Interview with Alan Sands: The legendary Comedic Magician

Alan: – it’s Alan

CoolKay: – CoolKay, here do I have Alan Sands the famous then infamous comedic magician on the phone with me

Alan Sands: – well I’m famous now because you got me on the phone I wasn’t before

CoolKay: – Hi Alan – so how long have you been a comedian?

Alan: – How long have I been a comedy magician? my dad did comedy magic, so I’ve been doing it since before I was born

CoolKay: – that sounds different and a kinky

Alan: – yeah well – actually I began – I was on stage at the age of three and a half with my dad and but I mean as far as me doing magic – probably just six and I got paid for my first show when I was twelve so it’s been a while

CoolKay: – have you ever done anything else

Alan: – minimally, I went to horse shoeing school, then I tried being a farrier for little while but I was still entertaining at the same time.

I’ve worked in hotels when I was a teenager or up until I was about twenty one and I did everything one could imagine in the social activities departments of those resorts kind of like being a cruise director you know being the entertainment social host on a cruise ship in the Catskill Mountains where cruise ships that didn’t go to sea You would move into the hotel for a week or weekend,

and do everything that the hotel had to offer and you know I played miniature golf and volleyball and horseshoes and croquet and badminton and you know made up crazy zany rules for the game to keep the – you know guests entertained and to give those people that a chance that had never played before and so we play volleyball over the tennis net or you know things of that nature

CoolKay: – mmhm okay so

Alan: – I was a lifeguard and I rented equipment. Anyway but yeah I’ve always been in entertainment

CoolKay: – what what was your first show which he did by yourself do you remember?

Alan: – yeah I did a puppet show for the mentally disabled or mentally handicapped mentally challenged. There was a mentally challenged group school camp or something that was near me.

And, I called him and said Hey I want to come and do a puppet show for you and they said please come and I brought all my puppets and my public stage over there and I don’t know how long the show was probably ten minutes. It was the first show I ever did on my own.

And then by the time I was about seventeen I was doing a full on comedy magic shows you know, doing them sending myself through high school and paying for a car.

CoolKay: – just what every teenager needs right!

Alan: – Yeah exactly! Yeah – I was charging twenty-five dollars for a show if they came and picked me up and thirty dollars for a show if I had to pay a friend five dollars to drive me there.

And I had one particular friend I remember who his father was a doctor – a cancer doctor, very wealthy and and I always thought that he was doing it for the money and had no clue that you know he had his dad’s credit card in his pocket and could go shopping anytime he wanted.

You know to pay for gas and he just enjoyed doing it for me for whatever reason and then I finally eventually bought my own car for seven hundred and fifty dollars and could drive myself anyway.

CoolKay: – okay so is your father still performing?

Alan: – no my dad passed away in two thousand six and but he did perform my entire lifetime yeah right up until. He was a comedy magician and he did a comedy. My father actually wrote some of the magic tricks that are world standards.

He wrote a rope routine and during World War II that almost every rope routine that anyone does has moves in it, that my father created.

He also wrote the original moves that are in it. He also wrote the two encyclopedia’s on balloon sculpturing animals in the early seventies and they were the first big books on balloons – there were about a half a dozen pamphlets that were eight or twelve pages that people published in the fifties and sixties but my father wrote.

You know his first book was eighty pages and so a lot of people credit my father with creating the balloon animals sculpturing, whatever you wanna call it. That craze okay – and I sold my way to college actually making balloons mostly on the streets in San Francisco

CoolKay: – now I’m curious do you have sisters and brothers?

Alan: – I have I had five sisters I lost one because of Covid. I have four sisters and one of them is ten years older than me and she also has spent her entire life as a full time performer.

She got a drama degree from Connecticut University and then ran one of the largest singing telegram and children’s birthday party talent agencies in the San Francisco Bay area.

And, she just retired about a month ago, she turned off for phones for the very first time. COVID kinda killed her business, but she’s in her seventies,

and she wanted to retire so we kind of forced her into retirement and she said okay I’m good. Then all of her four of her five children are in the entertainment industry in one way or another.

