The Voiceover Artist

by Dave Reidy

  In the summer of 2001, when Bill and I had been together eight months, he sailed us up and down the shoreline of Chicago’s North Side while I mixed myself martinis and drank from a clear plastic cup. We were heading south past Belmont Harbor when Larry’s voice came on the boat’s built-in FM radio. I had helped Larry get his first commercial for Jewel Foods years ago. A creative director I knew had asked me to send over the demos of any artists I handled who might be right for the campaign he had described to me. The only demo I sent him was Larry’s. Since then, Larry had done more than two hundred spots for Jewel. If you had played audio of Larry reading the phone book to the average radio listener in the Chicago metro, it would have been even money that she’d say, “Isn’t that the Jewel guy?”

  I knew everything about this piece of business. I knew the spot I was hearing on the boat, advertising weekend specials on berries and avocados, was a new one. And I knew that my creative-director pal recorded every new Jewel spot at Sweet Sound Chicago, a studio famous for its near-perfect acoustics and deep distrust of digital technology. Which meant that Larry hadn’t been patched in remotely, from L.A. or anywhere else, to record this spot. Which also meant that he had definitely been back in Chicago in the past six weeks. And hadn’t called me.

  I decided right then that I’d never speak to Larry Sellers again. I would not call him, and if he called me, I would hang up. The decision had everything to do with my pride, which was wounded by a realization I hadn’t allowed myself to have until I heard Larry’s new spot: for months, my staying after work to audition unsolicited demos had been nothing more than an excuse to spend an extra hour near my phone, waiting for Larry to call.

  For our one-year anniversary, Bill took me to Tokyo, and then Sydney, where he rented a boat and sailed us across the bay. Back in Chicago, though, the glamour of the lifestyle Bill provided began to wear off. I never would have guessed I could get so easily spoiled, given the hard-working neighborhood I came from, but even the best restaurants get old if the dinner company isn’t interesting. Then Bill confided in me that he’d been drinking more than he’d like, and that, if it was all the same to me, he’d prefer to drink on weekends only. So we started eating earlier, I drank wine instead of liquor with dinner, and most of our evenings ended with the two of us in bed watching the local news, like a suburban couple too timid to venture out of the hotel suite and into the big city, content to have life reported to them while other people lived it.

  After two years of balking at the idea, and despite my creeping boredom, I let the lease run out on my apartment, put most of my stuff in storage, and moved in with Bill. I had started out with Bill to make Larry jealous but stayed because he was a decent man, and I didn’t see how life would improve if I were living alone with less money. And when I hung around after work to listen to demos, I wasn’t waiting for Larry anymore. I was trying to kill an hour of an evening I knew would drag on until our ten o’clock bedtime.

  Now, almost a decade into a twenty-first century that still feels like the time of somebody else’s life, my contentment is an easy sell, except when it isn’t. Like the afternoon Bill and I went to the movies and I heard Larry narrating one of the coming-attraction trailers. The film we saw was a tearjerker, but it wasn’t so sad right away, so Bill found it strange that I was wiping my eyes during the opening credits.

  We were standing at the curb a half-block from the theater, waiting for a taxi to appear, when he said, “You must have seen that ending coming.”

  “I’d read the reviews.”

  When Bill turned away to look again for a cab, I crossed my arms against the cold wind coming in off the lake and held myself as tightly as I could.

  It’s only after incidents like these that listening to the unsolicited demos becomes about Larry again, a contest between my desire to hear him say my name and my refusal to call him—which one will the vodka drown first? Pride floats in vodka, it turns out. The urge to call Larry dies first every time, and I go home to the palatial penthouse where nothing interesting, nothing fun, ever happens. But part of me believes that, one night, as I sit at my desk, listening to those hopeful, untalented voices, my pride will sink like a stone. That I will call Larry and, if he answers, I will ask if him to meet me for a drink. That I will try to reclaim even some small portion of the rich life we had until I decided—for reasons that Bill’s abundant, unwanted love has shown to be idiotic—that my life with Larry wasn’t enough.

