AP Strange: 00:22

Pardon me while I have a strange interlude. But there is nothing else. Life is an obscure oboe bumming a ride on the omnibus of art. Among the misty corridors of pine, and in those corridors I see figures, strange figures. Welcome back, my friends, to the AP Strange Show.

AP Strange: 01:09

I am your host, AP Strange. This is my show, and today's show is brought to you by Mercury Gatorade. Because no matter what the astrological weather is out there, whether it's rough or whether it's calm, you wanna stay hydrated and you wanna make sure you have enough electrolytes. So get yourself some mercury Gatorade for all of your astrological transitions. And tonight on the show, this is gonna be a fun one.

AP Strange: 01:39

I have a magician on the show tonight, a stage magician and an artist, and someone who considers both of those things kind of the same thing, and that's something we're going to unpack tonight. His name is Joe Ledoux. He's based more or less in Boston, in Massachusetts, throughout Massachusetts and does a lot of performances around here. He's a man who, once cast a spell and conjured UFOs, fairies, and sea serpents of us just outside of Boston and he brings a lot of wonder and magic to the world through his love of magic art and skateboarding And he seems like a really interesting guy. We've been chatting a little bit just now and excited to get into it.

AP Strange: 02:29

So welcome to the show, Joe.

Joe Ledoux: 02:31

Thanks so much for having me. This is the first time it seems like someone actually knows what I do.

AP Strange: 02:39

Well, do my homework. I try to tell people, know, people are like, oh, what's a good episode of your show? And I'm like they're all good. Mean I look for people that I think are interesting to have on you.

Joe Ledoux: 02:54

Thanks so much for having me,

AP Strange: 02:55

this is gonna be fun. Yeah it is gonna be fun because mean I was looking at just for listeners background you had an event happening in Boston that caught my attention and I'm like oh man well I can't go to that event but I do want to follow this guy And then I looked into you more and found that there's a lot of overlap because I mean listeners to the show know that I'm a I'm a big geek for stage magic, but kind of your fusion of stage magic and fine art and all of that is, seems like a really interesting story. And then you add skateboarding to the mix and it's just like, okay, well, this guy's really unique. So I'm kind of curious, I know one of the zines you sent me kind of explores the background with the skateboarding. So I don't know if you wanted to talk a little bit about your journey from skateboarding to magic.

Joe Ledoux: 03:59

Yeah, sure. So when I was a kid and I would see people skateboard, I remember just seeing them move without putting their foot down. And I had a skateboard when I was like six or seven years old, and my sister would have her friend over and he was a skateboarder, and he would get on my board and not even push with his foot and be able to get it to roll and move around. And it just seemed like magic to me, way that the board was animating around. And then as I got older, there was sort of this time in my life, probably around fifth or sixth grade, where everybody had skateboards and my parents, I asked them if I could get one and they got me one.

Joe Ledoux: 04:43

And there was this trick that people would talk about at recess where it's called an Ollie Impossible, and you would put your foot all the way on the back and sort of scoop with your back foot the board in a vertical three sixty and then land back on it. And none of us knew if it was possible because there was the internet, but not every household had one. And my parents, we didn't have the internet where I lived. And I would sit and try it every day and wonder, would it be possible to actually do this? Is it a myth?

Joe Ledoux: 05:20

Is this trick something real? And at the same time, I had also been in love with magic, and I was trying magic tricks. I had seen a magician make a candle disappear on TV where he wrapped a silk around it, and I was grabbing my mom's candle and trying to, like, shove it down my sleeve, trying to shove it around like a countertop, and just, like, wrap the silk around the candle and then make it disappear. And I couldn't figure it out, and I ordered the candle, and I found out it was a gimmicked candle. And I felt like that ability to believe that I could really make it disappear with my own creativity, was losing that.

Joe Ledoux: 06:00

Almost like the martial arts. Like, you're not shopping through real bricks and you're using, like, pre cracked ones, if you're actually using real bricks, you'll be a lot stronger. And I wanted my magic to be strong. So I landed the Ollie Impossible on the skateboard one day, and I was like, this is more magical. This is your brain trying to do something impossible and actually do it where the tricks I'm getting from the magicians are fraudulent and kind of destroying that aspect of myself.

Joe Ledoux: 06:28

So I saw the skateboarding is sleight of feet and I researched it and found out that the Polynesian chiefs, the first surfers, they would pray for the big waves, and the ones that were the best surfers were the head chiefs. So I started to look at the connections of magic and surfing and then looking at skateboarding. And when a kickflip was invented, people didn't know how it was invented, so they called it a magic flip. And then it just kind of dawned on me that, you know, skateboarding was basically sleight of feet and magic, and it connected in this kind of mystical sense to something more spiritual and then I decided to write the book.

AP Strange: 07:10

Wow. Yeah, I mean it's that kind of thing where the magic of discovery is a lot of it because it's like you really do have to practice at both skateboarding and magic tricks or illusions or sleight of hand to to get good at it, you know? And then the the magical moment where you actually accomplish it is is revelatory in a lot of ways. Yeah.

Joe Ledoux: 07:45

Yeah. There's that real when you land, like, a skateboard trick for the first time, there's, like, this ecstasy. Like, skateboarders talk about it, this rush, and it's just the best feeling in the world. And I think that happens also, like, with magic, like, when you are practicing sleight of hand and you can do the coin roll through the fingers where it doesn't fall and you get it to go around once, there's that feeling. So, yeah, I do think that sleight of hand and sleight of feet are with the skateboarding, they're very, very similar in kind of the mechanics and the thinking.

Joe Ledoux: 08:19

And then they also, you know, magic and skateboarding go a lot deeper than that as well. If you go back to the roots of skateboarding too, they connect I mean, sorry, of magic. The roots of magic go back to shamanism. So, you know, you can take follow either thread, but I think that on a secular level they're magical and on a spiritual level both art forms are magical too.

AP Strange: 08:42

Yeah, yeah, I mean, think people like to make a distinction between, stage magic and, like ritual magic or, you know, the spooky kind of magic or, the more spiritual end of magic, really they don't need to be distinct as you say like they are tied up together. Shamanistic traditions do this. Know there's a writer George Hansen that had written about it. He wrote this book, The Trickster and the Paranormal and he talks about the sham and shamanism where shamans use like sleight of hand as a means to an end to kind of direct people or to as a way of like priming the pump for the actual magic that they're doing, you know. And it's kind of part of it, know.

Joe Ledoux: 09:35

Yeah, I had heard that there would be sort of doctors like that in a shamanistic sense that would secretly have like feathers in their mouth, and they would bite their tongues to get the feathers all bloody and then go to suck out the disease on someone's arm or something and then spit the bloody feathers out. So they were using sleight of hand and trickery, but they're doing it so that the placebo and that the person watching it, it would seem real in their mind. And at the same time, the shaman would probably be under some kind of hallucinogenic and tapping into the spirit world, and it wasn't that they didn't believe it, but they would be trying to make it real for the person that they're healing because they're not in the same reality. So in a sense, they're acting out the spiritual reality that they're in to make it real for the witnesser to heal them.

AP Strange: 10:36

Yeah, yeah, and I mean having that kind of effect whether it's a placebo effect or psychosomatic, that is still just kind of imposing your will upon reality and by virtue of that changing it. Yes. That's pretty miraculous in and of itself. So I mean was I understanding correctly before we started recording you you trained with, people in shamanistic traditions to learn some of your magic?

Joe Ledoux: 11:14

So I'm part of the McBride Magic and Mystery School in Las Vegas, and it's one of the best magic schools in the world. Jeff brought David Copperfield in to teach us. He gets a lot of the top magicians in the world. Meet every Monday on Zoom, and I've been taking classes there for like eight or nine years every Monday. And also in person when he's traveling, I've met up with him.

Joe Ledoux: 11:40

I met him in LA and he became my magic teacher. It's like I felt lost living out in LA studying screenwriting, and I had graduated from college and sort of felt lost. And I wrote to Jeff, and it's like the teacher, when the student is ready, the teacher appears, and then all of a sudden he wrote back, told me to be his guest at the magic Castle. And then when I met him, he told me that you can't give a gift that you don't have. And he said, A magician that doesn't believe in magic is like a doctor that doesn't believe in medicine, and you need to go have real magical experiences and study with real magicians so that you can give your audience magic.

Joe Ledoux: 12:21

So he sent me to this place called Twilight Covening. It's in the Berkshires, not too far from Boston. I I feel like it was like maybe an hour drive or something. And it was on this mountaintop, I think it's like a YMCA camp on top of this mountain. And it's basically like Burning Man, but here, and you pick what tribe you want to go with.

Joe Ledoux: 12:47

There's people maybe doing tarot cards, maybe there's a Native American group, maybe there is a Buddhist group. There's all different groups and tribes, and I went with the shaman group, and they basically do an introduction to shamanism where you find your power animal and you do journeying, and then everybody brings a vegetable and they put it in this giant cauldron, and then everybody at night eats from the soup and puts a blindfold on, and then you're brought out into the woods. And then you this particular instance, because it's different every time they do it, there was little lights that you'd follow through the woods and there would be different deities. Like, you know, one of the people that I encountered was a phoenix and they had this sort of ashes on the ground that they sort of rubbed and then there was red flames under the ash and they kind of told the story and some of them would perform magic and you would encounter different creatures throughout the woods that would give you these little wisdom tales. And I came back from that experience different.

