It's not every day you get a chance to speak with a President.  Okay, at the time, he was a Texas Governor and "candidate" for President. But all the media exposure on President George W. Bush's new book entitled, "41: A Portrait of my Father", has brought back the memories of this special encounter. In February of 2000 I was working as one of the co-hosts on Mojo in the Morning on Channel 955, and we had literally just premiered our radio show together the day before it happened. The next day, Tuesday, was primary election day in Michigan, and we were told there was a chance that we could get George W. Bush on the phone sometime that morning.  We did! All morning I had been thinking, "what funny voice impression I could use to get a few moments with him on the phone?" The video that follows is just a snippet of what happened. 

Performing voice-over work can be a lot of fun. From the casual observer's point of view, the work can even seem exciting when Hollywood actors are shown voicing our favorite big-screen characters on the bonus featurettes of movie DVDs. But the reality of voice-over work is very normal. A majority of the time spent consists of reading audition after audition for prospective clients, technical jargon(sometimes challenging to pronounce)for corporate sales or training videos, and listing the benefits of why you should buy a particular product or use a particular service. Which is all fine, because I am happy to be a voice actor. It's what I was put here to do, and, it pays the bills!

Many years ago, my first television voice-over commercial was anything but normal. I was asked to record a voice-over for a Thanksgiving TV ad for Meijer. Meijer is the 24-hour equivalent to Wal-Mart in the Midwest, only BETTER. Oh, and in this TV ad, I would be playing the role of----a turkey. Yes, I would be taking on a turkey's personality in the form of a puppet. I was flattered that they chose me to be their voice. They gave me a picture of what the turkey puppet would look like first, and from that I needed to give him a voice. The puppeteer didn't mouth my words until a few days later, after the recording was finished. 

I've been fortunate to perform voice-over work for a wide range of purposes. TV, radio, viral animated web videos, narrations, supermarkets, heck, I even recorded some voice-overs to be played in a taxi cab van!  And for all of it, I am truly "thankful".

Here's a fake politcal ad I voiced a few years ago, poking fun at how confusing the ballot proposals are in some states.  I hope you exercised your right and voted today!