Paul Turner, Paul Turner Productions, "The Voice of Infinity", Philadelphia, PA
by Jerry Vigil
Two years ago this month, we interviewed Power Pig Operations Manager Marc Chase who talked about a guy that "blew through the radio station" for a brief period of time: "I really didn't have a place for him, but he had huge pipes. So we brought him in as a Continuity Director. I knew that wasn't going to last...." Marc was right. Paul Turner has since climbed the ladder of success at an incredible pace. At the young age of 26, he currently does voice work for over 100 television and radio stations. He is the voice for the majority of Infinity Broadcasting's stations. He's also the voice of the Howard Stern Show, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, and the Greaseman Show. And Paul's just getting started....
R.A.P.: Tell us about how you got into radio.
Paul: I had an idea of what I wanted to do with my career all the way through junior high and as early as elementary school. While most of my friends wanted to have the typical jobs, I knew in some way I wanted to be involved with broadcasting. I was doing some writing for the school paper one year, and I interviewed a local television sportscaster. He invited me to sit in with him while he did some play-by-play at a basketball game. From that point on, the bug caught me, and I pursued it.
There was a campus radio station on the university right near where I went to high school. It was completely student run, and these students looked at me as kind of a novelty -- "Hey, here's a little kid hanging out. Let's make him our mascot." And that's basically what happened. In the summer, I'd be waiting for baseball practice and would hang around, ask questions, and do whatever odd jobs they needed. This was a little 327 watt FM in the western part of North Carolina, and the students had full rein of the place. In the summer, a lot of them would not show up for their particular shows. This happened one day and they said, "Hey, let's let this little kid get a shot," and they put me on the air. That was my first time on the air. I was fourteen.
R.A.P.: What happened next?
Paul: I was at the campus station for about a year. From there I went to a commercial radio station in town, WRGC-AM, and keep in mind, this is a tiny little community out in the country, Silva, North Carolina. There was really only one AM signal aside from the FM signal at the university station. One day, I just sent them a letter saying I was interested in working for them, and it was very coincidental that they happened to be looking for someone, just a warm body to come in and run the board on the weekends for a couple of shows. I took the job and ended up staying there for five years. This is where I first got paid for being on the air.
I went on to program the station before I left. I worked there all through high school, and that station was very good to me. It was one of those deals where you become jack of all trades, and you really learn production. I learned a lot there, and I'm very thankful to them for that.
While at WRGC, I entered Western Carolina University. I stayed with WRGC and also worked at the campus station, as well as another station in Franklin, North Carolina. So, I was back and forth between three radio stations a day, and it was big time overkill. I found myself just going crazy, but, at that age you have all the energy in the world. You just want to soak up as much as you can about the business, and you're easily influenced in a very positive way by a lot of the people around you.
Disk jockey was my main goal. I think that's why a lot of people enter the business, and that leads them to a lot of other things like production. But the glamour and the ability to meet people and interview exciting people was all very attractive to me at that time.
My voice began to naturally develop as it does at that age, and I found that my voice was opening some doors for me. There's a radio station in Asheville, North Carolina which was a much bigger market for me than anything up to this point. It's actually the Asheville-Greenville-Spartanberg market. During my freshman year in college I was offered afternoon drive at WKSF in Asheville, which was a tremendous step from weekends or part-time at these other little radio stations. This station is where I really got a taste of production. It had two multi-track studios, an 8-track and a 4-track. It was an AM/FM combo. I did afternoons for about a year and a half, and while there I also became the voice of the station. I did promos for the first time and found that doing promos was something I really enjoyed. I would emulate whom I considered to be my heros -- Joe Kelly and some of the bigger guys. I'd listen to their tapes and try to get as many ideas as I could from them. The Program Director of WKSF kind of just let me run with it, and it was a great opportunity.
My next move was another big jump. I went to Tampa for my first full-time production job at WHVE. I found while working at WKSF that production was what I enjoyed, and it was what I seemed to get the most positive feedback on. People around me were saying, "You know, this is something you ought to be doing. You ought to be pursuing the production end. You have the voice for it." Even when I was at WKSF, I was doing voice-overs for other stations in the chain, little markets in Wyoming, here and there. So, I went to Florida, to WHVE to do production. It was an NAC station, believe it or not. I've told a lot of people that I worked for an NAC station, and they kind of frowned or said, "Oh, how could you stand it?" But, I've got to be honest with you. That was a tremendous experience because being a one trick pony, doing CHR or AOR for so long, can get kind of comfortable, and it can almost become dangerous. Being at an NAC station taught me to back off. It taught me a whole different style of production.