Okay so I mean I could get into details on each one one. One manages a theater, one lives in Hollywood and does everything in the film and TV industry you can imagine, and another does post production audio for a major major motion pictures that you know – Lucas,

and Disney produce – and one of them married the phantom on Broadway and she was a dancer on Broadway and equally a dancer all over the country and then the last one is a history teacher she’s a professor at the high school – the performing arts high school in New York City that all of the actors, that all the children actors and actresses go to.

you know that the children yeah like some you know – okay you know she actually teaches at that school.

CoolKay:- We’re going off on a tangent which – I need to know you know what you’re kind of like doing now and how long the show lasts. I saw the vehicle that you use when you when you do your comedic show – That’s pretty cool

Alan: – yeah the model three yeah

CoolKay: – yeah

Alan: about five years ago I got hooked on steampunk and I created an entire steampunk backdrop that we use for our performances and Misty my partner and I do a two person comedy hypnosis show and I do a comedy magic show,

and Misty is actually a brilliant tarot card reader and you know her readings are very very positive and people just love her intuition and how she can you know she really connects with people when she does her tarot card reading and so we’re kind of sort of on the verge of creating a struggling tarot card reading performance for her also.

But she’s been doing a lot of private parties sitting behind the table

CoolKay: – and I would think I would think that – that would the strolling thing would work great at a county fair I could see that work

Alan: – I’m finding more and more acts that strolling or I’ll hold I’m calling them strolling even though a lot are stationary performances are becoming more and more popular.

You know more of more big fairs want more of these small interactive experiences where you walk up to a family and say hello and yes yeah it’s really becoming very popular with some some of the acts that are staying very busy

CoolKay: okay so tell me where you have been lately and how long does your show usually last and where are you going

Alan: – okay well we just did a show this weekend in Minot following the Rocky Mountain service Association convention. we drove to Minot on the show at the spot a pool hall. And they set up a beautiful attic performance space with couches and lounge – it was just fun.

And we did a show there and it was just fun. And our standard show was ninety minutes. Our standard show with ninety minutes when we do just comedy hypnosis. The comedy magic shows another thirty seven minutes so all the time I do both magic and then we do the hypnosis show and the show is a little bit over two hours.

When we are doing corporate events. when we do fairs usually we do about a sixty to seventy minute hypnosis show or a thirty to thirty five minute comedy magic show.

And we also do a lot of high schools we do a lot of post prom and grad night performances beginning in March and it goes into June sometimes even late June,

and we’ll do anywhere from twenty to thirty you know or record year was thirty two and but we always do at least twenty even – twenty twenty one last year we did twenty plus you know maybe to

CoolKay: – you guys are busy

Alan: – well we were we’re not you know there’s always room for more

CoolKay: you’re ambitious

Alan: – you know we do about hundred and fifty shows a year

CoolKay: – Wow do you have kids?

Alan: I have one daughter and she’s lives in the Seattle area and she’s getting her master’s degree in hotel management

CoolKay: – okay well that’s sort of entertainment

Alan: – if you’re in the public

CoolKay: – right I was just curious. Okay all right, so you come pretty much self contained Do you need anything usually from a place when you know you go to set up that that you need ?

Alan: – Well we can always ask for stuff but no I mean we really can be very very self contained When I say we can ask for stuff we could use electricity.

Air conditioning – if you know its scorching hot at the fairgrounds, We could also use you know a changing room that’s air condition if it’s scorching hot at the fair grounds

CoolKay: – yeah

Alan: – you can go hide once in a while otherwise you end up sitting in your vehicle with your conditioner on if they don’t give you one.

And you know, but we do have a high top van and we have the trailer so we can change in there and we can hang out in there and you know just hide from the public when we’re not on stage or doing our shows and I’m very self contained.

CoolKay: – I like to ask this question I always do. What is your worst experience that you remember and what is your best?

