A New Project: Memphis Magic Night
Some time after moving to the Memphis area in May 2024, I began attending local comedy open mic nights in order to scout locations and talent for a new production. That production launched in March 2025 and is now heading toward a fourth successful show. It was sparked in part by my experience as a producer for Atlanta Magic Night, which ran from 2014 until 2025. It was a great place to showcase not only my own work, but also the talents of other local performers. I knew that Memphis would benefit from something similar here, and so Memphis Magic Night was born. I have taken a somewhat different approach for this show. Rather than two magicians each month, I decided to lean into the comedy community which is already well established here. I have a different local comedian open each month with 20 minutes, then I do a full 40-50 minute act afterward. Another change to the new model is that rather than a single home location, we are rotating the show between a handful of venue partners in different parts of the city. My intent here is not to become overexposed to any single location’s clientele. Finally, I’m exploring new marketing approaches for this show. Besides social media marketing I’m using posters and flyers more intentionally. I am also exploring some additional electronic marketing. At the end of the day, though, there’s no substitute for happy audiences coming back and bringing new people with them. If you’re in the Memphis area on June 16, come enjoy the next show! Click here for tickets. In April I appeared on a local television program to promote the show. You can watch that video below.
Best Trick of the Trade Show
While working a trade show booth recently I found myself in a short lull — that time when there’s a big assembly of some kind and the traffic in the room is diminished. I was standing at the corner of the booth rolling a worn 1972 Eisenhower silver dollar across my fingers, biding my time and looking around for an attendee I could engage. Something distracted me; I don’t know what. Maybe my hip touched the edge of the display table full of brochures, candy, and tchotchkes. Maybe I saw movement at another booth in my peripheral vision. For whatever reason, I zoned out and the coin slipped. I felt it hit the back of my arm and I believed, in my sudden burst of adrenaline, that I had caught the almost-dropped coin against my body with my arm before it hit the ground. I slowly pulled my arm away from my body and… nothing. I didn’t feel or hear anything fall, or drop, or hit the carpet. At this point I thought the coin must have eluded me after all and had rolled away. I looked around the floor for a few minutes. Nothing. The assembly let out and the trade show crowd built up again for the end of the day rush. I reached into my bag, grabbed another Eisenhower, and chalked this up as a loss as I went back to performing. After everyone had left the booth that evening, I took my time packing up. I looked under the tables and the boxes stored underneath. I looked carefully around the booth, the nearby walkways, and other possible hiding areas. That coin was either buried underneath a box I wasn’t going to move, or had rolled into another booth that I wasn’t going to enter, or it had been kicked somewhere else, or it had already been found by someone else. The next morning I arrived early and couldn’t help looking around some more. Still nothing. Oh well, it’s just a dollar, and not a particularly collectible coin. I’ve lost more than that by picking the wrong gas station for a fill-up and passing a cheaper one five minutes afterward. Plus, I’ve surely got a dozen more of those coins in my basement. I let it go and had a great trade show. Yesterday I got home and unpacked. As I was preparing to take clothes to the cleaners today, I checked all my pockets.In the sport jacket I had worn on the day I lost the coin, in the inside lower ticket pocket, beneath the inner left jacket pocket, was that Eisenhower silver dollar. Somehow it must have hit my shirt and been caught in a position that, when I released my arm, allowed it to fall at some angle that landed it safely in the most unlikely of places. I don’t know if there’s a moral to the story. It was just a pretty #amazing moment to find that coin this morning and realize that I had fooled myself with the best trick of the whole gig! #magic #magicians #tradeshowmagic #tradeshowmagician
Joining the 2022 Magicians On Mission and Armed Forces Entertainment Magic & Comedy Tour
I’m honored to have been invited to join the Magicians On Mission and Armed Forces Entertainment Magic and Comedy Tour later this summer! I have hoped and prayed for an opportunity to use what I do to support and encourage our active duty military personnel deployed overseas. I’m beyond excited that this is finally going to happen! (NOTE: For security reasons, I will not be sharing the specific details of the tour locations until after we leave each base.)You can help, too! Visit www.magiciansonmission.org and click on the “Donate” option. You can make a one-time gift, or you can set up a continuing donation to become a sustaining partner. Even $5 per month would help us support one service member per year.If you know influential people, celebrities, or other people with meaningful platforms who might be interested in partnering with us, please contact me so I can introduce them to our founder, Chris Rose.Magicians On Mission is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.#magic #mentalism #magicians #mentalists #comedy #comedians #military #activeduty #armedforces #armedforcesentertainment #performingarts #supportourtroops
Another Day at the Office…
