As Dave Lovering was still trying to find another meaningful purpose in the wake of the Pixies' breakup, he stumbled upon an unlikely craft that would eventually earn him a reputation outside of his music career: magic. As Lovering tells Happy Mag, "So I had a friend from Buffalo who was really into magic. We both went to this magic convention in Los Angeles, and I saw a magic trick that just blew me away. From that point, I was sold. I did everything in my power for about two years, studying magic, until I was proficient enough to become a magician." From musician to magician may seem like an odd professional trajectory, but Lovering has made it work.
In fact, he became so talented in magic that he combined his new love for the craft with his technical background to become the Scientific Phenomenalist, performing magic tricks that involved machines that he built himself. Lovering explained to Happy Mag, "The whole idea of my show ... was not to say that I was a magician. I was really just going out to do a science show with all these really wild experiments, then I started taking it into the magic world. My engineering definitely came in very handy."