AP Strange: 14:02

Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, so I mean, really is, I mean, I haven't seen your performances but reading about them and seeing what the philosophy is behind it because you have some nice little like, compilation reels that that you have on your website. It is about kind of melding the fine art and stage magic, sort of thing into a cohesive like full immersive magical experience that transcends just illusion and sleight of hand or art and kind of brings the audience in as part of it because you kind of have it set up in a gallery where you're surrounded by your art as well. So it seems to me to be like an immersive experience where the audience is almost part of the show and kind of bringing real magic as it were to the stage.

Joe Ledoux: 15:10

Yeah. I mean, you're spot on. Everything that you said, I would agree with. I definitely like to use that framework. You know, I there's two types of audiences, those that come to remember and those that come to forget.

Joe Ledoux: 15:23

And usually alcohol is the determining factor. So I started looking for venues where there's nothing wrong with Sweet Caroline and alcohol and glitter and fireworks. I'm very philosophical. So when I come home or at the end of the day, I like to put just a TV show on and zone out and watch some entertainment and laugh because I think we need both of them in balance to have a healthy life. And I just knew with my life that I was unhappy as a performer because at heart, I'm an artist, and my gift would be to give people not the entertainment, which I think we do need entertainment, but I wanted to give people art and meaningful experiences where people were coming to remember and not forget their troubles.

Joe Ledoux: 16:10

So I looked at the art gallery and I was like, Well, I went to MassArt and I was unhappy doing a lot of the corporate and entertainment stuff I was doing. Why don't I just flip flop it and have my paintings up, do a Monarch galleries, bring my skateboarding back into my life and do magic with that, and just really be myself, be vulnerable, be honest. Ralph Bakshi is one of my mentors. He has a lot to do with where I'm coming from with being real, and the Ashkan School artists, how they were sick of painting staged, beautiful Disney models in studios, and they went out and painted the construction workers on the street. It was all inspired by Walt Whitman and Looking for Truth, so I started to tell truthful stories about my life and go unscripted at moments in the performances, even have people just grab things and throw them in a hat and put jazz music on and see if I could create magic on the spot and show animated films between tricks and sort of make these artistic happenings.

Joe Ledoux: 17:16

And with the fine art framework, it wouldn't be like I was perfecting the same show over and over and over. I could try out new things and maybe fail, Tell the audience it's the first time I'm gonna try something, where, like, if you're doing a casino, you have to have a recorded track so that it's timed perfectly because if you go a minute or two late, they'll start charging you for that amount of time when the people could be playing the slot machines. It's like, I don't want to be in that kind of framework. I mean, I did stuff like that, not in casinos, but I did a lot of corporate work, and it just took me a long time to realize, like, this isn't who I am. Like, I know people that are entertainers, and that's they're great actors, and these are the people that need to be doing these things.

Joe Ledoux: 17:59

And when I started doing it in the skateboard shops and the art galleries and being myself, I started making friends and real relationships. It's like when Joseph Campbell said, follow your bliss and doors will open where there are only walls.

AP Strange: 18:14

Yeah. I guess so. And well, the fact that you're mentored by Ralph Bakshi is pretty amazing. How did how did you come to meet him?

Joe Ledoux: 18:23

Oh, god. I don't know if we have time for it. So when I first first met him, I was in LA and he had a book coming out. So I went with my partner, Ashley, to go to his book signing, and the first time you meet somebody famous, I noticed they always do this to you. So by the time I actually got up to him, he's like, oh, nice to meet you.

Joe Ledoux: 18:46

Have you met my daughter Victoria? And then sent me over to meet Victoria because he wants to see the other people coming in, maybe sell his paintings, keep talking. He doesn't want to get caught up with this fan kid that just loves his work. Yeah. And he also has friends he knows coming that he probably wants to talk to, but I've had several people where, you know, you go and meet people and they'll immediately do that technique to be able to keep schmoozing and talking, you know, and keep the crowd going in.

Joe Ledoux: 19:12

So I got to talk to him for like two seconds. And then he was having a show in New York and I had written to him saying like, I'd like to meet up with you and I would love to talk about art. And I was just finding his email through his website at the time and I was not getting a response. So I forgot to mention I had emailed him through his website when I was at MassArt and he actually wrote back to me and I asked him, what is the most important thing you try and do with your art? And he said, the most important thing I try to do with my art is be completely pure with what I think a situation means, which has kept me completely pure but poor.

Joe Ledoux: 19:56

And I did a whole presentation on his films and shared the quote with the Mets Art students, which is probably not what the art teachers wanted to hear and the students. Right. You know, but he's had a successful career. I mean, he said that, but he, you know, he had, he did make a lot of money and he has a nice house on New Mexico, but I get where he's coming from, you know. And like, after that I went to email them to try and meet up with him in New York, and my partner went with me.

Joe Ledoux: 20:26

So I waited in line for like an hour to talk with him, and he's like, are you are you okay? When I finally, like, got up to talk to him, was like, hey, Ralph. I emailed you, and he's, like, asking me if I'm okay. And then I think I was kind of like, what do you mean? And my partner Ashley came over because she could see that Ralph almost looked, like, angry.

Joe Ledoux: 20:47

And he goes, oh my god. You're normal. I didn't know you were normal. I don't know why if he thought I was like hitting on him or trying to ask him for a date or if he thought I was like coming on too strong, but when he saw that I was like in a stable relationship or whatever reason when Ashley came over he goes, Oh my god, you're normal. I didn't know you're normal.

Joe Ledoux: 21:05

Send me another email, I'll respond. And then goes to Ashley, Watch after him. Look after him. So then we went outside and honestly I started crying because he's like my favorite artist. And even though it kind of went okay, the kind of like, he's so honest.

Joe Ledoux: 21:25

He'll tell you if he doesn't like you, that kind of like encounter. I was just like, not what I was expecting. And you know Ashley's like, Well you said to email him again. I'm like on the sidewalk all you know trying to like just like keep it together. So then he was doing another show in Canada and I actually did a fundraiser where I had people over and I performed magic and sold all my paintings to get money to pay to get a bus to go to Ottawa and a hotel.

Joe Ledoux: 21:53

And I went and saw him there and I started talking to him in line and yeah at this point he knew who I was. And I said, I'd love to study with you. And he goes, Well, you can't. I'm too old. And I was like, What is it that you want, Joe?

Joe Ledoux: 22:09

And I'm like, Well, maybe just your phone number so we could talk about art and kind of, he's like, go talk to my son, Eddie. He'll give you my phone number. So, I went over to talk to Eddie and Eddie goes, can you remind me? He looked shocked like, why he said to give you his phone number? And I said, well, I'm a magician.

Joe Ledoux: 22:26

We talked and then he told me to come over here and get it from you. So he wrote down his email and then he said his personal email. And then said here's his phone number. I'd recommend emailing him first. So I just called him one day and he goes, how the hell did you get my number?

AP Strange: 22:42

And I was like, you told me

Joe Ledoux: 22:44

to get it from your son and he's like cracking up and you know, we talked for a while and I'd start calling him on different days. Sometimes, you know, I talk to him longer. Sometimes, he'd be like, call me another day. You'll get a different answer and hang up.

AP Strange: 22:59

Like, you know, it's like some

Joe Ledoux: 23:00

days were good, some were bad, and then I started emailing him and sending him, you know, just like little gifts every now and then. I wanted to buy one of his paintings and said, hey, Ralph, can I purchase one of your paintings when you put me on a payment plan? And he goes, just send me your book and I'll mail you one as a trade. So I sent him my skateboard zine. I'm not sure if I sent you that one and he just sent sent me a drawing that he did which I thought was just crazy and then he gave me feedback on one of my performances and I have a quote about it on my website.

Joe Ledoux: 23:35

And I started showing him my paintings and he gave me feedback on them and they passed down things to me. Norman Rockwell showed him. And the last time I talked to him maybe a few weeks ago, I showed him an animation pitch I'm working on and he told me to try pitching it to toy companies. So, he's like my biggest influence and he's been giving me an art education to some degree and feedback on my art. Yeah, he's one of my favorite artists in the world and I consider him like a mentor in my life.

AP Strange: 24:07

Yeah, that is excellent. So just being really persistent. Yeah. Yeah. Mean, he could have easily thought you were like a stalker at some point, You know?

AP Strange: 24:19

Like, maybe he did when you saw him in New York because he Yeah.

Joe Ledoux: 24:23

Yeah. Because he you know, I'm sure if you're famous, you get these emails, and I am so passionate and just, like, heart driven and and just very open. I think sometimes when people first meet me, they they can like, you know, wonder if I'm not autistic or like, I don't know, some sometimes people have described me in different ways, but I think it's like people when you're really, really open, sometimes can can get defensive too because they're not used to it but he's very open too and I mean, on the phone talking with him after I got to know him, he's like, you remind me a lot of myself and like, you know, it's like, I I think when you're famous like that though, you have to kind of have probably more of a wall up to be careful because yeah.

AP Strange: 25:05

Right. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you've experienced that, but I mean, like, I've had situations not even being famous, but being like somewhat notable, you know, where

Joe Ledoux: 25:20

Yeah.

AP Strange: 25:21

People people kinda feel like they know you, and you're just like, well, you you don't you don't really though. We're not really pals. You don't know me that well. Yes. But on the subject of your art, this was something that really intrigued me because it's it's something that has actually come up on the show before and I I always find this fascinating when I see it with an artist is when you have, a recurring character, that that is sort of like an alter ego, but also like a companion to you in another realm.

AP Strange: 25:59

And for you that's this character Muhachi. So I don't know if you wanted to speak to Muhachi's history and it seems like you've been drawing and painting him since you were a little kid, right?

