791: Greg Frewin - Lions and Tigers and Birds, Oh My!

Greg Frewin is an award winning magician who has had a long and successful career, having once teamed up with Jason Byrne when they both had bird acts to currently performing in his own venue, “The Greg Frewin Theatre” in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. He has appeared on dozens of television shows around the world and Las Vegas showrooms, too. He has even given a Royal Command Performance for Prince Rainier of Monte Carlo. He used to perform with big cats in his grand illusion show, which he is slowly turning over to his apprentice, Christian Mascia.

In this episode, Greg talks about his long and storied career that has taken him around the world on cruise ships, casino showrooms and Royal Command Performances that have won him accolades like First Place for the I.B.M., S.A.M. and FISM. He chats about working with birds and why he started working with large cats until he decided to retire that act. And speaking of retiring, he is slowly going into semi-retirement as he is turning over the reins to his theatre to Christian Mascia, whom we also talk to in this episode.

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767: Randy Wakeman - I've Been Around for a Long, Long Years

Randy Wakeman has been around for many decades and was often seen lecturing and performing at magic conventions. Nonetheless, I have always seen him as an “underground” magician who appeals to the true sleight-of-hand experts. He is one of those guys who has “been there, done that, has the t-shirt” as he was one of the regular performers about the Chicago Bar Magic Scene before the turn of the last century. He has written several books on magic (card magic mostly) and is still relevant in our community as a performer, teacher and author.

While at the recent Senior Tour close-up convention in St. Louis, The Magic Word spoke with Randy as part of the convention report content. He was preparing for a workshop, so we didn’t get a chance to go in-depth as I had wanted. But we agreed to get together at the 4F convention in Buffalo a couple months later. True to his word, we sat down to complete our chat which results in this episode. The content of our chat in both places was a little disjunctive, so the editing required us to put the second conversation first then plug in the chat in St. Louis and finish with our talk while in Buffalo. This sounds more confusing that it actually is, but I know you will understand and enjoy our chat.

608- Jeff Bibik - Bar Magician Extraordinaire

Jeff Bibik is a Chicago comedian and a magician. Originally from the Detroit, Michigan, area, he regularly performed magic in local restaurants and comedy clubs until 1985 when he moved to Chicago where he continued as a comedy magician in close-up and stage for the public and corporate audiences and he also performs a hypnosis act. Over the years he developed a large repertoire of jokes and gags that serves him well today as the house magician at the Chicago Magic Lounge.

Jeff Bibik pulls no punches this week in sharing the secrets behind getting work in restaurants performing magic, plus he tells lots of stories about working in bars and restaurants with a liberal sprinkling of funny gags, jokes and puns. This was recorded using StreamYard with Jeff joining us from the bar in his basement in his Chicago home. A video of our chat was also recorded and posted to YouTube. To view that video, please click on the video link below in this blog.