Hey, everybody, a couple of quick things before we start. You can
reach me at Life is a Gamble pod at gmail dot com or I'm on
Twitter at r WM twenty one and I always like to hear from you.
Love your questions, love your comments, and that's how you can reach me.
Okay, here is the show, Hey everybody, and welcome to Life
is a Gamble. This is episode number six and my guest today is Jason
Ladani. Jason is both a very accomplished musician and magician. I find those
two things kind of go hand in hand because they both require a lot of
time alone in a room with dedicated practice. So Jason, Welcome to Life
as a Gamble. Well, thank you so much for having me. I
appreciate it. I wanted to ask which came first, music or magic.
Well, they actually came at very similar times. When I was about seven
years old or so, my older brother showed me a card trick and it
just blew my mind, you know. So that was the beginning of the
card magic thing. I wanted to impress my brother back, but I had
also we moved into a place that had a piano. I didn't have any
lessons or anything, but I would just sit down for hours and kind of
mess around and stuff like that. And of course I had one of those
mothers that, oh my god, you're so good at everything, and date
on. She said, you could be a surgeon, you know, and
if I made toast, you'd be like, you'd be a five star mischelin
chef. So when I started showing interest in some of these things, she
said, well, let's go get some lessons or a magic shop and have
you have someone show you what to do. Or I found a piano teacher
and we went there so and then we kept improving the piano teacher on more
books and things like that. So she of course recognized some of that stuff.
But when I was seven is when it started. And they both thought,
I don't remember which one was first exactly, but they both started with
and was there a point where because you traveled right as a musician, A
mutual friend of ours told me, you played with BB King? Is that
right? Oh? Yeah, I was on the road for eleven years.
So basically I started playing piano at seven, and by thirteen I was touring
with my first band. It was a local band, but we would do
stuff down in New York, City, and I remember being in like social
studies class thinking like, who else in this classroom is going to be down
in York City? Play and open it? As the social studies teacher is
teaching me something completely ridiculous that I'll never use in their life. Same thing
with chemistry. I'm sitting there like rolling my eyes, going like what,
I don't care about any of this. So I had that kind of mentality
super early. But so I was playing with a handful of local bands in
my early teens, and then I kept just moving up the food chain.
I joined a bigger band that did wider dates, more you know, more
traveling, and then I joined Ernie Williams and the Wildcats. I think I
was about fifteen or sixteen years old, and they did a lot more touring,
but still East Coast kind of stuff. My first big one was Vince
Converse. That was Oliver the United, that was just NonStop touring, and
then the biggest, the last one was Shimika Copeland. Five years with her,
and that's when we had all the big bands that would open up for
The Stones and Jeff beck As, Richa, Franklinetta, James, Oh,
the whole. Yeah. Nine year I mean, those bands are just constantly
touring, and tour management basically just says, all right, you know BB
King has three months in Spain. You're the opening act. So I got
like, like like that, you're going to Spain for three months, you
know. So yeah, there was quite a bit of travel involved in basically
two hundred and eighty a year, and you were home maybe once every other
month. And and is that what made you transition into met magician full time?