Joe Ledoux: 26:10

Yeah, I'm honestly just amazed how much you know about, not only are you saying his name right, but that you know about the character. Yeah, so my mom gave me this bear as a kid and supposedly it was carved by the shamans in Canada. I still own it. It's like a soapstone bear carving. And at the same time, my sister and I were watching Indiana Jones, and there was this statue in one of the movies.

Joe Ledoux: 26:40

I can't remember which one it is. Maybe Temple Of Doom. And they call it like muhake or muhachi. And we would sort of grab the bear and say it's like muhachi or muhachi. And like that's how that's how this thing started to be born.

Joe Ledoux: 26:55

I always say he was a character that was not created, he was born, because he sort of was given to me by my mother and this thing was kind of crafted by other artists and it sort of just came into my life. And then I started drawing the bear, but over time, because I never stopped drawing him, he changed. So like in the earlier drawings, he has sort of claws and these hands and these little legs, and he looks he was a bear, but a cartoon version. And then eventually that kind of morphed into this bear with a cape, and he kind of had these jack o'-lantern, a jack o lantern face with these angry eyebrows. As a teenager, I just made him like the Kool Aid man, and he would just run through walls.

Joe Ledoux: 27:39

And the comics were very bizarre where as a kid when I drew them, it would just kind of go through with him skateboarding and then say, Is this comic boring or what? Mulhachi Roar! And it would be like, The end. They were just these really, really bizarre children's comics. And then at Mass Art, they told me, because I was making animations, I have several animations with him.

Joe Ledoux: 28:02

It's like old school Muhachi is what I call him with the jack o lantern face and the angry eyebrows. They didn't like the character and told me it felt like he had no personality and encouraged me during my reviews to stop drawing the character. And I loved mass art. I'm not talking down. In fact, it may have even been good advice at the time to take a little bit of a break.

Joe Ledoux: 28:26

So I ended up just quit drawing him for maybe like eight or nine years. And then one day, for whatever reason, I decided I was gonna start drawing him again. I remember the first drawing I did, it was like him with a cigar in his mouth, like kind of tethered and like up and moving again. And then there was a point where I continued to just fall in love with art again, and I was drawing him so much and getting so into the art that I realized the character was me, and at that point the character kind of reached his own enlightenment, and then his eyes change and there's a sparkle of light in his eyes. And then the character became sort of a mirror or an avatar for me to express myself.

Joe Ledoux: 29:13

And I would do a drawing each night just if I had a crappy night, I would drum hunched over and sad with a little speech bubble of how I was feeling that day. I remember during the pandemic, he just said the F word. We can curse on Yeah. The

AP Strange: 29:30

Yeah, you can.

Joe Ledoux: 29:31

He just said like, Fuck. And he was like laying on the ground, just completely done. So I like to say some of them are sad and some of them are happy, but I wanna create a cartoon character that's true to life. And that has a lot to do with Bakshi's influence with cartooning on me as well and his push to make cartooning real. And that sort of went with all of him becoming this sort of poetic expression of also turning the paintings and the cartooning into a fine art too.

AP Strange: 30:04

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and you can see this all kind of converge because I mean, you have the cartoons, well, the newer works with Muhachi on a skateboard kind of like telling your skateboarding story. So there's a point at which all of this just kind of converges into one self actualized thing, is really cool.

Joe Ledoux: 30:28

Yeah.

AP Strange: 30:32

I guess that's, while you were talking about his old expression like the Jack o'-lantern face, I'm like, oh, those were his edgy years I guess. Like his angsty teenage years.

Joe Ledoux: 30:47

And I mean, all of that's true. Like when we were kids, you know, we did things like as skateboarders and stuff. And, you know, I remember like driving and, you know, somebody like hitting somebody's mailbox or, you know, I was like a teenager and you do crazy stuff. And then I always like think, thank God I don't have kids because I you know, you think back of all the stuff that you did as a kid and, you know, it's like, yeah, I think it was that stage of my life which was mischievous. And I think the character really channeled that kind of energy too in the comics.

AP Strange: 31:19

Yeah. Yeah. I'm always grateful that we didn't have social media when I was a teenager because I would have posted so much dumb stuff online. A lot of self incriminating stuff, I'm sure. So so, yeah, it was good to have have some trouble to get into that there's no record of life that And they get caught, I

Joe Ledoux: 31:48

also to grow, right? Like when I was younger, there was so many different characters that I was around. I mean, there was fishermen, and I was in the woods, and there was these skateboarders that would bring me out to the city. And to hang around with all of these people and get that kind of perspective at a young age, I feel like it kind of gives you an ability to love because you see so many sides of yourself in other people. You see so much texture.

Joe Ledoux: 32:18

You see so many different things growing up. And when you grow out of it and you look back, sometimes I see people in the neighborhoods, and I think about how the neighborhoods shape people too. Like living in a city, you're exposed to so much more diversity and education. And there's just so many different levels. But I always can see myself in other parts of other people because when you keep on growing as a person and striving, I don't wanna say striving to be better, but just trying to be your own personal best.

Joe Ledoux: 32:54

And when I was young, I drank alcohol and stuff. Now I don't drink. I was hanging out with someone the other night, and they were smoking pot and tried to hand me a joint. And I was like, no, I'm good. They're like, you don't you don't smoke and you don't drink.

Joe Ledoux: 33:11

And I'm like, I did that all when I was a kid.

AP Strange: 33:14

Right. Yeah. And I and I I was like, and I

Joe Ledoux: 33:16

was like, I only drink decaf coffee, you know, and it's like, it's not even that I think they're bad or that I'm against it. It's just kind of evolved that way naturally. Like, I quit I quit caffeine because my eye was twitching, and my dermatologist is like, I don't know if it's stress. I don't know if it's caffeine. You know, all of these things and alcohol, something horrible happened in my life enough that I just had to quit.

Joe Ledoux: 33:39

You know, so it's there's just so many things that I feel like with growing up. It reminds me of like when somebody went to see Joseph Campbell and they said, what if I feel enlightened right now and I feel I agree with everything you're saying? And he's like, well, there's one mistake. You might miss life. And I think that, you know, it's it's to get a kind of a meaningful life, you kind of have to go through it, right?

AP Strange: 34:04

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I have thought that often, but I mean when it comes to art, it always amazes me. I think of like songwriters and songs that I grew up with. This occurred to me the other day while I was driving and I heard In My Life by the Beatles. And I'm like, it's like this retrospective song and I'm like, man, John Lennon was like 22 when he wrote this song. How did he do that?

AP Strange: 34:33

Know and it's funny because I was thinking about you know when I tried to write songs or poetry that's almost like a cliche is like teenage poetry and people are embarrassed about the poems they wrote when they were a teenager. Yeah. Because you don't have the life experience

Joe Ledoux: 34:48

yet, Yes.

AP Strange: 34:50

But you try to fake it. And it's very obvious.

Joe Ledoux: 34:56

Yeah, it's like cringe, right? And I remember seeing people read poems like that, and it's like and part of it is naive. And then another side of it is so beautiful because the person that's doing it, they're different after. You get up and you read it in front of somebody, and you think it's great back then. And then you get older and you back and you're like, oh, it's it's horrible.

Joe Ledoux: 35:19

But that's all part of the process.

AP Strange: 35:20

Yeah. Right.

Joe Ledoux: 35:21

I I I totally

AP Strange: 35:22

That's a serious stage to go through.

Joe Ledoux: 35:23

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My first magic show was horrible. Yeah.

AP Strange: 35:31

Yeah, I mean, it's like if you wanna perform anything like when I first started playing guitar, got on a stage and it was terrible. You know, I was shaking the whole time and

Joe Ledoux: 35:41

Yeah.

AP Strange: 35:42

But eventually I got good at it and now I don't play anymore but I'm not like

Joe Ledoux: 35:47

yeah

AP Strange: 35:48

you know it well sort of yeah I guess you know it's just it's like anything else, it's just one day it didn't appeal to me as much and I wanted to work on my strengths and somewhere else, you know, and try

Joe Ledoux: 36:05

to Yeah, I don't mean pass it in the sense that you stop past that point where you were shaking and you were nervous and eventually you got comfortable with it.

AP Strange: 36:14

Oh yeah, yeah. I mean for my twenties, was a performer all the time. I was always playing music or reading poetry. I got very comfortable on stage. And every every once in a while, do miss that.

AP Strange: 36:33

I would like to, but, you know, the Internet has become its own kind of stage.

Joe Ledoux: 36:38

Yes. Yes.

AP Strange: 36:43

And it doesn't require me to load gear in or out of a venue at two in the morning. Yes. That was a moment of realization for me once was there's a local poetry reading in Worcester and there was a house band that used to play there every Monday. I think they still do it, But I remember it was like seven degrees out one night and I was thinking about like, man, you know what I don't have to do tonight is grab a guitar and go down to that bar and load it in and then at the end of the night, load it all back out, you know? Yes.

AP Strange: 37:20

Because it'll be even colder.

Joe Ledoux: 37:24

There's a mentalist. He passed away, Max Maven, he and walks on stage with a few props, but he gives everything away and leaves with nothing. I just thought that was always like the try and aim for that. But, the the kind of management with the props and lugging things around and then the ability to just, like, do a show from your living room because Zoom magic is the thing now, and I I wanna do Zoom open studios. And I I I don't think it's like an end all where it's gonna get rid of live entertainment.

Joe Ledoux: 37:59

It's like it's just another platform, another stage. When acrylic painting was invented, everybody thought oil painting was done and it was over, you know, just because acrylic dried faster. So just another amazing thing that an artist can use if they wish to. So, yeah, I've seen a lot of musicians doing Zoom concerts, and I definitely like going live, but there's things that you can experiment with too. Like, there was a theatrical company that was mailing for a magic show things in the mail, and people were holding these things and the magic was happening in their house.