  •••

  BILL RETIRED FROM his practice in 2009. He teaches one day a week at DePaul’s law school and spends the rest of his time at home, re-reading books he loved as a young man and watching television. He’s pushing me to retire, too. He wants us to do all the traveling we can.

  I wouldn’t mind more travel. Besides, things are slower than they used to be at Skyline—the 2008 financial-system fuck-ups gummed up the advertising money machine—and I’m not naïve enough to believe we need my income. But how would I fill even a week of ten-hour days in that apartment with Bill? What the fuck would I do? I picture myself sneaking swigs of hard liquor while Bill’s in the pisser and grinding my teeth as he reads aloud from Gulliver’s Travels. So when he brings up retirement, I work the conversation around to our next scheduled trip. It’s usually only a few minutes before Bill gets excited and disappears into his office to research the Buddhist temples in and around Bangkok, or the best sailing route between Sweden and Denmark. Then I finish my bottle of wine, go to sleep, and wake up groggy but grateful I have some place to go that isn’t Bill’s apartment.

  •••

  ON A TUESDAY in late June 2010, I hear from an ad agency that one of my clients, a woman I’ve handled since the mid-1990s, has been selected as the voiceover talent for a new, multi-spot, national radio campaign promoting a major cruise line. I’ve helped this woman build a strong book of local business—she works a lot—but she has never had a national-campaign payday. Tonight, as the office empties out, it’s my privilege to call her. She’s cooking a pasta dinner for her kids—I can hear them yapping in the background—and when I tell her just how handsomely her hard work has paid off, she doesn’t believe me at first. I have to ask her if she thinks I would joke about something like this. Then she screams and starts to cry, and it’s all a little much, but I let her have her moment before telling her to settle down so I can give her the date and time of the first session. When the call is over, I open the window, light a cigarette, and try to enjoy a sense of accomplishment even as it fades into the grayness—it’s a feeling, but I can only describe it as a color—that is the backdrop for everything I think and feel.

  Nine padded envelopes—the day’s unsolicited demos—are stacked in my inbox. I drain the last swallow of cold coffee from my mug and splash some vodka into it, just enough to loosen up the dark-roast dregs and carry them over my tongue. The taste isn’t as bad as you might think. There’ll be a coffee-vodka on the market soon, if there isn’t already. You watch. With the dishes done, I pour more vodka, take an envelope from the stack, and start the first audition of the night.

  The ritual is pretty mindless these days. A long silence from the CD player is usually my first clue a demo is over, and as I put in the next one, I can’t recall what I’ve just heard because I haven’t been listening. Instead, sitting in my chair, I’ve been mentally reviewing the fuck-you-pay-me calls I made that day and watching pigeons huddle in shadows on the roof across the alley.

  But tonight, my ears are grabbed by the rich, resonant voice featured in the fourth demo I pop into the player.

  “When you cross the threshold of Ulysses S. Grant’s home in Galena, Illinois, you step into an era of warfare and wisdom, slavery and freedom, heartache and heroism.”

  I can see the speaker’s lips and tongue moving before I see anything else. The enunciation is clear, crisp and without any frills. Each syllable carries everything it needs and nothing more. There are no jingles in this demo, no silly voices, no little jokes—just an a cappella m
edley of clips I imagine were recorded in a bedroom and stitched together on a computer.

  “Purchasing a television from Arc Home Electronics means more than stereo sound and an HD picture. You get the satisfaction of spending your hard-earned dollar with a family-owned business that’s served Chicagoans like you for more than sixty years.”

  The voice is that of a young man who sounds older than he is, a combination I like very much: older male voices are in high demand, and a young man can make money for his agency for a long, long time. The performances show range where it matters—in tempo, volume, and energy—and the whole thing is done in deadly earnest. The kid is playing it straight and pulling it off.