Rod? Yeah, So when I was a kid, I was learning
this stuff, but there was no career involved. I just wanted to try
to fool my brother. You know that literally took like a decade for me
to I finally did one day I'd showed him a card trick at the kitchen
table, and he just was like, took ten years, but I got
you. So I had been, you know, working on my chops and
also just playing piano for fun. So I started making money as a musician
early. And of course, when you're fifteen years old making one hundred and
twenty five bucks for a gig, I mean that's like your feel like a
million. I had been making money with music first, but went and cards
was still just a hobby, something fun to do, and I would read
books and VHS tapes at the time, and of course when I was on
the road, I would show. It was kind of like a secret way
to get in with other bands. There. There's a kind of a politics
and click kind of thing on the road where if you're in BB King's band,
you are the top of the food chain. You know, you're eat
in a different place. The dressing rooms are nice, or the green rooms
are bigger, and the opening band you're not allowed to like communicate with those
bands. It's like a first class and coach kind of a situation. So
but having cards, I was able to perform for some of the guys in
BB's band, which gave me access to BB King and right, so they'd
be like, get get that kid, get that little white kid. So
I come in and I do like a bridge deal and they all flip out
because that's what they play bridge. But no one else in Shumika's band was
allowed that kind of access. So I had like this secret but and that
was true for all the bands. I was like my thing that I could
eat and I have all the photos. I've took tons of photos with all
these guys. So fortunately I have a huge photo album that I used cards
to get in the door there. But the thing is, on the road,
you have so much travel, so you're eight hours driving or a nineteen
hour twenty hour flight to Australia whatever. So the cards was a way to
kind of keep you know. I was working on my chops to kind of
fill that time, and I could read books and do all that. So
that was just how I did. A lot of the other guys who are
just listening to music and such, but I wanted to keep my and I
remember we'd go to these amazing places, like we've in Paris for like two
weeks or something like that, and everybody'd be out looking at seeing, you
know, Eiffel Tower and go into museums and sight seeing. I'd beat in
my hotel room working on my bottom deal. You know, I have a
great photo. I'll email te afterwards, me just sitting in my room,
just working in the bottom deal, you know. And I remember on the
last day, I'm like, well, I'm in Paris, I've got to
take a couple of pictures, you know. So yeah, it was kind
of an obsession, but that's how I kept myself saying on the mood whist
to work on that stuff and seeing the improvement over the years. It also
seems like you chose, at least all of the stuff that I've looked at,
you chose gambling slide of hand over. You know absolutely well, it's
just oh my god, yeah, exactly. I don't want to be a
magician. The last thing I want is to be associated with like a birthday
party magician, which I don't do. I've I don't do kids shows,
even on my website's sophisticated audiences on I never want to get lumped into that.
There's something about cards that first of all, unifies the whole show,
because the whole show, my act is a card show. So from the
beginning to the end, I'm talking about gambling and things like that. So
the whole show makes sense if I'm ripping silks in half and then putting them
together, and then putting a billiard ball through a piece of wood, and
then making linking rings link, and then then I do a blackjack trick and
then I cut a woman and had like the show, it's all over the
place, Like what am I? You're just a variety magician, so and
nothing has any meaning. You're just up there saying, look, a perfectly
ordinary ring, you know, another ordinary ring, and now they're linked.
Well, where's the depth to that? But people understand poker and gambling,
and they understand that there's a what is the purpose of linking two rings if
you're going to take them apart again, there's there's no purpose. The coins
there and then it's not, and then it's there again, and then it's
not. So gambling is like here, you shuffle as much as you want,
I'll show you a demonstration that will help you gaining. For example,
black jack, you shuffled as much as you want, you can cut the
cards when I deal out. There's a natural you know, people go,
what the what you know? So I did that because you can earn money
doing that, you know, and which I did. So there's something that
makes a lot more sense about cards. It was nothing appealing to me about
the magic Chris. Now, Yes, at seven or eight years old,
I did have a lot of that stuff, but it passed real quick.
And also the practicality of it. If I was going to be a stage
magician, I have to buy a suitcase with a bunch of stuff in it
and bring that everywhere all my props, you know, and feed my doubs,
and buy this thing and buy that thing my whole act. I can
buy it a CVS right before to show. It's a two dollars deck of
cards, you know, And we did that in Chicago, by the way,
we had some issues with luggage, so it just recently I had to
go to CV. I was CVS across the street and we bought like four
decks of cards and I did my whole show for them. So there's there's
a practicality to it. But also there's something much cooler about a guy that
can hustle in card games than there is a guy that can pull a quarter
out of you here, and that that's really what it comes down to.
My character does not want to do magic for kids. This is about going
into a casino and taking as of bucks off. Look at this. Have
you now I didn't ask I didn't ask you, but this before we started,
and I can cut it if you don't want to answer. But have
you used that skill set as other than a magician? Yes, I'm not.
I can be open about it to some extent. We're not going to
go with the guy's name and the date and all that. But there were
some home games that I said to myself, I can't take myself, seriously,
what kind of credibility to have to be on stage demonstrating this stuff.
We're teaching it or writing books on it without ever actually done it. I
wanted to know what that felt like, what are my nerves, like,
what does it take to do this stuff? And what is the point of
practicing and honing in on all these skills if you're never going to use them?
So in short, I used the money that I made from home games
as an investment, a safe investment. To take that money that was easy
money, obviously. I mean those kids weren't even I mean I was so
nervous. They were watching the game to hold. Like the first time,
I been like, am I really going to do this? You know,
my heart's thumping out of my chat. I thought the guy next did me
to get here? My heart thump? And then I start and like they're
all watching TV. And I finished, and I'm like that was remarkably simple.