Joe Ledoux: 38:44

I'm not saying you mail someone an instrument, but there's ways where you can create everyone has a front row seat in these immersive, really deep you can get really deep and meaningful even though it's technology, which is interesting.

AP Strange: 38:59

Yeah. I mean, there's ways to be creative and innovative with all of these different things, you know, and then it's not like one's better than the other, I think much like you were describing earlier about trying to figure out how to make the candle disappear. It's like how do you contextualize this different kind of media and still have that same kind of heart, that same energy to it that you wanna impart to the audience. Yeah. So yeah, yeah.

AP Strange: 39:30

I would much prefer a group of people. I do like that and it occurred to me in recent years that the only times I've done any reading or performing at all in front of people has been at like memorial services and wakes. And I'm like, that's not good. Yeah. I am good at that, but I don't I feel like I need to find other opportunities to be in front of people.

Joe Ledoux: 40:03

I'm just thinking about that, like digesting it. It's such an interesting place to start from.

AP Strange: 40:09

Yeah, well yeah, I mean, like I said, I mean I did a lot of performing when I was younger but it's just in recent years, it's like, you know, if somebody dies, wanna hear from me, I guess. The one to go to to eulogize, so.

Joe Ledoux: 40:27

Yeah, well, have a great speaking voice and I love your persona. When when I first started talking to you, I I immediately thought you were a performer just by your your look and your tonality and comedy. And Yeah. Can totally see you being that guy. And, also, it makes completely sense to be using your voice and doing a podcast too.

AP Strange: 40:48

Yeah. I think so. I've had a lot of people tell me I ought to be on radio and I thought they were just calling me ugly but yeah, it makes sense and I was a guest enough times on podcasts and eventually, you know, it's all about learning new things and I always wanna be doing something different. I wanted to build my strength as an interviewer. I'm not quite where I wanna be yet, but you know, it's all still a learning process.

Joe Ledoux: 41:18

It's Yeah. Just like I like Ira Glass. I watched his video, The Gap, I think it's called. If anyone just searches The Gap, Ira Glass, and I think it was when he was first starting his podcast and trying it out. And just this idea that he did you work so hard and you get to this point where most people just quit, but it's just the people that keep pushing over that gap.

Joe Ledoux: 41:41

You know, it kind of reminds me of the ten thousand hour things, which is a generalization, but I do think that, like, there's just something really valuable about doing and not wanting things to be perfect and just following that process through. Because because you become a better performer through it. Like, you can already tell that you've already done a lot of this stuff, you know? And I imagine that's the first time you did it. So and I I had to interview somebody once and I had a difficulty time.

Joe Ledoux: 42:11

Like, I interviewed Jeff McFride once and I called him up and, you know, he would answer questions and I would just kind of like dead silent, like, after he would answer answer a question. But it was for a book, so, you know, no one was gonna be hearing it, but I was kind of as I was doing it, thinking like, wow. Interviewing people, that's that's an art form in and of itself.

AP Strange: 42:32

Oh, yeah. I thought it would be easy. In the first couple times I ever did it, was like, oh, no. Because you know, and it still happens. I mean, I still have guests sometimes where I'm just kind of transfixed by what they're saying, and then when it's my turn to talk, I'm like, uh-oh.

AP Strange: 42:47

What do I do? You know? You're in headlights here for a second.

Joe Ledoux: 42:51

Yeah. I love that. That happens to me on stage sometimes when I'm really putting myself on the spot, and I try to embrace the moment. I I tend to a lot of times resort because I don't consider myself to be that funny to honesty. Like, I remember one time when I was doing the hat trick and just handing it out to everybody.

Joe Ledoux: 43:11

So I put something in here, and, you know, I'm gonna put jazz on and try and do a trick. And I reached in and there was, like, a box of cigarettes, and I was standing in the audience was staring at me, and I had nothing. Like, I couldn't I mean, you know, I didn't even think, like, just throw it and reach some I'd shake your head no and like, I just was staring at it and full on just, like, froze. And I I had and I just remember saying to the audience, like, I've never felt so lost or vulnerable at this moment right now.

AP Strange: 43:42

Have no idea what I'm gonna do.

Joe Ledoux: 43:44

And then I was like, wait. I think it's coming to me, and I went into a trick, you know, but it it's like, I don't know if it's liminal space, but sometimes those are really good spaces to be in because you get too comfortable. You know, it can be formulaic and you can lose a sense of sincerity with people and I think the audience gets nervous trying it. You know, it's like if someone's going to go up and tell a joke and they're really bad, the audience definitely, you get that tension. But the more that I perform, I kind of feel like that really doesn't matter that much.

Joe Ledoux: 44:26

It's more I think about the performer trying to get through those spaces and growing. I can't think of how to phrase it right now, but there's something there. And I think it's, yeah, it's a very interesting space to be in when you're outside of your comfort zone.

AP Strange: 44:50

Yeah. It's while you're doing a tightrope walk without, you know, so it's like you're gonna sink or swim when you're out there to mix metaphors. So like, and I think it's that improvisational space. That's why I always really liked open mics. I used to host open mics and like anything could happen, so you had to be on your toes, you know.

AP Strange: 45:16

Yeah. There would be moments where somebody would be, struggling on stage and you know, if you're if you're the emcee, you could kind of help them. You know you could jump in a little bit or you you have these beautiful improvisational moments and then you know you always have wildcard regulars that would do something wild on stage and you'd have to do something about it, you know.

Joe Ledoux: 45:41

So Isn't there a light, like a light they turn on if back in the old comedy days where

AP Strange: 45:47

it was

Joe Ledoux: 45:48

green or red. Right? Isn't that

AP Strange: 45:50

Yeah. Yeah. Or you'd have like the shepherd's hook that would come out and snatch somebody off stage like in the old cartoons. Yeah.

Joe Ledoux: 45:56

Guess I just mean that like one time when I was studying mysticism and I was really, really going deep, I started to kind of feel when I was getting all of the wisdom that I wanted other people to have it. And through the process, it's separating you from everybody else because you think that you're becoming enlightened. And then through that nature you see other people and you think like, oh, I wish they had this bit of wisdom so they wouldn't fear death, or I wish that they would have this. And then you start to realize that actually you're the one with the problem. Like you're kind of developing an ego thinking that you're outside of everyone when all you really needed to do was just let go and in the moment and accept people for who they are and not want to change them and find a peace of mind.

Joe Ledoux: 46:52

And I feel like it's kind of that same way with a performer. Like, that tension with the person on stage that's bombing, that's coming from the audience, not them.

AP Strange: 47:00

Yeah.

Joe Ledoux: 47:01

So, like like, as an audience member, my job is to just be comfortable with them being bad and be like, good job for trying. That's kind of how I look at it now. So I don't get uncomfortable. That's what I'm trying to say when I see people that are bad on stage. And I I get a sense of like, wow.

Joe Ledoux: 47:18

They're really doing it and getting past that moment and I think maybe that's where we need to get the audiences at so that the performers can be more vulnerable and try out more new stuff.

AP Strange: 47:28

Yeah, yeah I think so. I mean I'm just thinking about when you're the performer that's doing badly on stage. It's a journey the whole room is taking together ultimately. Yeah. People may remember that, know.

AP Strange: 47:45

So that can have carryover effects but like we discussed earlier, the person that's suffering on stage. Know they may quit or they may take that as a lesson and modify what they're doing and come back next time. Yeah. But before recording to kind of mentioned a few names and it seemed like. You know, there are people that can play with that dynamic of uncomfortable, uncomfortable silences or moments or dragging something out.

AP Strange: 48:18

Like we mentioned Andy Kaufman, I feel like that if it as performance art goes, because what you describe a lot of what you do as performance art, which I can totally relate to because I did wacky stuff on stage, sometimes just impromptu or just to subvert audience expectations. But Yes. But yeah. I mean, do you have other influences like that, or you wanna speak about talk about Andy Kaufman at all?

Joe Ledoux: 48:45

So I don't know too much about him. I had seen a film about him growing up, And I'm kind of thinking of people like Warhol that sent people into a movie and just showed a film that was white noise for hours until they all left. I think that a lot of that comes from my days at MassArt with hanging out with people like my friend Eric Schoonover. We would one day take a balloon animal and throw it off the balcony with no helium. For whatever reason with the wind current, it just floated up over the city.

Joe Ledoux: 49:22

So we I'm a magician. So we made like 200 balloon animals and threw them off the balcony and everyone was coming home drunk. And they're like, where are they coming from? And we have photos of them dancing on the street. People were pulling over cars and grabbing them and driving away.

Joe Ledoux: 49:36

So we would kind of like stir up a lot of trouble. We would go into the animation studios and we would prank call people with the sound boards and just you know call up people and have Ms. Cleo call them and record them, and then he would make animations to them. And then for like our art projects, I remember him just showing the animated Frank Halls and, you know, it was like there was actually like a to get into the apartment we lived in, there was buttons that you could you could buzz, and then people would would unlock the door to let you in. But when they buzzed through the intercom, it was like a speaker.

Joe Ledoux: 50:14

So you would hear the person say, like, come on in, and it would be over the whole lobby room. So we were like, let's make a radio station. So we went upstairs, and we taped our room number down. And there was like a security guy down there and a big lobby with chairs where everyone would hang out and we were like you know, ladies and gentlemen welcome to you know so and so radio station, our first song, and we started playing music and you know we just had it amped, we kind of hacked our way in. I think as a skateboarder, I like to hack technology and use things for things they're not used as, or like you said, like maybe have the audience enter an unexpected, maybe opener.

