John Carney will work his magic at the Sebastiani on Aug. 25

What do you think of when you think of magic and magicians? As decades have marched on and the world has seen so many iterations of “magic” and “magicians,” responses are sure to be all over the map (as are opinions of the venerable magic show in general). At 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 25, magician John Carney will bring his comedy/sketch/magic act to Sonoma’s Sebastiani Theatre. His pitch is that the show is “for people who didn’t know they liked magic.”

Speaking on the phone from his home in Southern California, Carney, who is nearing his fourth decade as a “sleight of hand” magician, says his family-friendly show is more than just magic, as he incorporates characters and sketches in with his coin, card and sleight of hand tricks.

He says the comedic aspects of his show are due to an early inspiration to follow in the tracks of Dick Van Dyke, Jonathan Winters and the Smothers Brothers as a comedic actor but, that wasn’t meant to be – at least early on.

“I used to love to perform characters and voices for my family,” Carney says. “But, there was really no place for an 8-year-old to do stand-up.”

It wasn’t until a few years later magic came into play.

Carney laughs, noting that “most of the magicians I had seen were some guy in breeches pulling out a bunch of handkerchiefs or something” which, obviously, wasn’t particularly compelling.

It wasn’t until a cousin showed him some simple card tricks that he became interested in sleight of hand magic mostly because “it used cards and coins and all the things I had around my house.” From there, Carney was hooked.

As his acumen as a magician grew, he got back to his roots of wanting to act comedically, and said, “Eventually the two interests kind of fused together.”

The guy who really got Carney into magic was Dai Vernon, says Carney, still with a touch of awe and respect in his voice for his early inspiration.

Nicknamed “The Professor,” Vernon wrote many books, including one called “Early Vernon” that came out in paperback in 1962 that Carney speaks to as one of his earliest tools for learning card, coin and various other “close-up magic” tricks.

Carney has appeared on stages across the country, and on “Late Night with David Letterman” and the Jerry Seinfeld HBO special and gained notoriety as a one-time pitchman for Mastercard.

Throughout that time, Carney’s show has evolved into a one-of-a-kind hybrid featuring his comedic talents as well as virtuoso magic skills to capture audiences. Carney says the scenes and scenarios he uses in his act serve to get viewers more involved in the act.

“I’ll bring up members from the audience, they serve as a sort of surrogate for the rest of the audience to be involved,” he said.

Carney is the real deal. Not only was he able to study under Vernon at the eternally hip and mysterious Magic Castle in Hollywood, a nightclub where magicians go to be inspired by other magicians and share their knowledge. The Magic Castle also holds several competitive magic shows of which Carney has won seven times and received more awards than anyone in the history of the magical mecca.

No small feat considering the respect that the Magic Castle still holds in the realm of the magic arts.

With so many variations on magic, magicians and magic tricks, one might wonder where a sleight-of-hand magician by way of comedian fits on the worldwide stage with more stunt heavy “rock star” acts like David Blaine and Criss Angel. Carney acknowledges this but hearkens back to when Doug Henning re-imagined what a professional magician could do.

After the nightclub years that translated to bigger Vegas stages which served to make magic popular again, the whimsical hippy Doug Henning took magic to the next level. Of the reinvention, Carney says “he didn’t look or act like a magician and he has these teams of people that were working on the shows.”

Then came David Copperfield, who would introduce scenarios or big romantic scenes to magic acts.

Ever the student and fan of magic, Carney also mentions Penn and Teller as one of his current favorite acts.

He describes them as “very, very smart” and Carney appreciates that they develop all their own stuff.

“They may have been influenced by something they saw but it’s all their own,” he says, which is something Carney also does in his profession.

When asked of his routine, Carney says, “I like to develop the idea and see people’s response.”

As for what he hopes Sonoma audiences will take away from his show, Carney says he loves it when people leaving the show say, “I never really thought I liked magic but that show changed my mind.”