Moving to Tampa was very instrumental in my career because there's a station there that I think most of the country knows about by now called the Power Pig, WFLZ. It's programmed by one of the biggest geniuses in the business, Marc Chase. They went on the air while I was in Tampa, and I knew they were about to come on. I made some inquiries, and Marc and I went out to lunch one day and hit it off. Jacor, who owned the station, had remained pretty loyal to a lot of the employees including their Production Director. They brought in a guy by the name of Brian James, a veteran, more experienced promo guy than myself. I was still very much of a kid at that time. But Marc wanted me on board, so he brought me in under the auspices of some assistant production guy or continuity person. I used the continuity desk, but nonetheless, my main job was really voicing a majority of the high energy nightclub spots and some of the promos for the AM, WFLA-AM, and the FM, The Power Pig. They had some beautiful studios, and that is where I learned a tremendous amount. I learned so much from Brian and Marc, some of the most creative people in the world, and Randy Michaels, who was the programming head of Jacor at that time. Creatively, that was the biggest growth spurt I had experienced up to that time.
I was there a little less than a year when another opportunity came. I received a call one day from Chuck Beck in Detroit at WDFX. I went to Detroit simply for the fact that it was a market size jump and a little advancement in pay, and because I considered it to be the next step in production. By this point, production had become the obvious goal in my life, and along the way I started to pick up some side business from a little voice-over business that I had started in Tampa. A couple of guys I knew who ran radio stations back in North Carolina said, "Hey, you have a deep voice, and it's becoming more well trained. It seems like it would be more of a sweeper/promo voice. Could you do some stuff for us?" One thing led to another, and by the time I left Tampa, I had a handful of clients -- eight, ten clients that I did on a regular basis. Nothing major, no really big markets, but enough to tell myself that there was something there and I should pursue it.
I was in Detroit for a little less than two years. There were some ownership changes. I wasn't fired. I just left on my own accord to come here to Philly. But, again, I enjoyed my time in Detroit, and I learned a different angle from some more creative people like Chuck Beck. It was a CHR station in a major market. We were competing with WHYT, and we had a good time. We didn't knock anybody down with our ratings, but we had a good time, and it was a good bunch of people.
By the time I left Detroit, I had amassed twenty or so clients that I was doing voice-overs for on a regular basis, the majority of which were radio stations. I had sent a demo to a guy in Washington, D.C. who had inquired about having me do some stuff. The tape somehow ended up at the WJFK studios in Washington which, as you know, is an Infinity affiliate. Tim Sabean, the current Program Director at the station where I'm based, heard the tape. One thing led to another, and he offered me a job to come and be basically the voice guy for Infinity based out of WYSP here in Philadelphia. And that's how I got to where I am now. I've been at WYSP about two and a half years now.
R.A.P.: Did Infinity put you on immediately as the voice for several of their stations, or was that something that happened over a period of time?
Paul: I was hired to be the voice of WJFK in Washington and also WYSP. Plus, I did some for WXRK in New York. Those responsibilities have obviously grown to include several Infinity stations for which I'm now the exclusive voice for. I even do one of their country stations down in Tampa, WQIK AM and FM. It's a very male-oriented demo that Infinity seems to have, and that's the type of production and voice-over work that I enjoy. I do KOME for them in San Francisco/San Jose, WXRK in New York and WFAN-AM in New York, a sports station. I do WYSP in Philly, WJFK AM and FM, Baltimore/Washington, and I do all the voice stuff for Howard Stern. Howard is really the big story behind all this. I also do some stuff for the Grease Man, the syndicated show, and also for G. Gordon Liddy. I do all of his voice stuff.
R.A.P.: You're the voice for all of Howard Stern's affiliates, correct?
Paul: Exactly. I believe he has eighteen affiliates now. I've been very fortunate in the fact that Howard and I have developed a very good rapport, a very good working rapport, and I think the world of him. He uses me for all of his affiliates' ins and outs - the "we're back with the Howard Stern show," "you're listening to Howard Stern on...."
