It's Night Side with Dan Ray. I'm tell you easy Boston's new video.
I re number three of Night's Side. And I met this actress best way to say it, because she has done in front of the audience work and voiceover work and has done so for over twenty five to thirty years, of which that I'm aware of, it might be more than that. And she's gosh darn good and I periodically have her on. So for the women listening, here's somebody who speaks for you, speaks to you. Ever want to get in this business, ever wish you could do commercials
or do a character. And with the video game craze out there, that's given her major exposure, and I'm going to have her tell people about some of her characters that she has done. Please welcome D B. Cooper.
I'd like to sound effect man thy here.
Rob is on the ball tonight. He hasn't done that for any of our other callers. Oh guess so tell me how many years have you been doing this?
Well, let's it depends on how far back you count. If you want to go back to where I started being on the radio all the time I was ten, and that is a very that's called a very very long time. I was in Hawaii and KGMB radio had an afternoon disc jockey called Granny Goose, and I was a feature on his show every day because I called him with a riddle a couple of times and he asked me to call him back every day and I did.
Is he still doing it?
I don't have any idea. I can't tell you. I mean, I only know how old I am. He's older than that.
In your career mirrors June's Foray legendary voice actress because she began at around eleven or twelve years old in Springfield.
Yeah, so this is Honolulu. Yeah, it is amazing. The business of doing live radio is so like we're doing now. There's there's nothing like There's nothing like it. They're really except for live TV. But live media is exceptionally thrilling, and it's always the kind of thing that keeps you right on the edge of your performance ability.
I totally agree, because I've been doing this for forty five plus years.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I'm not too old to get out of it yet.
You're not too old, young man. You just step lively there, I tell you.
And that's the example. You have done many video game characters and voices. Tell my audience some of the characters that you've done that they may recognize.
Well if you play games, and I hope you do. One of the most well known things I'm in is BioShock two. It's a game that came out oh golly ages ago, but people still play it. I'm the first voice recorder you come to, so it's kind of it's exceptionally fun to be one of the first games that you hear within the gameplay. It's after the intro. So
there's that. I am in job simulator. I'm in I'm trying to pull up my curriculum VTA right now because I've done so much I can't remember, to be honest, I was in the Ghostbusters game that came out after all the ladies who were in the movie, The Ghostbusters all ladies film, So I was in that. I got to be Slimmer in that game.
There right there, I want to hear Slimer.
Okay, stand by a second.
And did you drink your high cooler?
I sure need to do after that. There's a lot of I am best known, I believe for doing creature sounds, all right, so uh there's so Slimer is one, of course, in particular that everybody knows. I'm some characters in a in a a digital card game called Heartstone. And the other thing that I'm in that I'm particularly delighted about is a game called Monster Train. It's another it's a
it's called a roguelike deck builder game. And in Monster Trains there are about two hundred named characters, of which I do have. There were only two voice actors in all of the chapters of that game. It was me and a fellow named Michael Schwalby, and we did all of the voices and vocalizing in that game.
Do you have a hundred voices different enough from each other?
In you? I. What I have is an arsenal of sounds and a very good a very good sound designer. So I've got anything from the tiny creatures called the morsels, who make a little tiny sound when they spawn, when they show up on the field of play, and they go pah or handah. Can I oh those guys. But then I also have h the deeper creatures or the bosses, and they have like you know, they'll have a they'll have sounds like like that.
Yeah, it's totally amazing.
You know what, I just did it. I got it from just practicing for the hell of it. Honestly, let me try this out, and what does it look like? And how can I make this sound by manipulating my face, by figuring out where my placement is? What does it sound like if I grab my cheek and pull it. You know, it's all of these things that you learn about your instrument and also how to bring things to the table that people don't even know they need, for instance in Monster Train and I figure, I can't even
remember how I figured this out, Morgan. Is if you need to sound like you're like you're in water or that you've got water in your throat, and that can be anything from being an undersea creature to being someone who's swimming for fun, to being someone who's dying because they're drowning. One of the things that you do to get that sound is jello.
And what do you do with all You put it.
In your mouth. Yeah, you put it in your mouth and you can speak past it and it sounds like you're you're gargling water or that you've got water going down your throat, but you don't because it's semi solid. You can't do it with water. You'll choke because it'll run right down while you're trying to make assonant sounds. While you're trying to make sounds with you know, actual voice behind them. You can do gardling and all that kind of stuff because you've got your voice box shut off.
