talks about.
You're saying mentalism specifically. I was going to say Scripting Magic is one of my favorite.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: You know, I actually, let's say you can, you can, you can pick also. Not only. I wouldn't say not only Scripting Magic, but scripting Magic, Volume 2, available at Vanishing, Inc. It's a fantastic book.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: I actually like that one better. I like John Armstrong.
[00:34:54] Speaker B: I literally keep it right by my side.
[00:34:56] Speaker A: It's so good. I love that. I, I every Once in a while I pick it up and I reread that book, Books of Wonder. I mean as far as Mid Magic show, the Tommy Wonder books, anything by one time Orez, where he, he taught, he talks about how to hold an audience. So as you're, you know, as you're talking to this person, your hand is out over here and that keeps them. He talks about strings and all these really awesome techniques when you're on stage.
I know that you asked for one. It's just so hard to pick.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: No, I, you know what, here's the thing is I love magic books. So like, for, for what's great for me is hearing from the, you know, hearing from the horse's mouth, which books to get.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: I mean those are, those are some of my favorites without question.
[00:35:38] Speaker B: All right, next, next question. One more left after that. What would be your advice for any new up and coming magician? If they want to start doing what you did and get out there and perform. What's your, what's your recommendation?
[00:35:55] Speaker A: Boy, it's different than when I was a kid. Just advice.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:58] Speaker A: Find a venue like you do a restaurant. Find something where you can perform all the time. Somewhere where you can be bad.
Because you're going to be bad and you're going to make mistakes, a lot of them. So find a place where you can make a lot of mistakes.
It's low pressure.
Restaurants were, for me were huge. I learned so much about performing by having a restaurant every week for years and years and years. So find somewhere to be bad. That's my advice.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: Fantastic. Last question. If you weren't a magician, what would you be?
[00:36:31] Speaker A: Well, you know, I, I kind of like real estate stuff.
I know those two that. It doesn't, those two things don't seem like they go together. But I, I kind of, I.
You know what the best of. When I got into magic, I asked all the guys who were making a good living, what is, what advice would you give someone who's getting into it? And they all said a variation of things, but they all mentioned two things. They all said, buy a house early and start your ira.
And I like to say that I'm living the Charles Green life plan. Charles Green is a great corporate magician, trade show magician here in D.C. who's, you know, he's just fabulous. He's so talented. But he taught me, he said, don't just buy one house. Buy a house, then go buy another house and then go buy another house and you. And keep the others as rentals so that when you retire because he pointed out, he goes, look at how most magicians retire. It is not a pretty thing like have have a source of income for when people don't want to hire you anymore.
And so I follow, I I'm following the Charles Green life plan and so I would give that advice to anybody as well.
[00:37:35] Speaker B: So thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Magician's Workshop. And a huge thank you to Brian Curry for sharing his journey, philosophy and insights into the world of mentalism and magi whirl and school shows and literally everything else. It was amazing to hear about his unique approach to magic, and I think we all learned a lot from his perspective of being a good liar and making mentalism feel fresh and authentic. Thank you again so much for joining us.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: Thanks for having me.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: And if you enjoyed this conversation, be sure be sure to follow Brian on his Instagram and don't forget to check out his show, the Good Liar, if you're in dc. And as always, if you like what you heard today, leave a review, Share this episode with a friend and subscribe so you never miss an interview with all these magicians, creators and innovators shaping the world of magic. And until next time, keep practicing, keep learning, and remember, it's all about the art of deception, but in the best possible way. So see you next week on Magician's Workshop.