He's used me on a lot of his side projects including his Butt Bongo Fiesta video and the Howard Stern New Year's Eve Pageant, which was a big success on Pay-Per-View. I was there with him the whole time. I was the in-house announcer and did a lot of pre-recorded stuff, too. It was very interesting. A lot of people I talked to did not even realize it was me on the live parts. The recorded parts they knew, but I used a different style on the live parts. Howard and I met ahead of time. The whole show, basically, was a parody of itself. It was a parody of an actual beauty pageant, and he wanted a very Don Pardoish kind of voice from me.
It was a lot of fun, and just working with him in a close situation like that is a tremendous opportunity. He's a true professional. It's amazing to see an undertaking like that actually take place, and the preparation involved is tremendous.
R.A.P.: How has your affiliation with Howard helped your voice-over business?
Paul: Howard -- and I've told him this many times -- has opened the doors very often for me. Whenever I'm in New York, he'll have me on his show live, and we'll talk about voice-overs in a very off-the-cuff kind of joking way, which is pretty much Howard's MO. Every time I'm on the air with him, I will receive calls from my agent who will hook me up with some business that somehow comes from the appearance on the Howard Stern Show. The first time I met him, Howard asked me if I had an agent, and I said at the time that no, I didn't. Howard, over the last year or two, set me up with his agent, and that has helped out a lot.
Howard has been just tremendous to me, and it's nothing I've sought out and tried to obtain. He's just been a very nice guy to me, and I think it was basically a matter of being in the right place at the right time. I really owe a lot to him. There's not a day that goes by that I'm not just overwhelmed by his power in this media. It's just phenomenal. He has a gift and he knows what people like to hear and what entertains people. It's exciting to see people who really speak their mind, despite whatever controversies he's involved with. It's refreshing to see someone innovative like that come along. And not only do I enjoy working with him, I'm also a huge fan. So, you can tell I'm very much in his corner in all phases.
R.A.P.: Did the voice work for G. Gordon Liddy's show and the Grease Man's show come after you hooked up with Howard?
Paul: Yeah. Howard was the first, and then G. Gordon Liddy. The Liddy show has only been syndicated for about a year. Infinity's takeover of the Unistar radio network has allowed that syndication to become a very big success. At last count, I think it's on about 160 radio stations. Again, I do the ins and outs for the G. Gordon Liddy show.
A question a lot of people ask is whether or not there is a contradiction or conflict doing the voice work for both shows because they are such extremely different people, Liddy being the ultra-conservative, and Howard on the left side. There really isn't because the voice style I use, hopefully, is recognizably different enough that it sets them apart. I really don't think the listeners confuse that at all. It's just a voice they associate with the show on an individual basis, and there's probably not that much sharing of the audience anyway. But you know, what's ironic is that Howard and G. Gordon Liddy are fairly good friends. In times past, Howard has had Liddy on the show with him, and they get along very well.
R.A.P.: Did the Grease Man gig follow Liddy?
Paul: Exactly. I was asked by Infinity to do the Grease Man stuff, and that was a great opportunity. Grease Man is on about fifteen stations now, and he's talented in a completely different way than Stern. He has an entirely different shtick than Stern. I do all of the production for his show as well.
R.A.P.: Are you producing for Liddy and Stern, too?
Paul: I would say about seventy percent of Stern's stuff I do end up producing. A lot of his stuff is produced by Scott Salem, the engineer for the Howard Stern show in New York. Liddy's stuff is produced in Washington, D.C..
R.A.P.: As well as being a voice talent for Infinity, are you also the Production Director or Creative Director for WYSP?
Paul: Whenever someone calls the radio station and asks for the Production Director, they send it back to me, but we really don't have a so-called Production Director at the station. There's no slot for that. It's not that we don't have someone there to oversee things. If there's a production problem or question, I certainly will be there to answer it for them. In a market this size, the majority of production comes in as national. It'll need a tag here and there. Those things are handled by the jocks, and the jocks have a production schedule each day.
I am completely in charge of image production for the station. My job is to image WYSP, as well as WXRK and any other stations, and to create, with the Program Director and promotion people, any ideas for promos or sweepers or anything relating to those items. Therefore, I guess you could say I'm somewhat of a Creative Services Director for a lot of Infinity stations, but I don't have a business card with that title.