Joe Ledoux: 50:53

I was thinking it'd be hilarious to sort of have magic show where the audience is sitting and they're expecting to see me, and then the curtain's open and Teddy Ruxpin is just there holding a book and you know just reading like from the book. Yeah. I have like a kind of part of me with that kind of sense of humor, and I bring that into my magic shows. I mean, I'm very deep and philosophical, but every now now and then, I like to do something like that that's just bizarre or just from the unexpected and maybe a different kind of comedy that people wouldn't expect. I had a I probably shouldn't say this,

AP Strange: 51:29

I

Joe Ledoux: 51:30

had a really, really idea for a dark show where I wanted to have the curtains open. My friend Ken is really into dark and horror and I'm not. So I'm like, how about this Ken? How about the curtains open and there's a noose hanging. And then I walk over to the noose on a stool, put it around my neck and I kick out the stool And then I'm holding a bottle of alcohol in the bag.

Joe Ledoux: 51:56

And I kick out the stool and the rope breaks. And then I'm on the stage and the bottle's broken. And I grab the half broken bottle. And I look to the audience and say, the good news is the show is is gonna go on. And then I take a drink from the broken bottle of the alcohol and say, but the bad news is is that I didn't bring anything with me.

Joe Ledoux: 52:16

Does anyone have a dollar bill I could borrow?

AP Strange: 52:19

And, you know, it's like it was just like

Joe Ledoux: 52:21

it came to me and I and then, like, one of my friends is like that's too dark, it's too much, but you know there's that part of myself that after a couple philosophical pieces of magic I might want to have something absurd or kind of mess with the audience or just do something that I'm thinking of in my mind that maybe people wouldn't associate with my magic, but that's the fun of being a fine artist. You know? You can just do what you want. And maybe people think you know they know you, and then all of a sudden, they're like, I never I never saw this or saw him do something like this. If you're just doing the same show all the time, you don't have room to try that kind of stuff out.

AP Strange: 52:57

Yeah. Yeah. I always like, you know, for my part, I don't like repeating myself. So as a musician, it would kill me to play the same set every time I did a show. And I always wanna add new songs and that worked against me a lot

Joe Ledoux: 53:14

because Yes.

AP Strange: 53:15

Yes. Instead of having really well rehearsed tight songs, I always had kind of shaky songs. Yeah. You know? So I mean, there there's there there's a professionalism with putting on shows that kind of demands that you that you have a well practiced routine, but it's nice to throw like a little wrench in there once in a while and kind of mix things up I think.

Joe Ledoux: 53:39

I don't think it has to be that way like as a skateboarder it taught me that like you go to a skateboard demo people mess up all the time it's not a perfect performance and they get back up But it is a show, and it is a performance art. So coming from a skateboarder, I think I saw it that way. I know Rodney Mullen talked about a new book that came out called My Rules, and it's all about, like, sort of rap culture, skateboarding, and graffiti artists, and how they don't want rules and someone standing over them telling them how to do their art forms. And Ralph Baixie definitely was that way. He went totally against and went with his own vision, his own way.

Joe Ledoux: 54:18

No one makes films like him. And I think all these artists and all these these different unconventional people show you that I think you just have to set the ground rules when the performance starts. So I come out to the audience and I say something like, thank you so much. My name is Joe Ledoux. I'm the animator of spirits.

Joe Ledoux: 54:36

And I kinda make this little frog out of my hands. And then I tell people that whether it's my animated character on the walls, an animated film that I show you, or a piece of origami that animates and comes to life, or a story that I tell that moves you, I hope at the end of my show you feel a little bit more animated than you were before. And then I tell them, you know, a Vegas magician will blow you away, but I'm here to connect from the heart and pull you in. And I had a hard time as a performer when I first started magic. I I had a magic show coming up at a burlesque show, and there was a snowstorm.

Joe Ledoux: 55:14

And I went, yes, Because my gig was canceled, my partner Ashley was like, why are you happy your show's canceled? And I said, I gotta rethink this. And I realized I'm doing it as an entertainer. I gotta do it in art galleries, have my paintings up, be human. You know, spectators just spectate.

Joe Ledoux: 55:30

They just watch. Audiences just audio. They just listen. But participants, they're part of the show. They play part.

Joe Ledoux: 55:37

And I want you guys all to be part of this. There's a relationship, and I want a space where I can experiment, maybe fail, try something I've never done in front of you before. And then I say something like, is this a journey that you're willing to go on with me tonight? And then by round of applause, and then the whole audience applause is from that point on, I can do whatever I want.

AP Strange: 55:57

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, once you get them on your side, you you can

Joe Ledoux: 56:01

But I've established the ground rules too. I mean, some of them may not be on my side yet, but they know what's coming. Whereas if if I yeah. But, yeah, they're getting they're getting aboard with me getting on my side. Yeah.

AP Strange: 56:11

Right. Or yeah, at least piqued their interest enough that they're okay, let's see what you got, you know. You're always gonna have people that are skeptical and I kind of love those. I mean, I remember one time performed, I performed at a church. It was like a church variety show and I did a poem.

AP Strange: 56:31

I was famous for doing a poem of, well, I mean, famous. The one that I was best known for was from the perspective of Wile E. Coyote and I performed that one because people loved that one. So that was just my greatest hits, know. There was this older gentleman that obviously had mobility issues that somebody dragged to the show and he was sitting there just basic, he couldn't have been rolling his eyes any harder and I think like when I got off the stage, I could hear him actually say to his friend, he's like, is the crap you brought me to sleep.

AP Strange: 57:09

Like, well, you know.

Joe Ledoux: 57:11

Well, when I

AP Strange: 57:11

I always thought that it's better to be remembered and disliked than for people to be completely ignored. You know? Like

Joe Ledoux: 57:20

Yeah. I think we're on the same page. Like, I really Yeah. Everything that you're talking about as a performer, I'm like, definitely, we could be friends. I I I feel like you really get it.

Joe Ledoux: 57:29

When Copperfield came in to teach us, one of the things he told us is that you'll only be as good as much as you dare to be bad. And by you having the ability to try those new songs out in front of people instead of just playing the top 40 and holding to what you knew, you're so much better than all the other performers that never did that. Like even if you just go and just do your formulaic songs, you pushed, you felt what it was like to be uncomfortable in case you get flustered. Maybe you will just be doing a kind of standard set and the songs you know, but maybe the sound goes down or something and because you know what that feels like, you might be able to just go like acoustic like just have everybody get quiet and know. I I saw Bonnie Prince Billy do that.

Joe Ledoux: 58:12

Like he jumped off the stage and just started singing out in front of the audience with with no microphone. So you know it's it's like that's that's what it takes I think to be a really great performer to to really go above and beyond is to to have those be be daring to try those things out and maybe bomb or have experiment and do a horrible show. Like you might learn next time I don't want to do that. I want to just structure a show. But if you have to get out of your head and test the stuff and try and get feedback and decide, okay, you know even though I experimented and maybe the show didn't go that well but I was remembered or whatever, do I want to do that again?

Joe Ledoux: 58:52

And like a lot of the stuff I do, sometimes there's things I junk and sometimes there's stuff I take, but the more I go the more I feel like I'm just comfortable showing up being me and I wouldn't be able to do that if I hadn't experimented if that makes sense.

AP Strange: 59:09

Yeah yeah you know it's all it's all part of this unfolding process of Yeah. You know, kind of becoming yourself ultimately, you know.

Joe Ledoux: 59:21

If one wants to go that avenue, I mean, I again don't want to make it sound like I'm dissing actors or character actors or people. You know, if I got married, I would want a top 40 wedding band. Everybody has their their best you know, there's the best entertainers in the world and there's the best artists in the world. Yeah. And it's asking, like you said, know yourself.

Joe Ledoux: 59:41

Who are you? Are you an entertainer or an artist? And which one do you wanna be? Or do you wanna be a mix of both or play with it? But I think knowing the options, like, can brand yourself as I'm a magician, but I think George Carlin said that once he started, like, booking by his name and not a comedian, you know, I just I just I'm Joe Ladue.

Joe Ledoux: 01:00:01

You're not getting a magician. You're getting a personality. You're you hired Joe Ladue or a Joe Ladue show. So you can be branded as a musician or as a magician or you can brand by your name and your personality. That's also another thing to think about.

Joe Ledoux: 01:00:14

So I think being aware of the choices as performers or as artists or anything you wanna do in life, Learning what you don't like and tasting and experimenting and being like, I don't want to do this. I realized I didn't want to be a Vegas performer. I don't want to do the corporate stuff. The nose will it's like the sculptor. You can add things on and sculpt something, or you can take things away and get to something that's really you or really beautiful.

Joe Ledoux: 01:00:40

And, you know, I think the taking away through the experimentation and then tasting to find out what you don't like gets you closer to what you wanna do. That's personally the way that the path I've chosen. And that could be an entertainer. Yeah.

AP Strange: 01:00:53

Yeah. And I mean, that's not and it sounds like you did the thing that you don't wanna do. So you hey. You know that you don't wanna do it, but you've also gained the kinds of skills that are necessary for that, right? Like you could do it.

AP Strange: 01:01:08

You have the

Joe Ledoux: 01:01:10

Yes, yes. I just went and performed at a nursing home and you know, it really put me in my place because I just linked rings together and pulled them apart and I did give them some philosophical stuff that I thought, you know, would really make the show meaningful for them. And there's moments, you know, you just feel like a fraud where these people are pushed out in wheelchairs. But I always, even though I have these artistic kind of dreams, go back and pay my dues or bring magic to someone that's in need of entertainment or, you know, it's not like that's all I do because you're right. I can do it.