Alan: – worst experience you know – yeah we did a job in the school of Missoula, Montana – Where you know the stage was our performance space got flooded by torrential rains that kind of
washed right thru where we were working and another time – they set my stage up with a huge drain right in front of the stage and all of the agricultural waste was flowing right in front of the stage.

It was just some now we N. disgusting when it rained. And so I think rain is probably my biggest problem.

CoolKay: – I see

Alan: – and then one time it even it hailed – you know I mean we had hail that had balls the size of – they they were bigger than yeah – they they were golf ball size I would say you know that would be a good consistent size and

CoolKay: tell me tell me what you treasured both for your most treasured experience

Alan: – my most treasured experience just doing a good show you know I mean like the one we did in Minot, it was a great show.

CoolKay: – I think that sounds that sounds great [00:14:05.560]

Alan: – on the thirteenth we did a show in Minot and it was just a great show. You know when people get up in the animate and they respond and the show goes smoothly and nothing happens that is completely unpredictable.

You know that makes the show those rate and do you know what and have a good time you know and our greatest importance of that is – you know we sell our videos of the show afterwards on video,

and when you sell twenty shows you know that the show went really well because people want to keep a copy of it for themselves

CoolKay: – so
that’s cool

Alan: – yeah

CoolKay: – All right so is there any place you would like to perform that you haven’t had a chance too?

Alan: I would like to go back to some of the places that I’ve performed – for – events I mean I’ve done some real great international events. Misty and I go to England every year – Or we haven’t been able to go back for the last two years because of COVID.

CoolKay: – you know why

Alan: – and we do the Glastonbury Festival which is a hundred stages thirteen of them a variety acts and there’s over three thousand performers there with you know over two hundred thousand people attending for five days,

and that event is just so unique and spectacular you know it’s just so much fun and I did go to China you know twenty-five years ago and I would love to go back to and visit again.

Now for me it’s been a while I’ve been to South Africa I’ve been to Malaysia. I would love to go back to and you know and visit it again and of course anywhere new and exotic. And there is also four states I have not performed in.

So I’ve performed in forty-six U.S. states and I still want to perform in New Hampshire, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Connecticut all up there in the NorthEast.

CoolKay: – they’re pretty far east

Alan: – yeah and I don’t know and I don’t want to bring my trailer I don’t have to drag it all the way across the country I’d rather show up and work on their stage.

CoolKay: – yeah there are there are some big Ferris Delaware state there is is a pretty good size so it’s the New Hampshire one so – We’ll put this on the front front page and we’ll see maybe if you maybe get noticed and maybe I’ll put a plug in for you.

Alan: – that’d be awesome that’d be great okay.

CoolKay: – so is there anything else you wanna add before we close

Alan: – no we just would like to add into our contracted everyone supply us a dog because so I don’t have a dog and I would really like to so.

I did it but I’m on the road too much so I don’t know if anybody else has ever asked for that as part of their contract rider but

CoolKay: – I have two they’re spoiled rotten okay

Alan: – yeah I like spoiled rotten dogs

CoolKay: – well

Alan: – I will pet them and I will love them and I will walk them

CoolKay: – so what’s the best way for people to reach you if they want to book you

Alan: – well this email alanSands@gmail.com OR or Alan@
AlanSands.com – They can text us or call us. We like for you know we carry this thing called the cell phone but people don’t use that phone – so you know our phone number is 601-490-2999.

I am on Facebook just look for Alan Sands. You know, you know we also have our Misty and the Sandman Facebook page.

We’ve got like six websites so if you know find us on linked-in or Facebook or Twitter you know all of the above – we’re everywhere you just look for Allen Sam’s or Misty and the Sandman.

CoolKay: – great so we’ll get this up and hopefully you’ll get some stuff out of it and I’ll see what I can do for you too. Thank you Alan – and I’ve enjoyed talking to you.

Alan: – well it’s great to hear your voice finally we certainly do communicate enough on Facebook and elsewhere thanks.

CoolKay: – yes I I’ve been here a long time okay bye

Alan Sands – we’ll talk to you soon bye bye

Check out Alan Sands on his Website