There are a couple of guys at WYSP that also handle a lot of production. One is the Assistant Program Directors, John Russell. He will handle a lot of the production and really assist in putting out fires here and there with production. But there is no on-hand Production Director at WYSP.
R.A.P.: Do you have a pretty nice studio to work out of?
Paul: Yes, I do. When I first came to WYSP, they were just in the process of having some new equipment installed. We just completely re-did the studio two years ago from the ground up. It's now a multi-track facility. We're still not at the digital phase yet, but that's hopefully something that's not far around the corner. We have an Otari half-inch 8-track with dbx. It's a studio that doesn't have all the bells and whistles that a full blown digital studio might have, but it's a studio I'm very comfortable in. It's like an old baseball glove -- you play with it for so long that you really become accustomed to it.
There's a second studio, studio B, which is a basic room. It doesn't have the nicest console. It still uses a rotary pot board, but the jocks use it. There are two MCI 2-tracks in there. It basically works as a room to do tags and sometimes straight reads here and there, but it's not used as often, obviously, as the other room.
R.A.P.: Is there any talk about going digital?
Paul: We've considered that, especially with the amount of stuff that I do for the Infinity stations. And, because they're all rock stations, a lot of times we will run the same weekend promotion or the same image promotion on more than one station. For instance, if I do a promo for an all-request weekend at WYSP, chances are pretty good that WXRK in New York will do the same weekend promotion because both stations are programmed by the same Program Director, Tim Sabean, who travels between Philly and New York. With multi-track, it's very easy to do the old trick of simply dropping in the different call letters when doing a promo, but with digital, it's even easier.
To be perfectly honest, I haven't pushed the digital thing probably as hard as I should. But, I would say that within the next year, even if Infinity Broadcasting decides not to do it, it's something I feel I will personally be doing for Paul Turner Productions.
R.A.P.: Do you have any kind of studio at home?
Paul: No, I don't. I use Infinity's studios. I work with about eighty-five radio stations and a bunch of TV stations. Ninety-nine percent of everything I do is all dry voice. So you're talking about either having one of my 2-tracks or one of my DATs in use. At this point, I just haven't found building a studio at home the most economical way to go. Infinity has been extremely good to me when it comes to using their studio. The 8-track studio is the one I use for their stuff morning till night, and then after my work is finished for them, I do my own work for my other clients.
R.A.P.: Eighty-five stations is a lot of stations for you this early in the game.
Paul: It is a lot of stations, and it's growing daily. This has been a tremendous year. Howard has made it grow big time, and, hopefully, that will continue.
R.A.P.: Your success with the voice-over business at twenty-six years of age is very unusual. You mentioned Joe Kelly earlier as one of your heroes. I don't know how old Joe Kelly was when he was rolling in the stations like you are, but one gets the feeling that he too was very successful at a young age. At the rate you're going, your name will rank up there with Joe's before too long.
Paul: Well, I would hope to think that would happen because Joe is obviously someone I look up to with very high standards. I think he's one of the best out there. Some of the other guys I really emulate are Charlie Van Dyke and Ernie Anderson, both of which are big TV guys which is an area I've had tremendous success with in the last year. But radio is still my first love and is still something that, no matter what happens with TV, I will always continue to be head first into. Guys like Joe Kelly, Mark Driscoll and Brian James -- who is a good friend and one of the better talents out there -- are all guys I really have looked up to. I think they do, in their own different ways, a very tremendous job.
R.A.P.: You've reached a point in your career where a lot of people would like to be when they're forty or even older. Do you think about what's ten years down the road for you?
Paul: Oh, sure. I think I'm lucky in the sense that I got a lot of the crap, so to speak, out of the way early by jumping into it early. I paid most of my dues early. Now, there's always dues to be paid for everyone in different areas of their career, but for me, the majority have been paid. At this point I'm trying to fine tune the area I'm heading into with the voice work. Now, with an agent, I'm able to do some more national commercials. I'm interested in doing movie trailers, TV work, and more radio work. There's always something out there you aspire to, and there's always a next level that you want to see. You see someone doing well and you want to do as well as them.
