Shawn Greer Visit

Electric guitar licks splash around my head. I like volume and plenty of it. Had fun with Shawn Greer yesterday. He passed through town last week on his way to work a 4 day festival in Northern California. He stopped again on his way back arriving in the late evening and staying for a 24 hour Neil Young, Magic Jam Geek Session. Both mornings he was in town he joined Aaron and me on our morning hike in the Hollywood Hills. After the first walk we came back to the house and cooked some steaks on the grill and had a mini magic session. While I prepared lunch Shawn showed Aaron some coin magic and classic manipulations. Later we were working with some CRAZY BIG linking rings, (that Shawn had just bought) in the back yard. They must have been 20 or 25 inches round. We shot shot some video of the exercises. Maybe I'll post it to the web if anyone thinks that sounds interesting. Working with these gigantic rings was a real challenge and work out.

Shawn an I go ALL the way back to the old days. . . Polly too for that matter. We've known each other for 30 years! Boy time flies. It doesn't seem like three decades ago that we were jamming in Shawn's Grandma's basement in Norwood, Ohio on Ivanhoe Avenue. "I was lying in a burnt out basement, with the full moon in my eyes. . . "

We spent our formative years together, studying the art of magic and doing the damage that would prevent us from ever holding down a real job again. What a long strange trip it's been.

This is what I looked like in 1978. I was 13, Shawn was 16 and he had just got this little red Chevette. Over the next few years, studying under Larry Pringle and Paul Swinford we would establish a foundation of technique and performance that would help create the entertainers that we are today. Yesterday we watched some 20 year old video shot in Cincinnati. It was Shawn performing Color Triumph, The Egg Bag, Some Coin work and more Card stuff. I did some card, coin and even a trick were I would sing "Pennies from Heaven" while producing things from the song (an umbrella, flowers, a shower head & jumbo pennies). It was fun to take a walk backwards through time and look at the magic we were doing and the friendship that has lasted, grown and flourished.