Electri-gician Daryl Howard conjures up a second career
JOHN CARDER McCLANAHAN | Contributing Writer
john.mcclanahan@gmail.com
For decades, Daryl Howard woke from bed every morning to adjust wires and fix electrical circuits. Trained as a master electrician, Howard carved out a successful business for nearly 40 years. But even though the way electricity actually works may seem like sorcery to mere mortals like us, after a while, it failed to spark the same excitement in Howard. So he decided to pull a rabbit out of his hat and pursue a second career in the illusionary arts.
When Howard is not overseeing his business as an electrician, he performs close-up magic, usually for private events. He recently showed his act aboard a yacht cruising Lewisville Lake for partygoers celebrating a man’s 40th birthday.
Howard describes himself as a strolling-style magician, someone who does not rely on huge stage props, but rather up-close techniques marked by flashes of sleight-of-hand.
“That’s what I love the most, because that sort of magic is happening right there,” he says. “I love Penn and Teller and David Copperfield and all those guys, but when you’re watching that [kind of] magic show, you know there’s equipment hidden somewhere right behind the curtain or under the floor somewhere. I look at those stage illusions, and I think, ‘Could I recreate that same effect without all that equipment? Or just my bare hands?’”
His plan is to become a full-time entertainer, dazzling people with magic — a passion he discovered as a small child. He even performed more shows last year than the previous, and come holiday season, he expects more bookings.
“My goal is to continue to back away little by little, and eventually, completely walk away from the electrical business altogether,” he says.
Howard grew up in North Arlington, and occasionally accompanied his father, a real estate contractor, to some of his work sites. For Howard’s eighth birthday, dad took him to the State Fair of Texas, where he witnessed his first magic show. After the performance, his father walked him up to the stage, where he met Mark Wilson, a renowned Dallas-based magician, along with his wacky sidekicks, one a clown.
“That was what really sealed the deal,” Howard says. “I just became fascinated with magic.”
Soon after, his parents bought him magic kits for Christmas and birthdays. His first kit contained cups and balls, a couple of silk handkerchiefs, a set of metal rings and a cheaply printed card deck. And he began scavenging libraries and bookstores for any read pertaining to magic and magicians.
As a teen, Howard performed his first magic show when a family friend paid him $10 to put together an act for her son’s 10th birthday party.
“I was nervous about it,” Howard says. “I wasn’t sure if it would go well or not. But it went extremely well, and I wanted to do more.”
Throughout his adolescence, Howard dazzled friends and family with tricks and was certain magic was his professional calling.
But his father thought otherwise.
“When I told him that I wanted to be a magician, he laughed at me,” Howard says, with a chuckle. “He said, ‘Come on, son. You need to find a real job.’”
Magic took a backseat when Howard needed to focus on a career. He attended trade school to learn electrical work, while still tinkering with magic on the side — he would often carry a card deck in his pocket.
For years he ran a company, frequently problem-solving on-site issues using handwork skills he says he learned from his father.
Then around 2000, Howard stumbled across Wilson performing at a magic convention at the Sheraton Dallas.
“There he was. I went up and shook his hand. I said, ‘You wouldn’t remember me because I was just a little kid, but you were actually the one who got me interested in performing magic,” Howard says.
Now his childhood passion finally has the spotlight. And Howard feels he can become like one of his magician heroes for the next generation of Harry Potters.
Every year, Howard tries to refine his act using the same work ethic it took him to become a master electrician, though he says jumping into the entertainment industry is not so easy.
“Magic is a lot of fun to perform, but there’s also a lot of stress,” Howard says. “If you’re doing it professionally, a lot is expected of you. You’re expected to give a certain quality of performance. When someone pays you a paycheck to do a show, you have to be spot on.”
Howard says he’s getting too old to do strenuous electrical work under the Texas sun or in unventilated spaces such as attics (his son-in-law handles day-to-day operations), but during his transition, Howard plans to spend time refining his magic act, adding new tricks and writing new scripts.
He’s on pace to break his record for most shows in a year, performing around 100 last year (more than twice his 2017 total).
And as he pursues work in a competitive industry, Howard hopes to network enough to get more bookings.
“It’s like growing a garden,” he says. “You plant the seeds, and you water and fertilize, and you work with it, and you do everything you can to make the plants grow. But they have to do that on their own.”
DarylHowardMagic.com.