I recently had another event/giglife adventure. I was booked to emcee a charity gala, with a bit of strolling magic plus some magical material during the main show which was to be both in-person and streamed on YouTube and Facebook. Attendees would enjoy a buffet dinner and drinks, bid on silent auction items, then enjoy the main show. The underlying theme and primary activity of the evening was a vocal talent contest, with singers from around the country and internationally having submitted videos that were to be played live and voted on, as well as commented on live by two celebrity judges (one of whom was a Grammy-winning producer). This would be followed by a short live auction, some awards, then a live band and dancing. I arrived to a beautifully decorated venue, with a sunlit atrium with a grand piano and a young man playing some excellent background piano music. The banquet hall was all set with plates and centerpieces and electronic candles to enhance the ambiance of the room’s lighting. The stage was set for the band, judges, and livestreams. The staff had set up cameras and laptops and amps and mixers and lights and projectors and so on. Sound and video checks were underway. Contestant videos and ancillary videos of interviews and organizational promo were loaded into Dropbox and being set up for the streaming. A few minutes before people started arriving, the lights suddenly went out. Most of us immediately thought a breaker had been tripped by the amount of equipment. A breaker had not been tripped. A few blocks away, a car or cars had hit an electric pole and knocked out power for the entire area. There was no electricity, the WiFi was out, the cellular service was iffy, dinner was almost ready but not quite, and a degree of disappointment was quickly setting in. I approached the organizer and offered to help in whatever ways I could. (People were arriving by this time.) I had a full show in my car (from my show earlier this week in Chattanooga), and while the hall and stage were too dark for a show, the atrium was well lit and had good acoustics. Plus, a piano was available as noted before. We could move some chairs, set up a stage/performance area at the end of the atrium, and I could do a program (of any needed duration up to 45 minutes) there. This would ensure that even if the band was unable to perform, there would be some kind of focused entertainment event. This could be a “backup plan” if we got no power, or a “let’s buy some time” piece of the puzzle. Several of us realized the buffet could be set up outside, and there was enough light from the candles so that people could eat at the tables in the banquet hall, or in the sunlit atrium or courtyard. If we could not find a way to play the submitted videos, we had a piano on site and I could sight-read charts on my phone for people to sing whatever they wanted, so we could still do a “karaoke” sort of activity and stay on the theme: “So You Think You Can Sing.” The bar was fine — no electricity needed — so I suggested we let people get drinks, I’d do strolling magic, and we’d see if the power came back or if we could get an estimate on repair time from the power company. She agreed, so I tapped on a wine glass and announced the situation and that we’d be relying on everyone’s patience and flexibility, but that this was still going to be a successful night to remember. I began strolling magic while staff started setting up chairs for the atrium show. The kitchen started figuring out how they could move the buffet outside. We were advised that it would be at least 90 minutes before any power could be restored. (That was wishful thinking.) As I watched the sun move and the light in the atrium change, I advised that if I were going to do a show there, we needed to go ahead and start it within the next 30 minutes. So we announced it and about 10 minutes later I was doing a stand-up show with a little customized scripting to emphasize the fundraising need and the mission of the organization. As I performed I got word that dinner was actually ready, so I closed with a finale trick and people went to eat. At the very least, there had now been a show and a dinner. Most people got plates and went inside to eat at the candlelit tables. I got a quick nibble and checked on the status of things. I was told that in the time we had bought with the stand-up show, someone had rented a small generator from Home Depot and there would be enough power to run the mics, laptops, and projector. A garage floor worklight on a table became the stage light. We were “go” to do our program, albeit in dark and challenging conditions. I then went into onstage host mode, welcoming everyone and introducing the judges and other people. While there was no livestream, the in-person program went reasonably well in the dimly flickering banquet hall. People laughed and cried at all the appropriate moments. Some videos could not be shown, but all the contestant videos had been downloaded and were all shown and adjudicated. Donations were made, auctions were held, awards were given, and the band had enough power to play afterward. So the client and her team used part of my backup plan, and we all managed to cobble together the other pieces well enough to proceed with a “crisis-management” version of the original program. When I left the lights still hadn’t come back on. As I drove away I passed the emergency crew working down the street still surrounded by flashing blue police
Mississippi Moments: Interview by Marshall Ramsey
Speed and Swagger: Ten-Minute Trainer Guest Spot
Several weeks ago, I recorded a guest appearance on “The Speed and Swagger Ten-Minute Trainer,” a weekly podcast produced by Speed Marriott and Derron Steenbergen (aka Swagger). Their focus is primarily on issues relating to media sales, but with general applicability for sales and marketing. (I met Speed when we both spoke at the Mississippi Association of Broadcasters conference in January.) Click on the image below to watch the episode. #podcast #sales #media #magic
Don’t Forget the Rest of You.
Don’t Forget the Rest of You. I want to share a thought that has been percolating in my mind, heart, and soul for a long time. I believe it’s important, and I offer it to you as a gift at the end of a year that has been full of incredible challenges and opportunities for me, both professionally and personally. Please hear this in the spirit in which it is offered. Don’t become so comfortable with a few of your most obvious characteristics that you ignore the many other things about your own life, interests, gifts, and experiences that make you a multi-faceted, intrinsically diverse individual. Don’t let others be so obsessed with a few of your most obvious characteristics that they demand to define you solely by the ones they select, ignoring the many other things about your life, interests, gifts, and experiences that make you a multi-faceted, intrinsically diverse individual. You are more than the things you are best known for, even to yourself. You are also more than the limiting boxes others wish to put you in, to give themselves permission to silence, or discredit, or diminish, or exclude, or even totally ignore you. Every individual person is a mosaic. Perhaps even a kaleidoscope. Don’t forget the rest of you. And don’t let anyone else, either.