You're right, you know. A lot of people at forty would like to be doing the amount of stuff I'm doing. I feel very fortunate, and there's not a day goes by that I'm not very, very thankful for the opportunities and the people, and all the right people have come along at just the right time for me, everyone from the beginning to the present with Howard Stern. It's been nothing but a very pleasing experience, and ten years down the road I would like to be doing a lot more in each area -- TV, radio, film.
At this point, I'm really headstrong into the television area, doing the local affiliate news-type stuff. I would like to one day be involved with one of the major networks, if possible -- the Danny Dark, the Ernie Anderson type of gig. But, like I said, I'd never leave radio behind because radio is where it all began, and, to me, radio is more fun than it is work. I enjoy creating promos, and I do still produce. I said the large majority of work that I do is dry voice. That's for my outside clients. But I do produce for WXRK in New York and WYSP in Philly, and to me there's nothing more fun than coming in to work in the morning with an idea in your head about a promo or something you've seen on TV or in a movie, and to actually sit down and create this idea.
I have an assistant, a guy that I hired myself. His name is Corey Dissin. Corey is a young guy who goes to Temple University. He's advancing daily, and I'm allowing Corey to produce some of the stations that I have, the smaller ones that need the stuff produced. But, he's also helping me with a lot of WYSP and Infinity stuff, even though I pay him off my payroll. He's been a big help in a lot of areas. What I'm trying to get at is that radio to me is really a lot of fun, and creating promos is something that is very enjoyable for me. It's one of the things you can't believe is actually a job. It's like a major league ballplayer getting paid for playing baseball.
R.A.P.: How many television stations do you now do voice work for?
Paul: Right now I'm currently under contract with five TV stations in markets such as New Orleans, Detroit, Charlotte, and Atlanta; but there are several other TV stations that I do on a contract basis as a secondary voice for the station.
R.A.P.: Do the television stations generally pay more for the same kind of work in the same size market than the radio stations?
Paul: Absolutely. I've found that to be one of the more attractive points to television. But it really depends on the particulars of the situation. It depends on the size of the market, the company that owns the station -- as it does with all radio stations -- and how your agent negotiated the deal for you because you can be screwed in any situation. But, in general, yeah, TV does pay more than radio, and there's not as much work. With TV, you basically work four periods during the year really hard. That's during the sweeps, and then you have breaks. In radio, it's pretty consistent. You have your on-going work.
R.A.P.: So, hypothetically speaking, would you say the income from a television station and a radio station in similar sized markets might even out in the long run, though there would be less work done for the TV station?
Paul: In the long run, it's very possible, if you're on a retainer type basis with both. However, I still think TV would come out ahead in most cases. If you look at TV, the amount of revenue generated by a TV station is much higher in most cases and, therefore, they can justify paying more for a particular service, including voice work.
R.A.P.: There are a lot of people that don't have a deep voice like yours that are doing pretty well in the voice-over business. As these people surfaced over the past ten years, it wasn't unusual to hear people say that the deep, ballsy voice is fading away, becoming an extinct style. Yet, you take someone with a natural, ballsy voice like yours, and people still go after it, big time. Why do you think this is so?
Paul: Well, that's another really good question, and you're right. I've heard people talk about how the ballsy voice is fading away. Anyone who does voice-overs has probably heard that from time to time, and my response to that statement is that if the deep voiced guy is fading away, I haven't seen it. I haven't seen the fade yet, and I really don't think you're going to see that because there's a demand for that stereotypical announcer sound. There will always be a market for it just as there is always a market for the guy who doesn't necessarily have a deep voice -- the guy who can do character voices, the Billy Wests and the guys who have a tremendous talent in other areas, the voice actors, so to speak.
I feel -- and this is what my agent told me -- that you should make yourself as well-rounded as possible. Don't just be a deep voice guy. Grow in your acting ability, whether it's by taking an acting class or by studying the way people act on TV and watching their inflections. Be able to be as diverse as you can with your delivery. It's only going to benefit you. And, if that day ever comes that the deep voice guy does kind of fade away, you will still have somewhat of a background, another area to fall into. You're not a one-trick pony.
I'm not really scared by the thought that my style may fade away someday because there are so many trends. There are trends in clothing, and for some reason, styles and trends always seem to circle and come right back to the beginning. If you look back when radio and TV broadcasting first began, everybody had that big sounding voice, like the guy from Laugh In, Gary Moore. I'm not saying that style will ever come back. Hopefully not, but there does seem to be some kind of return to where they started with a trend. People burn out on any style. That's why you've got to have more than one. People will get really tired if all they hear is you jamming it down their throat that they're listening to Power 107 and the hottest hits in radio. People get tired of hearing that.