And I've got a giant pot in front of me, all right,
So that I got over that real quick. And then for I did it
for a couple of years. But I used that money to go into it
because and I was smart enough to say, I don't want to risk a
felony by mucking or doing anything heavy handed, as you know, so I
just stuck to counting. But I was investing money that was provided to me
by home game. And the place that I was working at at the time
had a two deck game and they played deep in the day he played,
so I was able to make some actual, pretty good I made reasonable money
with the home games, but I actually made some pretty good dough. I
was there until one day I showed up and there were all six deck shoes.
Yeah, and something for our audience. There's a very clear distinction between
cheating and counting cards, which is not cheating, not illegal exactly the stuff
I did in home games. Member home games aren't regulated, so yes,
it's it's not legal to gamble anyway. But the things I did in those
home games would get me time in jail. For the casino. It's very
dangerous too. And also it's not even worth it. I mean, you're
gonna risk so much for one pot. It's just not worth it. So
and there are guys, I know, lots of guys that do this stuff
for real have millions of dollars. But that wasn't for me. You're talking
about risks. We'll get to that in a minute. But I made that
choice early on. I said, I'm gonna stay where I know I can
talk my way out of that situation. But when you got guys in suits
dragging you at the casino with security footage proving it, I'm not gonna be
able to talk my way out of that. So I I just could see
that. So while we're now that we're to the subject of a risk,
I wanted to get to this story about a big risk that you were faced
with. Well, yes, the first risk I had was when I left
high school. I had just graduated and I was playing with those bands and
didn't I know, I didn't want to go to college or anything like that.
All my other friends around me in school, high school friends and everything,
small close knit group of friends, and they were all going to get
jobs with their dad had offered them. You know, my dad can get
me in at the railroad station, or I can get in at this factory,
or I can get in from that. I knew way back then,
after already having a taste of freelance work, gigging and things like that,
that working at a job for that many hours and after taxes you get half
of it, you know, Like that means, you know, I get
out to calculator, like that means in a day and eight hours, you
made thirty two dollars and eighty cents for eight hours of work. And they're
like, yeah, but at the end of the week, it's one hundred
and eighty nine dollars. You know, I'm thinking to myself, are you
are you out of your mind? And you do it as all week?
And I remember because I was doing shows for one hundred and fifteen hundred and
twenty five bucks or whatever, and I'm just playing music, you know,
like and it's for two hours. So I knew ahead of time that I
did not want a job like a boss kind of thing. And I wasn't
suited for college at all because I just felt like it's gonna be more of
high school. And this was back in ninety seven, so this wasn't this
was before the whole like if you don't go to college, you're never going
to be some movement that happened where the college tuition. So college was still
like a reasonable thing to do at a high school. So anyway, like
clockwork, I had gotten out. I left sixty feet a rubber out of
the high school driveway. No joke, I'm not even kidding. I hated
that place and hated high school too. Man. I was starting to give
up in like tenth grade. I was like, am I gonna make this?
Because I got people telling me what to do all day. I can
see that this is not anything like algebra and calculus. I'm not gonna yep
funny thing. I'm in my forties. I still haven't used it. I
have not used a single thing yet. So I got a call from someone
that had seen me in New York City at with one of those bands I
was playing with. And this was a guy that managed Vince Converse, a
guitar player from Texas. He's got a couple albums out of Texas, t
and Sunset Heights and One Step Ahead that's the album. But I didn't know
any that at the time. The phone just rang, and this guy's like,
I'm so and so. I'm with Mythic Records, and I saw you
play with SO and so, and we want to go on tour. And
I just talk about risk. I did not know any what I was getting
into it all. And I he said, it's gonna be national touring.
You're gonna do an album and it makes four hundred bucks for local dates and
it makes six hundred bucks for festivals and be NonStop touring, and you have
to move to New Orleans. That's where the band's going to be based.