Joe Ledoux: 01:01:50

I know how to do a children's birthday party. I know how to, like, razzle dazzle a bar. And, you know, sometimes I I do those things because it makes me a better performer, but sometimes it's not about me. I mean, as an artist, I think if you make something for everybody, it's for no one. And if you make something for yourself, it's for everyone.

Joe Ledoux: 01:02:09

Because, you know, if you just try and cater to somebody and write a piece of poetry to please the world, not gonna do anything. But if you say like, you know, I have bad acne and I feel like I can't go on dates most nights and, you know, something like that, all of a sudden everyone's going to be relating to that and they're going to be like, oh my god, I'm not the only one. Like, I'm not alone. So I think, you know, there's just those two spaces to play with. But, yeah, I started by entertaining and doing a lot of these things.

Joe Ledoux: 01:02:38

I mean, I never headlined a stage in Vegas. I never did a casino. I've never been on, like, a major TV show for magicians. And I have a hard time with that. Sometimes I'm sort of like, should I go on a TV show?

Joe Ledoux: 01:02:52

Like, should I go on Pen and Teller Fool Us? I have several friends that have been on it, and one time my magic teacher asked me if I wanted to be on it. So that's hard with me because I'm like, well, should I mean, having said that, I performed with LaGrand David, which had the Guinness World Record for the longest running show in the world. And one time when

AP Strange: 01:03:11

I was

Joe Ledoux: 01:03:11

performing with them, somebody went on and filmed it. And then I think back, I'm like, wait. I have been on the news before. Like, there's things I I do that I forget, but I kinda ask myself, like, am I doing this because I want people to see me do this? And if it doesn't sound fun to me and the time regulations and the constraints, I'm like, I think I would rather just do the art gallery show.

Joe Ledoux: 01:03:34

You know? But I did build up for a while before I pulled back because Jeff told me to do that. He's like, don't pull back too early. Build up and do all that stuff before you pull back. But I'm 42 right now, and at some point you have to take a stand.

Joe Ledoux: 01:03:49

So for like thirty eight years of my life, I did kind of the entertainment stuff, and I've kind of pulled back now to this sort of with the experience, the vision of what I wanna do, and I'm pulling back and kind of, you know, like Rodney Mullen said, don't compete. Create your own playing field. So I've created my own playing field now where where I can just be my own best, and that's fun for me.

AP Strange: 01:04:13

Yeah. And I tend to think that if it's fun for you and that enthusiasm comes through, it'll be fun for other people anyway, you know. Like, you're not doing it to entertain them necessarily, but you're doing something that's true and honest and right and and people will respond to that. The right kind of people will respond. I find that like the people that are meant to to appreciate it are it it will find them, you know, hopefully.

Joe Ledoux: 01:04:45

The one or two, three people in the audience will come back to the next show. Then eventually, you have a show

AP Strange: 01:04:50

of people that like what you do. Well, I'm no stranger to playing to an empty room.

Joe Ledoux: 01:05:00

One show I did in LA when we lived out there, I was trying to find a venue. So I was like, I'm just going to do it in the park at night. And I called it magic under the moonlight. And I remember I cut the shirt up to look like Peter Pan because I wanted this mystical looking kind of coat. And I had this pan that I catch coins out of and throw it in.

Joe Ledoux: 01:05:20

And I'm walking through the woods cause I wanted to come out of the trail, and there was a full moon that night. And my girlfriend's down. It was in it was in Silver Lake Recreation Center. And I'm walking, like, out of the woods, and she's coming up the trail where it was like a dog kind of, like, park, and there's like trails that go around where people run, and it's more of a pedestrian area around the reservoir. And she so I'm like seeing her, and as I'm waiting before my girlfriend gets there, there's like someone walking their dog, and they see me in the woods with this like cut up clothing and it's this really rich neighborhood holding this thing and they're like, are you okay in there?

AP Strange: 01:05:54

And I

Joe Ledoux: 01:05:54

was like, yeah, I'm about to do a magic show and they're like, oh, okay. Like, you know, they they immediately understood, but I just thought of like how sketchy I looked out there, and then I walk out

AP Strange: 01:06:03

Like a character in a David Lynch movie or something.

Joe Ledoux: 01:06:05

Yes, and then Ashley comes up and I'm like, how many people are there? Because I'm so nervous. I mean this was early on in my career and I hadn't done that many shows, And and she goes, there's nobody here. And at that point, I was so relieved because of the stage fright, but then so like, so happy, but then so sad that no one was there.

AP Strange: 01:06:24

Right. Yeah. It's a double edged sword. Yeah.

Joe Ledoux: 01:06:27

Yeah.

AP Strange: 01:06:28

But, yeah, I mean, I I I've I've been in situations where it's kind of, like, intimate. That's kinda cool too when you only have a small crowd and you can kinda loosen up a little bit and and, you know, try something different with a smaller crowd, you know?

Joe Ledoux: 01:06:42

Yeah. Yeah. Like making the best of it, right, and getting creative and

AP Strange: 01:06:48

Yeah. And I mean, I liked what you had to say about doing kind of doing a show for for old folks at a nursing home because it's so you can get these ideas about entertainment as being something distinct from the art and reaching people, but sometimes entertainment is like all the people actually need. Yeah. It's still a very important thing, especially for people that might be lonely or isolated, you know?

Joe Ledoux: 01:07:16

Or they want an escape or to take some stress of the day away. Yeah. Like even the clown doctors in hospitals, the kids are, I remember reading a story where they were severely burned, and the clowns come in and they start sneezing out marbles and doing magic. And as this kid that had been severely burned was being bandaged, he was laughing. And that's how powerful the entertainment and the magic is, is a distraction from the pain.

Joe Ledoux: 01:07:42

In that kind of situation, I would not be like, let me tell you this deep, meaningful story.

AP Strange: 01:07:47

Yeah. You

Joe Ledoux: 01:07:48

know? I would be like, you know, glitter, fire, dove. No fire. Take the fire back.

AP Strange: 01:07:56

Yeah, fire is probably not Yeah. Appropriate in that That specific situation. Yeah. Water. Yeah.

AP Strange: 01:08:07

Yeah, no, it's important and I think think it's important for people to know in general that whatever little things you can do are even not being a if you're not a performer or whatever, if you're not if you're not a magician or an artist, know, whatever little things you can do to make people smile or think or feel something or connect on some level is worthwhile, you know?

Joe Ledoux: 01:08:37

A lot of So. Things that I do are for the audience. I think, say, the entertainer gives the audience what they want, but the artist gives the audience what they need. And I kind of see my job when I see the people, like if someone has their arms folded, I might hand the deck of cards to get them to shuffle, to get them to loosen up, and people support what they help create. So suddenly they're starting to get involved instead of kind of sitting back, you know, so so so it's like in a shamanic sense, there's looking at people and reading the room and sort of in a magical kind of spiritual way, I like to think too that kind of the synchronicities that happen on who I call up, that maybe that person, for whatever reason, needed to come up.

Joe Ledoux: 01:09:28

And there's a piece I do where I have somebody think of a shooting star and throw an invisible shooting star in the air, and then I catch a glowing light from the air and put it in my hand and it turns into a real star, and I tell them that magic reminds them their dreams and wishes can become real, and I hope their wish becomes real. And they leave with that star, you know? So there's a lot of empowering the audience. There's a lot of trying to give the audience what they need and a lot of trying to leave the audience feeling animated and ecstatic and great after the show. So there is an entertainment element, but it's not like that's the, like, factor that that drives me or drives the work that I do.

Joe Ledoux: 01:10:11

It's more like I'm creating these magical pieces obviously to be shared with somebody, but I'm not putting a filter on what I can or cannot do.

AP Strange: 01:10:19

Yeah. Now, you mentioned synchronicity. Have you ever had that kind of happen with magic where there was a performance that you did where, like, an audience member or participant had had kind of like a spooky connection to what you did or it just seemed like it was perfect in a way that you couldn't have planned?

Joe Ledoux: 01:10:40

I mean, these things happen all the time. Right. I was at a concert and this guy came up to me and he goes, is your name Joe? And I was like, Yeah. And he goes, My friend Joe shot himself in the head after a campfire and you look exactly like him.

Joe Ledoux: 01:10:56

Is it okay if I give you a hug? And I was like, Sure. I gave him a hug. I don't know if he was crying. And he left and my partner asked, she's like, what happened?

Joe Ledoux: 01:11:06

And I told her, and we're like, that's so weird. And I have no idea. But I I didn't know if one of my friends was messing with me who was at the concert and saw him. And the fact that I had the same name, it was interesting. It wasn't at a show, but I've done a trick where I take a key and it rotates in my hand.

Joe Ledoux: 01:11:28

And I remember I was thinking, what's gonna be the closing line for this piece? And I was doing it at the Lauren Greno House in JP. It's like this old mansion looking kind of building, and right after the key turned, a bolt of lightning just hit right behind the building. And then when I got my magic wand, I remember hearing that the wand chooses the wizard. The wizard doesn't choose the wand.

Joe Ledoux: 01:11:56

And I was using this black and white plastic wand. So I said to Ashley, I wanna find a wand that the universe picks for me. And we had gone to my parents, And my dad had just gone for a walk into the backyard, and we were standing out on the porch. And as he came up from the trail that goes into the backyard, I said, dad, next time you go back there to the beaver dam, because we used to play on it as kids, and the beavers would carve and make all the sticks and the dams back there. I said, could you grab me a stick off the dam that I could use as a magic wand?