In fact, we do something here with Infinity to keep things fresh. Each quarter, we try to differ things a little bit, try to differ the sound. We'll go with me doing the hard-hitting stuff, and then next quarter we'll change off. We have a female in New York named Allison Steele who is a legendary jock at WXRK. She's been jocking for years. She's a more soft-sell woman, and we try to mix her in now and then just to give one particular style a rest. That's Tim Sabean's thought, and I happen to agree with it. I think it's very much the truth that people get tired of the deep voice -- people get tired of anything if given too much.
R.A.P.: How has your style of production changed over the past few years?
Paul: I think in the last year I've developed a very MTV-ish style of production -- quick edits, quick drops from movies, from Letterman, or whatever, that entertain people as well as tell them you're playing another twenty songs in a row. You want to be able to entertain them for those few seconds you've got their attention. So, I've gone into a style that I think is totally different from anything I've ever had.
R.A.P.: What production libraries are you using for the stuff you're producing at WYSP?
Paul: We're using several. One of the libraries I'm most happy with as of recent is from Toby Arnold and Associates. We use just about everything they have -- Attitude, Young Guns, ZX-1000, right down the line. In the past, the station has had licenses with Brown Bag. We still do with Money from Brown Bag, and I've got some small libraries like Shock Wave from Network Music that we did a buyout on. We also did a buyout on a small package from Airforce. For sound effects, we're using Hollywood Edge. We have four different ones including City Tracks, Premier Edition, and Cartoon Tracks which I think are good ways to color a promo. I'm very happy, especially with the new Toby Arnold music. For a rock station it's got some good guitar in it, and the voice seems to fit very well over most of it. That's what I like. I don't like production effects that are too busy -- horns and drums and everything going on at one time. I really enjoy the drone effect that a lot of the Toby Arnold stuff has -- you know, hard punctuator at the beginning, and after that it becomes more of a background as opposed to a foreground. It seems to let the voice have a certain presence over it.
R.A.P.: What kind of processing do you like to use on your voice when you're just laying voice tracks, let's say, for other stations? What kind of EQ and compression do you use?
Paul: I have gone through periods in the last three years where I've changed the way I do things. I've almost gone one hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction. I've always been a big fan of the Symetrix 528 compressor simply for one main reason -- because it has the EQ. You're able to EQ as well as compress. But, I used that a lot more in the past than I have in the last year or so. I've learned to back off on that and to become comfortable using less compression, especially when sending dry voice to my outside clients. I back way off on the compression, almost nothing at all, but I will still EQ a little bit through that Symetrix. And, we have a Pacific Recorders board in the studio, the BMX production console, which has on each track a little EQ above it. Sometimes I'll use a little more EQ from the console. I don't use a lot of rack equipment as far as voice effects stuff. I don't have an Eventide unit, but I do have a Yamaha SPX-1000.
R.A.P.: Many people with deep voices will cut some of the lows and add highs when EQ-ing. Do you do this?
Paul: Oh, that's absolutely what I do. I like a very crisp sound. I like something that cuts through the radio like a knife, especially with music. A bass voice tends to get lost easily in a lot of today's music and anything else that uses any kind of bass. A female voice, and even a male voice with higher tones, will really cut through and have an edge. I think you can have both. I think you can have balls, so to speak, a very bassey voice, and also cut through a piece of production. The way I do it is by doing exactly what you said. I like high-passing the voice, but high-passing is something I use as a highlighter as opposed to an overall sound because you can overuse that just like people used to overuse sampling. I do drop off the bass a lot in promos and various pieces of production to give the voice that presence, and we use a little reverb to add even more. And when I really want to highlight something, we'll just drop the bass out and completely high-pass filter it, which is something you try to use as sparingly as possible, though it's easy to get caught up in it and use it more often than necessary.
R.A.P.: It's very easy, especially when you're new in the business, to want to crank up the bass in hopes of making your voice sound "deeper" or bassier.