  “Chicago Blackhawk hockey: Winning is everything.”

  Then I do something I almost never do: I play the demo again. And I’m not even halfway through it when I lean over to retrieve the last envelope I threw in the trash can and pull out the cover letter I hadn’t bothered to unfold. The letter is as brief and straightforward as the demo. It reads, “Dear Skyline Talent, Please find my voiceover demo enclosed. I appreciate your consideration. Sincerely, Simon Davies.”

  A phone number is printed beneath the signature. I don’t recognize the area code, which makes me suspicious about where this Simon Davies lives. I’m not about to sign a kid who has to drive in from the fucking sticks and can’t find his way around the city. I check the envelope and see it has no return address. No postmark, either.

  Simon Davies delivered his demo by hand. How fucking earnest is that?

  I’m getting excited about this voice. But as the grayness in my mind begins to thin, I lose trust in my excitement. I worry that I’m only falling in love with the possibility that, after all these years, I might still have an ear tuned to money-making talent. So I put the demo in my top desk drawer and begin a one-week cooling-off period to make sure I’m not just hearing what I want to hear.

  •••

  SEVEN DAYS LATER, July 4th has come and gone, I’ve hidden and killed three bottles of Grey Goose in Bill’s apartment, and I’ve nearly forgotten the sound of Simon Davies’ voice. I arrive at my office Tuesday morning intent on skewering my belief that I can sell this kid and his voice, even in a down market. I listen to the demo again, in the light and relative sobriety of the morning, and I decide I wasn’t hearing things. Simon’s demo is better than most of my clients’ audition reels.

  I tell the new receptionist—receptionists at Skyline last about as long as any plant on my file cabinet can live without water—to call him in for a meeting that afternoon. The timing is a test: if the kid can drop everything and make it to my office for a same-day meeting, chances are good he can do the same for a voiceover session. But the main purpose of the interview is to find out if I’m wasting my time—and risking my reputation—on a savant who can’t make eye contact or a prima donna who thinks his talent makes the world go ’round. The earnestness of his demo package leaves me pretty sure Simon is no prima donna and worried he might be a weirdo. I want proof that he bathes. I want to know he can have a conversation without chitchatting about collecting locks of hair or eating his stool. Simon Davies gets two minutes to convince me I can send him on a job without the creative director calling to ask what the hell I was thinking.

  He arrives early and I make him wait. It’s twenty minutes after our scheduled appointment when I allow the receptionist to send him back to my office. When he shows up at my door, I glance at him over my reading glasses and wave him in.

  “Give me a second,” I say, returning my eyes to the paper in front of me.

  “Sure,” he says.

  He stands just inside the door and casts his eyes quickly around the office. I move my lips, pretending to be reading a contract, but I’m actually inspecting Simon. He looks a little younger than I thought he would, but he’s presentable. He’s wearing khakis and a collared shirt, both a little wrinkled, but clean. His dry, brown hair is straight and weakly parted on the left side. He’s a few feet away, and I can’t smell him. So I decide to begin the interview.

  I remove my glasses and let them hang from the cord around my neck. Without getting up, I say, “Hello, Simon.”

  “Hello,” he says.

  He maneuvers around the chair in front of my desk and shakes my outstretched hand. His handshake isn’t as firm as I like, but he isn’t slipping me a dead fish, either.

  “Have a seat,” I say, pointing to the chair in front of me.

  “Thank you.”

  “Thanks for coming in.”

  “Thank you.”

  The way he says the words makes it sound like he’s thanking me for thanking him.

  “Thank you for having me, I mean.”

  “Of course.”

  I can tell already that Simon Davies isn’t a sociopathic weirdo, but he isn’t normal, either. He has trouble with small talk and seems to be doing something with his head—not quite a twitch, but a little shake—before he speaks. The movement causes—or maybe tries to cover—a split-second delay in his responses that a stopwatch couldn’t capture but my ear can’t miss. If I were a matchmaker sending Simon out on blind dates, I might still be worried. But I don’t see that any of Simon’s—I’ll call them quirks—would annoy a creative director or her client, assuming he can deliver the goods in the sound booth. And his voice is as crisp, clear and resonant in person as it was on his demo.

