Faces we

Arts Feature
The full
frontal
with Vancouver’s Wes Barker
Local comedic magician—
and sometimes nudist —
has gained some serious
traction
By Alex Walls
Photo courtesy JFL NorthWest
Wes Barker is pretty comfortable with
nudity. The stunt magician—a term he
coined in order to set himself apart as
a performer—is fully clothed for this
interview, but says with a grin that he’s
always been one to streak the party,
and one of his tricks involves pulling
a beer from his underwear onstage—
only to reveal another in its place. “It’s
more burlesque-y than nude, really.”
With more than 28 million views over
his 37 YouTube videos, and gigs planned
this year at the JFL NorthWest festival,
in New Zealand, the United States,
and in Ontario and Alberta, 29-yearold
Barker is certainly keeping busy.
Born and raised in Langley and now
living near South Granville, Barker says he
was always funny, but thought everyone
else was too. At school and with friends,
he was the one people came to for laughs,
and when out and about, “I was always
the one to [go], ‘Okay I’m going to strip
off my clothes and run over here’, or
just do something random or crazy.”
He got into magic as a way to pick up
girls at bars (“super not how it works out”),
learning from books during his lunch
hours working as part of a road crew for
the City of Surrey, a summer job he had
while studying business at University. He
quit his job in 2011 after he was offered a
promotion, and began to focus on what was
then a sideline career of magic and comedy.
While he had done some stand-up when
he was 20, Barker says he originally wanted
to be a serious magician (“I wore a suit”) but
found that an even mix with comedy came
more naturally. After an unlucky period
of unsuccessfully booking work combined
with high stress levels, including random
nosebleeds, Barker says he began cold
calling all sorts of places including senior
homes, and the work picked up. Hustling
helped him book many of his gigs, including
international tours, he says. “I don’t
think enough comedians try cold calling
Australia.”
Making ‘mutes’ speak
He feels the last two years have seen
him hit his stride when it comes to his act,
including spots on television in the last
12 months with "Penn & Teller: Fool Us",
where he successfully stumped his magic
heroes (apparently prompting the famous
on-screen mute, Teller to say, “That’s
awesome”), and America’s Got Talent.
The latter saw Barker escape a straitjacket
to a timer, with a photo of his naked self
slowly revealed as the clock counted down.
He made the stunt in time for America not
to see the full Barker birthday suit but it has
come close to going wrong once before, he
says, when a buckle jammed, requiring some
panicked smashing of the jacket against the
stage. And yes, he really got naked to take
the photo. “My buddy Neil is a professional
photographer and I got him to take it. His
studio is in his garage. All of a sudden, the
door opens up and his wife rolls in and
she’s like, ‘What the hell is going on?’”
A combination of magic tricks and
stunts, jokes, and audience interaction,
Barker performs at colleges, corporate
gigs and this month, at the Vogue, as part
of the JFL NorthWest line-up, where he’ll
be featuring two new tricks involving a
boomerang and a blow dart gun. “No one
will get hurt. Probably. But it’s going to
be really fun. You’re going to want to have
your wits about you.” The venue was the
site of one of Barker’s more triumphant
performances two years ago, when a selffinanced
show saw about 1,000 tickets sold
of the Vogue’s roughly 1,160 capacity.
Tricks up his…
From this performance came the
top three viewed videos of Barker’s on
YouTube, which involve, respectively, a
topless woman, bras and girls kissing,
the first earning more than 21 million
views alone. Has Barker cracked the
Internet? “I thought I did, so I tried other
videos like that, and they don’t hold
up.” He attributes the popularity to the
production value, a recognizable thumbnail
and a boost from a website. “Basically,
no one knows how to do YouTube.”
About 80 per cent of his act is of his
own invention, he says, and he adds about
20 minutes every year, practicing new
tricks for however long it takes to get
them right, which can be anything from
no practice to months of preparation.
Despite this, sometimes things don’t
always go as planned. One performance
saw Barker, blindfolded, throw a
tomahawk past the target and backstage.
“All I can hear is my sound guys jumping
out of the way … and you just hear this
crashing.” No one was hurt, and the
audience was none the wiser, thinking
the tomahawk was rubber and it had been
an intentional miss, but “it was bad.”
Personable and self-effacing, off-stage
Barker appears to be softer than his onstage
incarnation, which has been known
to rifle through girls’ purses, pulling out
a variety of objects including condoms
and thongs, and to trick female audience
members into kissing him. This last
manoeuvre once saw some instant karma,
however, when the audience member’s
boyfriend strode onstage while Barker was
trying to perform the straitjacket stunt, and
kissed him “nice and long … He definitely
burned me, I had no comeback to that …
I didn’t even bother to do the straitjacket
escape, there was already a half-standing
ovation for this guy kissing me.”
As for his plans for this year, booking
a Netflix special, and Montreal Just For
Laughs are high on his list of ambitions.
Magic is in an upswing, Barker says, with
more shows than ever being approved on
television. In fact, he’s been approached
to do an entire show naked, but turned it
down, since once is enough for the joke.
Speaking of which, his other goal for 2016?
“Dress better. I’m going to dress better this
year.”
Rapid-fire questions:
Alex Walls: Have you ever made someone
pee their pants from laughing too hard?
Wes Barker: No, I’ve had girls rolling
around on the ground at parties,
saying they will. That’s always a good
feeling, when you’re causing someone
physical pain from laughing.
AW: What’s the strangest thing
a fan has ever said to you?
WB: I’ve had fans ask me to send them
pictures of my feet. I don’t know why.
AW: If you had (real) magic
powers, what would they be?
WB: I would like to do legitimate
levitation, just because I would present
it as a magic trick and I would only
do a little levitation, so the audience
would like it but no one would ever
be able to figure out how it’s done.
Watch Wes Barker perform as part of JFL
NorthWest at the Vogue Theatre on Feb. 19.
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