They wanted a central position in the country because if we don't you know what
I mean, if we're living in the East Coast, that means all the
West coast dates are difficult you live in the West coast. So they said,
we're going to live in New Orleans, which gives us access to the
whole country. And we bought a house for you guys, and there's gonna
be five of you. And the gig starts like and I'm just like,
yeah, what do you do there? So quite literally months out of out
of high school, and I'm telling my mom, like, hey, listen,
so I think I might be moving to New Orleans, you know what
I mean. But of course my mom's like, you're the best, honey,
you know, be safe. But you can. If I always knew
you would make it, you know, So but that's a big increase because
you're talking about making a hundred bucks a gig to touring full time. So
I was kind of faced with that what do I do? And do I
play it safe or do I take this risk? And I basically put all
my stuff in my car. I drove a Saturn at the time. I
quite literally was at that age. I was able to pack up my entire
bedroom and put it in my car, like there was nothing. I had
a comforter, my television, my movies close, it's just everything, like
the bedroom was just and put it all in this car and I drove twenty
seven hours straight, like through the night. Yeah, I pulled over to
sleep in like Virginia or something like. And this was before map quest and
everything. I mean, this was looking at an atlas, and I got
that information from touring. Being in the bands. We all had atlases back
then. So the idea of driving to New Orleans wasn't that crazy because I
knew that I'd just go to a gas stationing and twenty seven hours later I
pulled up in New Orleans right to the gig, actually right straight to the
gig, pulled in the band was like starting in like forty minutes. It
was pretty close. Oh my god. Yeah yeah, yeah, but blues,
Yeah, but blues. You when you feel like that, you're gonna
play like I knew, like I feel awful. And also you're nineteen years
old. What is it twenty seven hour drive? That's that's not twenty seven
hours today, I'd be in the hospital. But so I played the gig
and that was the beginning of it. We put all our stuff in a
trailer afterwards and moved into our new home and went around the whole country playing
music. Wow, now I did. We lived in Thibadeau, which is
outside of New Orleans. We had this home and that whole thing lasted I
want to say, a year before or six months to a year somewhere in
that nick where we had some financial issue. There was some business issue where
the owner of the record label wasn't paying money on time, and then the
management couldn't send us money, and there was a lot. There was kind
of some business and then imagine that a record label's screwing the artists exactly exactly.
So there's something called tour support like the the the And I've learned this
for the first time. You know, when you get these dates. The
record company is like supporting you along the way. So the club that you're
working has only given you like five hundred bucks, but the record companies like
padding that and saying, okay, here's a salary to help you guys go.
Because when you make the album, we're keeping ninety percent of the album
and you know that that that's our money and you get ten the remaining ten
percent. So they were making all the money on the on the album that
we were selling, but we're out there promoting the album. So that's how
we were able to survive on the road, because you couldn't live one hundred
bucks a gig got there, so they would send us that money, but
you know, we go check the ATM in the morning and be like,
well that's weird. And then also of course the trailer would break down,
the van would break down. You know, you're constantly on it. So
there was a lot of issues there. So the whole thing eventually fell apart.
But that was my first big risk, great experience. I learned a
ton and that was my first Internet or not international. It was my first
national stuff where you're just constantly But I mean, I remember the other thing
that was interesting about that. I had just met my first girlfriend, the
most beautiful woman I'd ever seen at that time, just I couldn't believe it.
And we were only together for like a month before I left, and
so we're in that honeymoon phase. And it was hard to leave her,
that's for sure. But we stayed for that for a whole year there.
We did this long distance worked out for a year. Well, yeah,
because I did it again in two thousand and one and I left her again
and we still did it. We did. We were in a relationship for
six and a half years or something like that, and four and a half
of those or five of those years I was on the road, so it
was just nothing but alone. But even now as a magician, you're on
the road too, right because you do car. Yes, but it's different.
It's different now because everything now is a one off. Yes, I'll
go to I just did Branson's Island, Richard Branson's Island, Necka Islands,
and that was for a week. So that was that was a longer one
because you're so far. Actually it wasn't even that far, but you are
three different plane rides away. It's not just like I'm flying to Chicago and
back, little small islands you jump to when the planes keep getting small.
Then you get on a little boat taxi and take another You know, it's
that that place is out in the middle of nowhere, so it wouldn't make
sense to go out there for two days and back. So as part of
the deal, we said, all right, let's make or I'll fly to
Vegas for tooth or I'll fly to California. Just did Kettlen Island while ago,
same thing about four or five days. So you say, these little
trips and I'm only working for forty minutes. So you arrive, you get
settled in the next day that then you do the sound check, and then
you do the show, and then you have like two more days, one
day of just I'll hang out and then the next day is basically chill out.
But then you leave in the afternoon. You're something to fly home.