  “Shall we get down to business?”

  “Sure,” Simon says, trying a friendly smile.

  I don’t smile back. We’re not there yet. “Have you been talking to any other agents?”

  “No.”

  Not a savvy answer, but I’m not surprised.

  “Do you have a cell phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Let me lay out the ground rules for you, Simon.”

  Leaning forward, I narrow my eyes and turn my head just slightly, so that my left eye is closer to him than the right. This is a routine I have developed over the years to make one thing clear: none of what I’m about to say is a joke.

  “I’ll need you on call,” I say, “like a surgeon, between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. You’re available unless you’ve told me forty-eight hours in advance that you’re not. Can you agree to that?”

  After another little headshake, Simon says, “Yes.”

  “If I call you with a job, I don’t want to hear about your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your dying grandmother. I want to hear you say, ‘Yes.’ And saying ‘yes’ means that you’ll be at the session in perfect voice, at least ten minutes before your call time. Can you agree to that?”

  “Yes,” he says. “I can.”

  I ask myself if I believe him, and I do. “Good.”

  I give him a quick, fake smile, thinking he will take it as a sign he can relax a little now. He doesn’t seem at all relieved.

  “Is this going about how you thought it would go?” I ask.

  He does that head thing again.

  “I had no idea how this would go,” he says.

  This makes me laugh out loud. “Good answer.”

  I decide I’m beginning to like Simon Davies but banish my next thought as soon as it occurs: the last artist I’d signed who possessed Simon’s exceptional vocal skill—the talent to place each word in the listener’s ear with a jeweler’s gentle precision—was Larry Sellers.

  “You’ll be billed out at $150 an hour for non-union sessions and at scale for union radio and television work,” I say. “Until we get you in the union, that is. Then we’ll push for more than scale. No matter what your hourly is, we charge the agencies an additional fifteen percent, so Skyline’s fee doesn’t dip into yours. Our fifteen percent of any residuals comes out of your earnings.”

  “So, do I pay you?”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “I pay you. All your payments are made out to the agency. We take out your fee and deposit the rest into your bank account. Taxes are your responsibility. If you’ve got no money to pay them
when they come due, don’t come to me. The best advice I can give you is to think of every $150 as $100 and move the difference into an account you don’t touch until tax time. Is this all making sense?”

  “I think so,” Simon says.

  “Good.”

  He doesn’t sound too sure, but I can’t get myself interested in pinning down his misunderstanding. I’m on a roll.

  I lift two thin, stapled documents from a stack of white paper striped with the edges of pink and yellow carbons and hand the documents to Simon.

  “This is your contract,” I say. “One copy is mine, the other is yours. It’s a standard contract, the one all our new talent signs. Show it to a lawyer if you like, but if he knows anything about the voiceover business, he’ll tell you it’s more than fair.”

  Most of my new clients are so grateful to be with Skyline that they sign whatever I give them right away. But every once in a while I get one, like Simon, who can’t ignore a piece of advice some well-meaning boss or grandfather gave him: “Never sign anything without reading it first.”

  Do these people actually believe that they understand what they’re reading? That they can really pick out the places where they might be getting fucked? The advice should be, “Never sign anything without going to law school first.” Then reading a contract might be worth the time it takes.

  I give Simon a moment to review the contract and, while he does, I scan it myself. A few phrases of the language my attorney and I have crafted—“exclusive representation,” “one tenth of all residual payments,” “binding until such time that the AGENCY terminates”—come together as I drag my eyes across them. Contracts: what good are they, really? They can’t hold together what’s falling apart. Larry’s contract didn’t keep him with Skyline, and nothing else I’d done had kept him with me.