History

This life doing voice work, whether as a talent on the air, or doing voice-overs; this life is, for most of us, not filled stability or predictability. So, I’m very grateful to my family for being so patient with me. Even though I certainly haven’t always deserved their patience.

What follows are the thoughts of my daughter, as she remembers them, from back when she was quite young. I think she was 6 or 7 at the time this took place. (She is 22 now.)

“I was in a recording studio with my father. This was long enough ago that soundproofing was still done with egg crate foam on the walls, which I enjoyed running my hands over. My dad was talking with and doing an interview with another man, I don’t remember who it was. The table was dark wood, and I remember looking down at it and seeing my bag of skittles, bright against the table. I remember thinking how good the skittles would taste, but that I was concerned that the crinkling bag would make too much noise, because my dad was recording an interview with this man. I had had it impressed on me very thouroughly that I had to be very very quiet when daddy was working, and I did not want him to be unhappy with the noise I was making. When they came to a stopping point, I very quietly asked my dad if I could eat my skittles, and was allowed to do so. I just find this story funny, because even at that very young age, I had a sense of what I was or wasn’t allowed to do in the sound studio.”

It can be kind of painful to realize that we get so obsessed with our work that we ignore our children and spouses. But, painful or not, it’s worth remembering…and worth leaning from.

From February 1986 to February 1996, I had the remarkable privilege of hosting a national contemporary Christian music radio program called Christian Countdown USA for most of those years, and The CCM Countdown with Bob Souer at the end.

The founder and owner of the program for the first several years was Chuck Wagner. Chuck, who worked for Moody in Chicago for 20 years, was the guy who taught me the value of good direction.

You see, at the time he hired me as his new host for Christian Countdown USA, I had been doing voice over work in the Chicago market for about 3 years. All of it at suburban production houses. But, I thought I knew quite a bit about how to use my voice in a profession manner.

Of course, the truth was, I didn’t know jack. But, I guess Chuck must have heard some promise in my audition, because he picked me out of the pool of about 5 candidates who applied. And we started working together. For a few weeks we recorded at Domain. Then, after it became obvious we couldn’t afford to keep working there, we scrounged studio time when and when we could, relying on the kindness of strangers and fellow broadcasters. Not a recomended way to meet a weekly production deadline!

Eventually, Chuck bought a home in Wheaton, not too far from where I lived at the time in Warrenville. We pooled our equipment. I bought a couple of new pieces of gear, including a custom “plate reverb” unit, a multi-track (4-track) Tascam reel-to-reel recorder and so forth. Eventually we were able to combine all of these random pieces into a pretty fair home production studio. Most of the equipment was mine, but I had no room in my little townhouse for a studio; so we set it up in Chuck’s house.

During the preceding several months, Chuck had been listening, guiding and directing; but because of all of the uncertainty of where and when we would record, and so forth, he was always at least a bit distracted. Now two things converged. First, we had the studio built, so we had a consistent place to work. And, second, Chuck had learned pretty well what my strengths and weaknesses were.

So it was in Chuck’s house in Wheaton where my education really began, into how valuable a good director really is. Chuck understood that the best direction never tells “how to say the line.” But, always, what are we trying to accomplish with this line. Now, there are times (especially when working under tight deadlines) when a line reading is the most effecient way to get something done. But, most of the really satisfying and excellent work stems from the synergy of the director’s guidance and the voice-over artist’s talent for reading and acting.

An authentic performace can’t be faked. (Once you learn to fake sincerity, everything else is easy!) It must come from the honest emotions and thoughts of the performer. Line readings, no matter how well given, are inherently fake; because they can’t come from the guts of the person actually doing the read. And, as is probably more and more obvious to anyone paying attention to the winds blowing through our culture, authenticity is critically important.

The year was 1974. I was deeply in love, and to be blunt, poorer than the proverbial church mouse. I was putting myself through school at a private college in the Chicago suburbs. Every penny I had, and quite a few I was borrowing, were paying for my education, so I had no money for an engagement ring. You see, I wanted to marry Kathy. She wanted to marry me. Like I said, I was deeply in love.

She confided in her mother about our situation. Mom suggested that a family heirloom diamond was available, one that had belonged to Kathy’s great-grandmother. But, if I was serious about marrying Kathy, I would have to provide the engagement ring and the wedding band to go with it. One of Kathy’s very best friends was the daughter of a jeweler in Madison, Wisconsin; who had just decided to move his business to the Chicago suburbs and merge with an existing jewelry store.

So there we were, going through Mr. Johnson’s jewelry inventory, finding just the right setting for the diamond, and a matching wedding band. All for only $75, including the cost of mounting the diamond. But, as my Dad used to say, I didn’t have two nickels to rub together. Where was I going to get $75?

At the time, Kathy worked for David C. Cook Publishing Company, as an associate curriculum editor. (This was back when they were still located in Elgin, IL.) And one afternoon, a few days after our shopping expedition, Kathy attended a meeting about an upcoming convention. It was decided that the company should prepare a kiosk display that would include a pre-recorded narration about their new releases. But, who could they get to record? There was no narration budget.

At this point, Kathy spoke up and said that her fiance had a “nice voice” and would be willing to work pretty cheap. Whomever was in charge of this project agreed to this suggestion, asked her to call me, and eventually met me at the Domain Communications studio in Wheaton, IL. The agreed upon price was $50 an hour and when we were done recording, the session took one and a half hours.

It was an answer to prayer! And exactly the $75 I needed to get Kathy her engagement ring and wedding band. Thus did I get my first paying voice-over job, the very humble start to my life as a professional voice-over artist. How humble? It would be 9 years before I got another paying voice-over job.