So much less work, much much less work because you're only doing that small
show. You're only there for the small and there you're kind of padding that
whole trip with these days off around it. As opposed to music, where
it's they are grinding you to death. You would get into a city at
three sound checks at four to six, go back to your hotel. Change
the show is from nine to eleven thirty. Go back to your hotel room
and lobby. Call is two thirty in the morning or three in the morning
to go to get everybody together, to go to drive two hours at the
airport to get checked in for your nine am flight to right. So see
how there's no and that's non stop. That's non stop. And also it's
not right now I'm the boss. So with Shamika or with Vince, they
would just book as many dates as humanly possible, And I don't have the
right to say I don't want to do that. One you're part of the
band, you're on call. But now I'm in charge. So if I
don't want to work for something, or if there's there's two dates that are
a couple days apart and something comes in in between, I can say,
well, nuts, I don't want to do that because that's going to be
too much. How the hell am I going to get out there and back
and be ready for this day here. So it's much different when you're your
boss because you could kind of pick that schedule and it's very different. Lout
in the road you do the gig and then hope you get paid. You
know, here you get a contract, you get paid before the date.
You know, it's very very different. It's very very different because it's corporate.
It's corporate work, so everything's all cleaned up. You had another big
risk that you mean, Yeah, so basically the same thing happened with Vince.
So I come home from Vince wh I played with him for, like
I said, about a year or so, and then I ended up getting
it my first job, my first job with a real paycheck. I had
worked at like a golf course, you know, when I was like fourteen
fifteen years old, but that was just cash on the side. But I
had gotten my first job at a bank, of all plays. And I
was already of the crooked mindset I or you know, the card cheating and
all. And so here I'm working at a bank, you know, and
their security was like on the they would forget to put the tape in in
the morning for days at a time. They'd be like, oh, yeah,
this the boss of Blump too, and say, hey, you know
the security tapes I've been running for like four days. Now, Okay,
guys, you gotta remember to do it in the morning, you know,
so that they would prop the back door open with a brick so you could
go out and take smoke breaks. So quite literally, the back door to
the bank is wide open, like you just walk up to it and pull
it open, and then the brinksman would show up, and that's the guy
that takes all the old money and exchange brings you in the new money.
And that was a quarter million dollars almost like one hundred ninety seven thousands all
basically all the money in the safe kind of was always being rop So you
got two hundred thousand dollars two hundred fifty thousand dollars, and they wouldn't put
that in the safe because the brinks guy, they're on a tight schedule.
They can't they got to hit every bank in the morning, so they can't
show up and wait for you to stop working and go and open up the
safe and you know this and then get the thing, right, they want
to show up, grab the thing and go. So not only is there
a dope backdoor that's propped open with a brick, there is an unsupervised giant
canvas bang with quarter million. I was sitting in it and I remember thinking
like, man, do I want to there's a risk I didn't take.
I remember thinking like, it would be so easy to just tell your friends,
like just take this. You dig a hole in the wood somewhere,
show up, take it. There's no cameras running bury it in the woods
for like five years. Yeah, but I didn't do that. But that
was that was ridiculous. And I gotta say, I'm sure it's changed by
now. But the code to the you don't want to know what the code
to the safe was two three four five. Wow, not one two three
four that's too easy. Two three four five was the code to that safe.
Oh my god. I've never seen anything in my life like that.
So anyway, I was working at that job and I quite literally answered the
phone at that job and somebody asked for me and I and it was John
Hahn, who was Shamika Copeland's manager. And John Hahn had seen me with
Vince Converse in New York City and he said, that's a keyboard and he
said, we were getting rid of we're firing our old keyboard player and we
need somebody new, and we tore we leave in like a month with the
first tour date. It was in Nashville, and we're going to be gone
for three months straight. Remember one of those big bb King tours. It
was straight three months. So I was on the phone in the bank and
well, all right, because I was getting wind of that corporate nine to
five rat race bullshit where I was hired to be a teller. But after
like a week's where the worth, the boss would come up and say,
you know what, there's a lot of old paperwork that we need filed,
and I'm going to give it to you because I know you'll get it done.
With a little pat on the back like I'm supposed to be like,
oh, oh my god, he picked me because I'll get it done.
I'm the real worker here, folks. I'm the employee of the month,
you know. But I remember when he slapped me on the back saying I'll
give it to you because and I'm like, you'll give it to me because
I'll get who are you like you do it? Like the idea of having
a boss to me was just the worst thing ever. I was hired to
do this, and now you're asking for the extra stuff, just like the
movie office space. We need you to come in on the weekend and I'm
thinking, like, you're gonna give me overtime, So now instead of making
thirty five bucks for a whole day, I'm gonna make forty two bucks for
a whole day. Like wow. So anyway, that phone call came in
and I was in that same situation. I was still with the same girl,
and I'm in I'm wearing my suit and my tie and I'm on the
phone and I said sure, and I hung up and I walked out.
