Growing up, the voice that I connected with Sunday nights on “Walt Disney Presents” was Rex Allen. The 1950s cowboy movie and TV star was the voiceover talent for Disney’s trademark “animals in the wild” type features. He had that Arizona drawl and just the kind of meter to his voice that it was as if he was in the room narrating the film for you live.
Having spent part of my youth in Rex’ home town of Willcox, Arizona, he was even more of a real person to me. Every October he would come back to town for Rex Allen Days for a parade and rodeo. You can’t get more old west than that.
So when I had the chance to be a voiceover for a project for one of my clients, I couldn’t wait to get into the studio. At the mic I imagined Rex standing at the mic in an old studio in LA, script in hand, poised at the mic ready to put those Arizona pipes to work.
While my project wasn’t as iconic as Rex’, nor my voice as memorable, I did have fun with it. My friend and audio producer, Hyman Stansky, set me up in his home studio. Using Protools, his Mac and a great mic, we were able to record several blog posts, both for my website as well as his company’s website, Russ Berger Design Group.
Lots of details came into play: rehearsing the script beforehand, holding the page to be able to read without adding noise, remembering to pause and read slowly and to not smack my lips!
You can hear some of the results here where my friend and collaborator, Chris Howay, has embedded them into my website.
This is a great add-on to a site. Being able to have your blog posts subscribed to or added as a podcast page or tab to your site allows for more sharing of your content as well as another channel of interest.
And I got to live a bit of a childhood dream.
Relentless