Joe Ledoux: 01:12:31

And he goes, you mean like this? And he reached behind his back and pulled out this, like it's a little shorter than a foot. Like, maybe it's, like, nine inches, and it's all hand carved by the beavers. And it looks like a Gandalf, like Merlin wizard wand because of the way it's chewed and carved. When people see it, they're like, where'd you get the wizard wand from?

Joe Ledoux: 01:12:50

And it's like, that's what I use in my shows, and I tell the story. And it's, you know, it's this amazing kind of synchronicity as though, are you waving the wand? Is the wand waving you? And just to ask the question and be open and have it appear, They say chance favors the prepared mind. You know?

Joe Ledoux: 01:13:07

It's like you have these synchronicities, and they always happen as performers. I mean, I don't know if I can remember them all off the top of my head right now, but, like, there are things that just happen during the shows that, you know, where real magic shows up, you know, where lights blink or you're doing a seance. I mean, all of this stuff happens or you hear a noise and it is it's interesting. I mean, I think that they happen to everybody though, like even in our lives, you know, not just to magicians, but one time I was here's one. I was at a show and this was crazy.

Joe Ledoux: 01:13:44

So I was thinking, okay, I want to give everybody a gift. It was at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. And how many people do you get at this these gigs? And and they get, like, around 1,200 people. So I said, well, I don't know if I can create that many gifts, but I'm gonna fold a thousand cranes.

Joe Ledoux: 01:14:03

So I folded a thousand origami cranes. I forget how long it took me. And we had them at the door, so I think I did like 1,200, but so that people could get them on their way out when they were leaving the magic show. When I would do the strolling magic through the museum, I would tell them, you can get, you know, one of the cranes when you leave. So when I folded half of them, I'm like, I should really find out where this story comes from.

Joe Ledoux: 01:14:25

So I ordered the book. I think it sounds the person's name sounds just like that game, but I think it's Sadako, if I'm saying it correctly. She was a Japanese girl, and she developed an illness from the radiation during the war, and she was in a hospital and she was folding a thousand cranes because in Japan, if you fold a thousand, you get a wish, and I think she wanted to kind of wish to live. It's a really sad story, there's a book about it. And I started to read the book, and I found out that when I ordered the book, I dropped the book on the ground, and I remember Ashley saying to me, why are you why'd you drop the book?

Joe Ledoux: 01:15:15

And I'm like, August 6? And I might have the date wrong. I can't remember when the performance was. But whatever date that I was performing was Peace Day in Japan on when they fold these thousand cranes and honor girl. So it was just crazy to me that I would fold the thousand cranes, get the book shipped in.

Joe Ledoux: 01:15:37

And I know the story with her is they fold half, she folds half and then passes away, her friends and family fold the rest. And then every day in Japan on Peace Day, they put the cranes around this statue they made of her that kind of immortalizes and makes her live forever. And I know I've kind of gone around several sort of circles here with the story, and I don't know if it's holding together, but essentially, when I got the book, I had started to fold the cranes and read about it, and I was reading the story, and then I couldn't believe, like, the back of the book or something, it says, like, peace day was the day I was performing. So the fact that that synchronicity just happened, and that gave me the courage to do the performance that day because I was so nervous, but then I could feel like I was part of something larger, that there was you know, Jung didn't believe in coincidence, but these synchronicities. And I don't even care if it's scientific.

Joe Ledoux: 01:16:32

I mean, how does a bird know when somebody flies a pattern of it over that it's never seen before? They've done tests, you know, like a shape of a hawk, and you have these little chicks and they'll all run out of the way. Even if you look at it as a scientific thing, there is, in my mind, there is something happening with this sort of archetype. My friend Rick Heath that I was talking about said an archetype is something you cannot be, you know, and I really believe I'm meant to be a magician. It's something I cannot not be.

AP Strange: 01:17:05

Yeah. Mean, sounds that way. I mean, the the story about the wand is great because it's just, you know, it's almost like your dad performed a magic trick Yeah. In the moment when when you were looking for the wand because he just happened to have a piece that he picked up. Yes.

AP Strange: 01:17:22

Yeah. And then having the date be the same as as the the piece day in Japan for that performances, that that's a very moving story, really. I mean, you must feel kind of a a connection to that story now too.

Joe Ledoux: 01:17:37

Yeah. I mean, you know, it was and it was a really a really meaningful day because I was nervous, and I remember telling people the story when I was performing and telling them that I left them there. And sometimes, like, you know, you're you're ready to give up, and then something happens, and it it just gives you that push for that little sense of, like, mystery to kind of get you into that you know, I closest thing to a shaman in today's world is an artist and a visionary. And it taps me back into that kind of visionary, mystical medium in a way where even your artwork, where your ideas and your consciousness come from. And, you know, the more open minded you are to the magic, the more magic you experience.

Joe Ledoux: 01:18:22

So it doesn't happen every day, but every now and then you just have, whether you're performing or just in your daily life, these magical moments. And my sister had moments like that, like she was walking down the beach as a kid and she just yelled out someone's name and the person next to her was like, That's my name. And she's like, No, not. And she pulled out her license and showed her. And then there's an animation.

Joe Ledoux: 01:18:48

I'll send it to you. You'll love this. It was my sister said that she had this horrible dream where she saw, like, a donkey and the dog wanted to attack it, And she told my mom, like, how frightened she was in the morning. So my mom was like, I don't know if you should go to school. My sister's like, I'm going to school.

Joe Ledoux: 01:19:06

So she went to school. My mom took a dog for a ride to the town store, and then there was a truck with a donkey in it, and the dog freaked out. And she brought the dog because she was worried about leaving the dog at home and the fact that the donkey was there and stuff. And then my sister came home, she's like, tell me what happened in the dream. And she was all freaked out because it was the only time she ever saw a donkey in Hubbardston where we grew up.

Joe Ledoux: 01:19:27

And I made a whole animation about it because it was such a weird tale. She was always, like, the psychic one in the family. Yeah.

AP Strange: 01:19:37

Yeah. Donkey premonition. That's pretty good. Yeah. I mean, I I I love that stuff, and I've considered myself a synchronicity generator, because I run into that kind of thing all the time too.

AP Strange: 01:20:00

Your story was reminding me of, this past summer when I did a presentation in, Gettysburg about the Loch Ness Monster, I was talking about the old story of Saint Columba driving the monster from the loch and when I looked it up, I was like the date that's associated with that was pretty much the day that I was gonna be doing that presentation. I'm like, oh, how about that? This is like the 500 something anniversary of this event, you know? Yes. So it's wild when stuff like that lines up because it's so the listeners probably will do a little magic right now and listeners will have synchronicities off the back of listening to this conversation.

AP Strange: 01:20:45

Yes. Calling it. Calling it right now.

Joe Ledoux: 01:20:48

That'll be our magic trick for the evening.

AP Strange: 01:20:51

Yeah. But we've been going for a bit, but I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about the year 2013 when you cast a spell over Boston and your experience with with conjuring UFOs, fairies, and and the sea serpents. So how did that come to be?

Joe Ledoux: 01:21:14

Yeah. I I had heard that magicians great magicians do big tricks, And I had just gone to see Ralph Bakshi talk in Ottawa, and he was saying that never let money get in the way from you doing anything big and talking about how if you put your heart in it and the limitations can kind of force the creativity, you might be able to do something even better. So I kind of came back fired up, and I was standing at the bridge where Houdini jumped off. I think it's the Mass Ave Bridge in Boston. There's a plaque that Houdini jumped off here.

Joe Ledoux: 01:21:52

And I was looking at it and thinking of him putting the chains off and jumping up the bridge. And I was thinking, you know, what he did was a lot of showmanship. Like, you know, it's not that far of a drop. I mean, I wouldn't wanna jump off it, but he was in really good shape. And I was just thinking about the acting and being underwater and coming back up and the symbolism.

Joe Ledoux: 01:22:11

And I was like, I need to do something big like this. So I wanted to go down to Revere Beach where Wonderland is and make a mermaid appear. And I was like looking up scuba divers and trying to think of like bringing everyone down and saying I could make like a mermaid come up and surface and go down. And then I was I was thinking, like, okay. How am I gonna make sure that this is safe for somebody?

Joe Ledoux: 01:22:33

You know? Is someone gonna try and shoot the mermaid?

AP Strange: 01:22:37

And I was just kind of, like,

Joe Ledoux: 01:22:40

looking at the constraints and the practicality of the illusion. And I thought about doing something with a fishing pole and like catching like a magical fish and having the line break. I wanted to just do like a big illusion. And at this time, I was still using gimmicks. I mean, as my career evolved, now I've gone, you know, really purist.

Joe Ledoux: 01:22:59

My magic teacher calls me a magical purist. But, you know, at that time, I was still willing to kind of use them. And I thought, well, hold on a second. The pen is mightier than the sword. What if I cast a spell over the city and write like a piece of poetry?

Joe Ledoux: 01:23:16

And I was reading Alan Moore, who was talking about how the word grimoire, like an ancient book of magic spells, comes from the word grammar. And or it's one way or the other, I can't remember, but if you look at the etymology, it's connected and that arranging words in the right order is spelling and it's grammar. So literally to write words is casting a spell and it's spelling. And I was like thinking, did grimoire really is it really connected? And I went online, I looked up grimoire, and I realized it had that etymology.

Joe Ledoux: 01:23:48

I'm like, that's insane. So I thought, I gotta write a piece of poetry. Words are magic. And if I look at the local legends that were around Boston, like the first UFO in America was seen, I think, in 1639 over the Money River in Boston, and then I found out about the great American sea serpent that was seen around the same time in sixteen thirty something. And I collected old newspapers.