That day, I told Mike Boss I said I quit, and said,
well, you can't. You can't just quit. You have to give two
weeks. And I was like slowly backing out of the bank, like quite
literally something out of a movie where I'm just like and he goes, you
have to count your drawer and sign it up, said I said, I'm
sure someone will do it. But you see, I no longer work here
because just five seconds ago I quit. So that means that's not my job
anymore. And He's like, you can't do that. This is this isn't
this isn't a taco bell. You can't just And I'm thinking like, as
like, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? Give
your detention. Yeah, yeah, exactly what are you gonna do? And
I walked out and I never heard from them again. I got my final
check and everything. My older son after high school, he got a job
at a casino as a blackjack dealer. And he calls me up after a
couple of months and he says, you know, my boss is a complete
idiot and he doesn't like me, but because he's my boss, he can
just make my life a living hell. And I said, welcome to the
world. Yeah, I just can't that. And I had an older brother
too that I saw that stuff happening. He's eleven years older than me.
So I saw that as a kid saying, well, he hates his job,
like he hate and he's slamming the phone down and he's coming home in
a pissie mood, and he's going in on the weekends and hey, Michael,
you want to go play golf? I can't. I gotta work,
you know. Like, So I had a good learning experience by seeing that
ahead of time and said, that's not delight for me. And same thing
with kids. How much kids is amman, and how much it changes your
life and how it stops certain like he wanted to do this, but kids
kind of thing. And I saw that and I said, you know,
I don't want kids either. And people would tell me, you know,
you're ten, You're going to change your mind, and no, I don't,
because I just I just knew that I would have to give up piano
and cards and all that to be to be there for some kid or something,
and I just said no. So I left that gig. I drove
directly from that show right to Macy's and I bought luggage and I got a
passport and I was on the road. I was on the road in within
weeks. And I stayed with Shamika for five years, So that was a
that was a big one because we got paid on time, so that was
a little bit different. That always helps were and it was international. It
was our first international thing. But that gave me access to serious star power
because Shamika was much bigger Grammy nominee Alligator recording artists, so we got access
to so that I was able to hang out and meet and learn. I
learned how to play the guitar from watching Best Guitar Less Did you ever have?
Yeah, Well, by the side of the stage, I could hear
I could listen to those albums for years, but I couldn't always tell by
listening. I'd be like, where's hell? Wherew is he bending like that?
I don't know, that's not part When I try it, I can't
reach that note, you know. And then when i'd see him, I'd
say, Oh, he's on the tenth fret. Yeah, I was trying
that bend down there. It's not going to work down there. So I
was able to look at him and just watch his hands and see the exact
frets that he was on and every night for four years or five years,
you know. So those are some tremendous lessons and I would do that again.
It hard, but again, that the same kind of thing if you
think about the risk of it. I'm comparing it to, first of all,
do I lose my girl again? And we still made it through the
whole thing, through the whole And also I have this kind of normal life
now, And what do I have to compare it to. I have a
band that I moved all the way down to New Orleans four and it all
fell apart in six so I just had to kind of go with it.
Well, I'm running out of time here. I want to thank you very
much for doing this for our listeners. I will put links in the show
notes. You're on all the socials, right, I mean I follow you
mostly. It's all card magic. It's all card magic by Jason. And
let me just say this one last thing before you go, because I'll keep
it under a minute. The riskiest jump of all was to leave music altogether
and switch to being a full time performer, because I had to take all
that experience, all of those years of touring, and completely shift to a
whole new field. I knew I had the chops, but I had nothing.