Paul: Exactly. That's such a misconception. Doing that tends to give it a very muddy sound. You'll get some boom to it, but that's not really what you want. You've either got it or you don't have it when it comes to a bassey voice. And there's no way to simulate that aside from some kind of harmonizing with a pitch drop, and even that sounds very fake. I mean, you can do time compression and anything you want, but it just sounds very altered. The only way to have it is to have it.
However, you can enhance what you've got. Again, I'll use a baseball analogy: if you are a hitter and you're not doing something right, and you weren't born with the talent to hit, you can do other things to enhance your hitting. You can lift weights. You can use a lighter bat. You can step closer to the plate. All these things will eventually, when used together, make you a better hitter. In voice-over work, you can EQ, you can compress, and you can do this and that, and if you do everything right, sometimes it will help you a little bit. But, you've got to have something to work with to begin with.
R.A.P.: What's your production philosophy?
Paul: Production to me is very much like a window display in a store, and this is how I approach it for a particular radio station that I'm working and creating for. It's very much like a window display in Bloomingdale's. Every season they keep the same products inside the store. You always have the same things for sale and the same things to offer. But, as you walk by the store, every so often you notice that they change the window display, whether it be for Christmas, Halloween, whatever. You always see something new and exciting, but it never changes what's inside the store. I think production has that same value to it. You're always offering the audience the same product, especially in classic rock and roll. You have a base of music that you offer, and your job as the creative promo guy at the station is to change the window dressing as often as possible and keep it exciting because, let's face it, an audience can hear the same record over and over again, but if you present that record to them with production that sounds hot, fresh and exciting, each time they hear the record it'll take on a whole new feeling for the audience.
Like I said earlier, every quarter we sit down and purposely try to make it sound as different as possible. I mean, one quarter we used Bill Wendall from the Letterman show to introduce the jocks like he does David Letterman, with funny sayings about the city and funny sayings about the jock. That's with me mixed in, here and there. The next quarter it could be me doing a lot of MTV type of production. The next quarter it could be me doing more laid back, very adult sounding production with just guitar behind it, real acoustic unplugged kind of production.
Basically, when I go in to produce a promo, I first think of what it is attitude-wise that we're trying to say, whether it's in your face, whether it's subtle, whether it's painting a picture through characters. We have access to one of the great talents and that's Billy West in New York. He does a lot of voice-over work in the area of cartoon characters. Billy and I are good friends, and he has been very accessible for doing character voices in promos for me. That is a huge bank of talent right there that we have at our fingertips, and we use him to change the sound of our production. Whether we're using any of these types of production, the philosophy is to constantly keep things changing and to keep things new and exciting.
R.A.P.: Any tips you've learned along the way for the folks who want to get into the voice-over business? Something that would be helpful to someone who has their first station and is looking to add ten more?
Paul: Well, I think if you're at a radio station and you're interested in doing voice-work and production on the side, the most important thing I've found to be to my advantage is contacts, getting to know as many people as you possibly can. And there are no people who are too small or too insignificant along the way. You know the old saying, don't kick people on your way up because they'll kick you right in the butt on your way down. That's very true, and you've got to remember your roots. You've also got to be very outgoing. And you've got to promote yourself because if you don't promote yourself, there's no one else to do it for you. Promote yourself, whether it means you get an agent, or whether it means publicizing what you do yourself. People have to hear about you, especially in the beginning.
As you know, radio is a business, a very small, tightly knit community. And word of mouth is extremely vital in this business. To be honest with you, that is the biggest advertising tool that is available to us. And if you can do that in the beginning, get the word out, work night and day, you'll come out ahead in the end. Don't be afraid to work more than your standard eight hours your first few years in production. I've worked for Marc Chase and Chuck Beck and Tim Sabean, and all of these guys have taught me that a good Program Director can inspire a good work ethic. If you stay the extra hours to get a promo exactly right, you'll come out way ahead in the end because if you bust your butt in the beginning, it will certainly pay off in the end whether you want to be a producer who produces the stuff or whether you have the voice talent and you think you'd like to be a voice-over person. Don't ever think you're in too small a market because -- and it sounds so contrived to say this, but -- hard work really does pay off. That's a very stereotypical statement, but it really does. You bust your butt, and I can guarantee you that if you have a goal of being in a big market -- and that's not always everyone's goal -- if that's what you want to do, put your mind to it, meet the right people, make the right contacts, and you'll certainly get there.