Joe Ledoux: 01:24:15

I have them, these block prints of, like, sea serpents that were seen off of Boston Harbor. It was called the Great New England Sea Serpent, and it was all around the same time. I'm like, this is so interesting. You know, there's the Red Sox, but there's, like, near the Fenway area, like, there's this UFO or, like, story. And I was looking at the land, and it was transforming it.

Joe Ledoux: 01:24:37

I think it's called psychogeography, when you know these historic kind of stories with the landscapes and they transform them into these different kind of spaces, and then it just started to kind of form. And I wrote a piece of poetry on, like, a wizard scroll, and it was a spell, and it was about all of these old legends but asking them to resurface again and then ask us to see new ones. And it was called Forjunteller because it was for the month of June, so it was like fortune teller, but for for June Teller. And then it was put in the local newspaper, the Boston Metro, and I had no idea they were gonna do this. I I had submitted the the event and what I was doing, and and they put it in the event section as a supernatural event.

Joe Ledoux: 01:25:23

I still have the clippings, but I thought that was really funny because I was wondering in the newspapers if that's ever happened before, a supernatural event in the event section. And yeah, people for one month looked up at the oceans and the skies and for ferries in Boston, and they reported what they saw on the website. And it wasn't until after after I I I contacted the papers and said, do you guys wanna say what people saw? And nobody wanted to say what anybody saw. And I'm like, this seems kind of bizarre.

Joe Ledoux: 01:25:57

Like, we we did all this and got everybody, but nobody wants a report on any of the sightings. So I kinda made my own posters of what people saw, and I think I did like a a podcast with my friend about what people saw. And then it kinda got buried, and no one really knew about it. And then Vanish Magazine did an interview with me with the original person that interviewed me for the Boston Metro about what people saw and what happened, and that was published in a magic magazine. It's like an anniversary, like five or eight years after the spell or something.

AP Strange: 01:26:33

Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'd like to read that at some point. That'd be Yeah.

Joe Ledoux: 01:26:39

I'll send it to you.

AP Strange: 01:26:40

Oh, yeah. Sure. Well, that is is great stuff. I mean, I guess just getting people out there looking, it's a magical enough thing. Right?

AP Strange: 01:26:51

Even if but the fact that they were reporting stuff and actually seeing stuff is pretty wild.

Joe Ledoux: 01:26:57

Yeah, and you're spot on because my friend actually told me that he was sitting on his roof looking for UFOs and he didn't see any, and I was like, that's just cool. And then there were people that saw things like a light in the sky. And was several UFO reports. And then there was also my partner, Ashley, which was really funny. We were hanging out and she, we're like Scully and Mulder.

Joe Ledoux: 01:27:27

She's the skeptic, scientific, and I'm like, come on. Let's go look for the fairies. So if anyone watches the X Files still Right. If no gets a reference. But yeah.

Joe Ledoux: 01:27:38

And she we were out, and she's like, look at that insect. And it was like it looked like a dragonfly with a shorter body with legs hanging down, these little arms and these wings. And it was anthropomorphic. And we did a little illustration of it and called it the I forget the we were in Brookline. I think we called it the Brookline Ferry.

Joe Ledoux: 01:28:01

And I think it was just an insect that we've never seen before, but it it really looked like a fairy. And then I started to think about it and I was like, she was playing along and getting her into that magical space. I mean, when she's done interviews, she's talked about it because she's not that kind of person, and it really got her to kind of into this mystical kind of space. And the more I thought about it, I was thinking, well, if insects were all extinct and they didn't exist and you told people about this soul and this little being that, like, this little creature that could fly around or a little ant that could crawl around. It's like the fact that there's consciousness and life in those things.

Joe Ledoux: 01:28:44

I mean and then and then the other thing I kind of thought of is, like, we're the fairies. I mean, the further you go out into the universe, the smaller we become. And everyone's looking for a little tiny miniature person that's alive, but like, we're that, you know? And there's just so many different ways you can kind of see it, and that I think was the great thing about the spell is it got people to kind of make believe, children just to see them in their mind and report them. It got people to see maybe comets or unidentified flying objects.

Joe Ledoux: 01:29:13

They saw lights go by that could have been aliens. I'm not saying they're not. I mean, there was all kinds of sightings. And then it got people also in this in between realm of kind of seeing the magic of what's in front of them every day. At least that's what it did to me too as a magician.

AP Strange: 01:29:31

Yeah. And that's excellent because nature itself is pretty magical. Know, other people are pretty magical and just existence is magical.

Joe Ledoux: 01:29:43

Yes.

AP Strange: 01:29:44

And you can go way out there with that and people start to act like, act like you're crazy if you talk that way, but if you can convince them by casting a spell over the city then then well done, I guess. I applaud it, know.

Joe Ledoux: 01:30:06

Thank you.

AP Strange: 01:30:07

Stuff. Yeah. All right. Well, since as we kinda like wind down here, do you have projects that you're currently working on? I think before we got, got to recording you're talking about taking a little hiatus because you've done a whole bunch of shows recently but Yeah.

AP Strange: 01:30:28

You've got projects coming up in the future.

Joe Ledoux: 01:30:31

I've always got stuff going. So I'm working on several new zines. One of them is actually about house sparrows because they're my favorite birds. And I'm illustrating and creating a zine just about kind of the life cycle of them and how amazing those birds are. And then magic wise, I'm working on a version of the Indian rope trick, which I'm really excited about.

Joe Ledoux: 01:30:55

Been working on it for years and it's ungimmicked, which I'm excited about. And it's been really hard to think about how am I gonna make a basket, a rope rise out of it, hold it and float off the ground, and then pull parts of my body off and throw them in the basket, come back down, and then restore my hand in this basket that I ripped into pieces. And it's kind of this mini version of the death and resurrection show, but it's really close to the real thing, and I'm trying to really make the myth come to life. And, yeah, I'm excited about it. It's That's awesome.

AP Strange: 01:31:33

It's a classic.

Joe Ledoux: 01:31:34

And it's, you know, it's real theatrical and it's real mystical, and it's got some music, and I've got a story I'm developing into it. And I'm working a lot with this kind of sound that monks do. It's, I think it's called Touvon singing, where you sing multiple tones at once to sort of get this rope to levitate and stay rigid. So it's got some real soul singing in it too, some mystical singing involved in it that's not easy to do and that is something kind of, you know, the fact that I could do it, you know, not everyone can do it. So it was interesting to tap into that kind of part of myself through this, the way that the trick is evolving.

Joe Ledoux: 01:32:24

I think it's gonna be one of my, yeah, one of my, well, I don't wanna say masterpiece, but it's like one of the pieces I'll be the most proud of that I've created.

AP Strange: 01:32:39

Yeah. I mean, I think that's very exciting. Love the rope trick. I said, it's a classic. Have you ever by any chance read the book Jadoo by John Keel?

Joe Ledoux: 01:32:50

No.

AP Strange: 01:32:51

Oh, okay. Well, I'll talk to you about that after. I'll send you a link and you can decide. Indian rope trick plays very heavily into it. It's he's he's going all over the place in I guess it was the fifties when he was doing it, but traveling all over and looking for, the Indian rope trick and how to do it.

AP Strange: 01:33:14

Yeah. From from magicians and and people in all different areas throughout The Middle East and in the India. So yeah.

Joe Ledoux: 01:33:22

I'm familiar with the one that Richard Wiseman did, I believe. The rise and fall of the Indian rope trick. Is it is it is it in that kind of nature? It's so it's

AP Strange: 01:33:34

No. It's it's way more like an adventure story.

Joe Ledoux: 01:33:36

Oh, okay. Okay. Okay.

AP Strange: 01:33:38

Yeah. So John Keel wrote a lot of like ultimately, he's been remembered more as like a UFO writer, 14 writer, paranormal guy for like the Mothman prophecies was, you know, the one he's known best for. Jadu was his first book and at the time he was writing for magic magazines and like the linking ring and those old school ones and men's magazines, which so he'd be doing like travel and adventure and intrigue stories.

Joe Ledoux: 01:34:09

Yeah. I would love to read it.

AP Strange: 01:34:11

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a fun book. So now if my listeners wanna check out the stuff you do and find you online, how how can they do that?

Joe Ledoux: 01:34:24

So I have a Instagram. It's just so my name is Joe, j o e, and then the last name is Ledoux, l e d o u, x like x-ray. So it's joe ledoux magic is my Instagram. And then you'll see, it's like the little character that I draw, a little green circle with his face on it. And you'll know you have the right one when it says the artist that skateboards and paints and lends magic together.

Joe Ledoux: 01:34:51

And then my webs my website is it's just joeladue.com. The website's good for sort of I have my art on there and my art. I have, like, a gallery where you can look at my drawings and a promo reel to kind of see some of the magic that I do. That's mostly kind of something to just give people a taste of what I do when I'm trying to get book places. But I do I do use it a lot to just sort of share films, animations, and my art on.

Joe Ledoux: 01:35:19

So it's a good place to go to just see my art. And then the Instagram is where I would really send people to kind of see, like, where the shows are happening because that's where I usually post, like, when the next show is coming up or if people wanna see what I'm up to or the new projects I'm working on.

AP Strange: 01:35:34

Yeah. And if they're somewhere nearby, they can book you too. Right? So Yeah. Yeah.

AP Strange: 01:35:42

Alright. Awesome. Well, this has been a really fun chat. I knew it would be and happy to have made your acquaintance. And thank you so much for coming on.

Joe Ledoux: 01:35:51

Thanks, AP. It was really fun to be on the show, and maybe we can do it again sometime.

AP Strange: 01:35:57

Oh, yeah. Alright. Alright. Thanks. Bye.