I had no contacts, I had known nothing. And that was the
one that I wondered, is this is this going to work? Because in
my field as a magician, first of all, to make it as a
magician, that's like impossible, and then to make it just as a magician,
and then also to have literally zero income to say I don't have any
I'm not playing with any bands. I had to leave all that stuff behind
and once I did that, it opened up the edile and I just started
doing. And the one thing I wanted to pass on in this podcast,
if anyone's interest, it's like when it's scary to jump. That's when you
know, like it's okay. Like if you're nervous but you're you're super scared
about that jump, just do it. Because on the other side you look
back and you go, what was I waiting for? And all three times
that that's happened, all these jumps that I made, I always remember being
on the other side of it, going everything's fine. It's not like you
make the jump next in a week you're homeless and thinking, I like,
I shouldn't have done that. As humans, we make that jump and then
you have to make it work after the jump, so it's terrifying prior,
but when you make it, it's not so bad. And me doing it
three times, that's that was the thing that I said to myself when I
did the jump into magic and performing. I said, I've made this jump
a thousand times and it's always been okay, and it was. So that's
kind of a point I wanted to end on that if you're nervous about it,
and you know you hate your job but you want to do whatever,
you want to be a chef or you know, and you're feeling like,
oh, I'm stuck at home and I got this job. It's just just
do it. Just do it, and you'll realize once you make that jump,
you'll be fine. You'll be fine. Yeah. After college, I
moved to Vegas to become a card counter and I didn't have a lot of
money, so I got a job as a blackjack dealer. And after a
while, I was making more money playing than I was dealing. And I
was talking to a friend who was one of the pit bosses, and I,
you know, I told him, I feel like I can't quit because
I've you know, got two mortgages and you know, and he was like,
are you crazy, He said, quit the job. He said,
what's the worst that can happen? I mean, if if you go broke
or something, you can always go find another job. I could have gone
back to any band. Yeah. After but when you're in the moment,
though, it is terrifying to you. But when you look back, when
you look back, you realize that it was this was fine, that wasn't
anything. And the same thing happened to me when I quit music. Making
one hundred and twenty five two hundred bucks and local gigs and trying to teach
on the side and all this other stuff and after six months of doing magic,
and I got into the corporate work and then eventually broke into New York
City work. I was making twenty times the money, like it was such
like what was I thinking? What was I thinking? And I a good
local. One of the original bands that I had played with. The singer
had passed away. He was eighty years old. He passed away, and
we were all at the funeral and we were walking out to our cars,
and of course it was a great funeral because they were telling funny stories and
it was it was sad, but it was also there was a tone to
it where we were telling these stories to make things feel better. And we
all went out in the parking lot and all these guys I hadn't seen in
like ten years, We're all getting into our cars, and I remember the
drummer. He was getting into the same minivan he had and I had a
brand new Mustang, you know, And and he stopped and goes, wait,
how do you how do you afford to drive that? And I go
I stopped playing the blues Man, and we laughed and we both drove away.
But a ridiculous amount of money. Because I'm my own boss and I
can charge what my rates, and breaking into a New York City market more
high end corporate stuff and being in charge like that. I'm not just following
what someone's giving me. I'm going out and getting it. And that was
a huming So I just wanted to make sure that we got that last point
in thank you for letting say that, because I think that's the whole point
thing is to look back and say, you know, it wasn't that bad,
and you can learn those lessons from other people that have done it,
and when you do it yourself, take a moment to appreciate that absolutely.
And as I said, I'll put up links to you know, your Instagram
and your YouTube, and I'll put up links to both the music and the
card Magic, which are both just exceptional. So again I want to thank
you for doing well. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's it's at
Card Magic by Jason on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube. I don't really care
about the other ones, but on those I do a lot of the magic
stuff, of course mostly, but every now and I'll throw up a couple
of blues tracks and play some piano or some guitar just to fingers in shape.
I still play. I just don't care about trying to make a living.
I enjoy playing, just not the business side of it. But so,
yeah, man, do whatever you want and to make sure you're happy
doing it. And that's that's the secret of life right there. Yep.
And share it with people. That's the other one ship to find out what
you love to do, be happy and share it with people. That's why
I'm doing this, I think. So yeah, so, and next time
you're in Vegas, look me up and we'll go have some lunch or something.
Absolutely we'll do. Okay, Well, that is my my interview with
Jason Ladany and just a couple of things. It would help the podcast tremendously
if you would leave a review, or if you're listening on YouTube, just
hit subscribe and that would really help me out. Now my recommended for this
week. I should have recommended this last time when I was interviewing Down the
Dragon Wilson, but it reminded me of a show I've been watching that I'm
really enjoying. It's called Warrior and it is on HBO Max. Shout out
to Cartwright for recommending it to me. But it is a martial arts fight
television series set in San Francisco in eighteen seventies and full of fight action,
and yeah, I'm enjoying it a lot. So check that out. It's
called Warrior on HBO Max. So that's it for this week and I will
see you next time.