The Real Magic of Message-Driven Entertainment Events | Interview on The Nonprofit Exchange Podcast
On 20 July 2021, I was interviewed by Hugh Ballou of The Nonprofit Exchange on the work I do and how it can benefit the leaders of nonprofit (and other) organizations. You can watch the interview here: https://youtu.be/_xf8FOVoUqo You can also find it in audio form on many podcast platforms. You can also visit the page directly here; that page includes a full transcript of the interview.
As I Was Saying…
After Steve Allen’s departure as the first host of NBC’s The Tonight Show in early 1957, the network mistakenly tinkered around with their winning formula. Six months later they realized their error, rebooted the show, and named Jack Paar the host. Probably the most memorable thing about Paar’s tenure was the censorship kerfluffle of 1960. The network cut one of his jokes on the February 10 show; they aired news footage over it during the broadcast and failed to inform Paar of it. Paar walked off the set mid-show the next night leaving announcer Hugh Downs to finish the broadcast. Three weeks of controversy ensued, and on March 7, Parr reappeared and began his monologue with the words, “As I was saying before I was interrupted…” This comes to mind because the last post I made on this blog was just before I left to perform on a cruise ship in January/February 2020. I was performing on a ship in the South China Sea when the ports started closing around us. I boarded in Guam on February 2, and once we left port we remained at sea for about two weeks without docking anywhere. I finally got off the ship in Singapore — not even close to the prior terminating port of Taipei (which itself was a replacement for Shanghai). I got on a plane and came back to Atlanta. I spoke at and hosted a conference in Atlanta, attended a conference in Tennessee, and then came the great interruption. (As a pianist, I like to call it “The Grand Caesura.”) During the rest of the year I both did and failed to do many other things that I should. I kept active, transitioning to virtual performances and seminars which I hosted and continue to host from the studio I’ve put together here in my office. I learned to use new software tools, I learned about lighting and sound and streaming, and I worked hard to learn new ways to be interactive and effective while working in the new virtual venue. I delivered value to clients and continue to do so. But I also failed to do some things. I didn’t have a system to “keep a full pipeline.” I didn’t send out as many emails as the gurus said I should. And of course I didn’t update this blog at all. Next thing you know, it’s March 2021. Okay, fine — I’ll try to get back on the horse. I have neat things to tell you about. I have a new virtual show coming up. And I have other projects in store. Let’s see what happens.
The Magical Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia
For the last five and a half years I’ve been a producer of Atlanta Magic Night, a monthly magic, mentalism, and comedy show with a rotating cast of local and national performers. I get to perform and MC the show sometimes, but I am also one of the “on call” people if a booked performer has a problem. As it turned out, one of the performers booked for our January show contacted me to let me know he had been diagnosed with shingles. That meant that I was suddenly on the bill for Saturday, January 11. We had a pretty good pre-sale even though the weather was gloomy, so off I went to our venue partner, Atlanta’s venerable Red Light Cafe. The sky grew progressively darker as I drove there, loaded in, preset props, and did my sound check. Sure, a little rain, but everything was going just fine… until a loud crack of thunder introduced a torrential downpour. The flooded parking lot suddenly looked like a theme park flume ride. Despite the increasingly scary weather, we opened the house as people were arriving anyway, bringing news of traffic and power outages and other fun things. No worries, we had power and music and lights and food. Then, maybe 20 minutes before showtime, the entire complex went dark. Rather than panic, I went to the piano and started playing so that there was background music. I took some requests from people in the dark house. I continued to improvise and play and chat. A little after 8:00 PM, the manager asked me what we wanted to do. I suggested we give it another 30 minutes, and he agreed. I explained the situation to the people that were there. Then I also explained that rather than have them leave with no show, that we would try something unusual so even if they didn’t get a full program, they would get a really neat story to tell. We rearranged the chairs and tables to create a small performing space on the floor. People took out their phones and turned on their flashlights. And there, in a dark club, with multiple LED spotlights, I performed a close-up magic show that nobody there will ever forget. I know I won’t. One of the club’s owners is also a tech for the Atlanta Opera. She has seen hundreds of performers, performances, technical glitches, entertainers, bands, and live theatre situations. Her comment on the night? “I have no idea how you pulled that together — entertaining those people during a power outage. You pulled it off, and I’m impressed. Seriously, one of the finer things I’ve witnessed. You’re on the list!” Ellen Claire Mills Our emcee for the evening was a local attorney who does magic on the side. When he sent the photo you see here, he also shared a comment that was inspirational to me: “This was beautiful. This is what magic is about. You are a riveting performer Joe, and a connector of thoughts and people.” (Thank you, Chris!) Sometimes “stuff” happens. You either can let an unpleasant, complicated, challenging situation stop you cold, or you can let it push you to create an #amazing experience for your audience even in the midst of the storm. And that’s something useful that we can learn from the magical night the lights went out in Georgia. Epilogue We sent everyone home. I packed everything away by flashlight. As I packed the last item into my case, the power came back on. Some things are simply meant to be.