But if your voicebox is active, you can't have water trickling down your throat at the same time. But this wonderful, viscous, gooey jello. I've started telling them the studio in that I work for a video game company called Senimax Online, and I direct, I cast and direct the video game
called The Elder Scrolls Online. And when I need my actors to do something that's called a sound set where they have to, you know, fight and die, I have the engineers stock some jello for me so they can die miserably.
Do you know the name Samantha de SEUs, Well you could. I'm sure she has name recognition out there. She is the daughter of Carl de Seus' sixties busy morning man, and she is doing what you're doing, uh, blazing a trail for women voiceover works hot.
I'm looking at her online right now.
She's awesome, right and I had her a couple of weeks ago, and the key is with her then and now with you. I want you to address the women listening in the audience to get them interested in just stepping up to the plate. You've always wanted this, so you were curious about doing it. You got to step
up to the plate and take a swing. Let me take my break, and when we come back, I'm gonna let you speak to all the women listening right now, let me take the break here time here on nights side ten, sixteen seventeen degrees.
Now back to Dan Ray Mine from the Window World Life Side Studios on WBZ the news radio.
I've got voice actor dB Cooper here. I've had her on the radio with me many many a time. And dB, there are people listening out there. And I'll say people, because maybe I was in error to make you address just the women. There are a lot of people out there, male and female that want to get into the business, and they don't know how you've gotten into the business. You've mastered your craft. Tell people how to step up to the plate and just try tell them where they can make inquiries.
Help them the way that I know you and I were talking about being in radio at a young age and live radio and the kind of stuff that we're doing right now, and those paths where you could be a weekend disc jockey on a rock and roll station or do overnight news on a news station, they don't really exist anymore. For someone who's sitting in the seat you're sitting in, you have to have done it for quite a long time. It's not something that's easy to
aspire to. So the path I took doesn't exist anymore. So here's what I teach my students. The first thing when someone reaches out to me and asks me about what it takes to be a voice actor is I will give them an assignment, and that is you must read aloud three three to five minutes a day. You must read aloud three to five minutes a day. It doesn't matter what it is. It can be your favorite novel. It can be a magazine that you like with articles, it can be a user manual, it can be a cookbook.
But read aloud for five minutes a day. And when you've done that for a month, call me back or send me another note, and then we'll talk about getting you stopped up to start thinking about how to do scripts and that sort of thing. And Morgan, I have to tell you that out of if it were one hundred wannabes, probably I've probably heard them too. Because the what you need more than anything else to quote get started unquote in this business is drive, and you have
to be willing to do a lot of work. You have to read aloud every day because you have to get used to your voice every day. You need to be able to understand what your voice can do. I can work with you on that, but you have to be willing to work every day. And that's the thing that really separates most people. So start by reading aloud and then record yourself and listen back and get used to the sound of your voice being played back to you.
Because everyone likes to complain about the sound of their voice being played back to them because they think it doesn't sound like them. However, it's what everybody's hearing. The reason you sound different being played back on a device
is because you're hearing what everyone else is hearing. When you're speaking, you're doing all manner of vibrations within your neck where your voice boks in all of the soft and hard tissue that comes up from your neck into your oral cavity and through your sinuses, and your whole face is vibrating with the sound of your voice. All of that stuff goes directly into your middle ear and is making harmonic impressions on all of your auditory systems.
So you're hearing your voice plus everybody else is hearing what plus what's in the room. You're hearing your voice plus, so you're hearing all of your inner harmonics, and you're also hearing what's in the room. We're only hearing what's in the room, So you need to get used to that sound.
My son, who work in four different markets doing TV news as a field reporter.
Periodically he would.
Get to anchor. Most recently he was a Channel twenty five, and he just decided to pull up stakes. He and his wife went down to the Carolinas where he lives.
Now. He's in the.
Private he's in the private sector and he's doing quite well for himself. He his wife, they have two children and dog, the typical American nuclear family. He began the same way I told him, Evan read something read. I got a trillion magazines, books, reading material arbitrarily. Just pick one and read. You don't have to read a lot, just read so you get more and more comfortable. Reading is key. That is an aspect of what you're going to have to do. And yeah, he went to Emerson College.
Oh well, hello, nurse.
And obviously that helped. But you've got to have the drive to achieve in you. Yeah, out that drive. Perhaps you're not going to get it.
You're not. And I'll tell you something. I'm telling I could be I can be absolute with You're not. You have to at least begin to try. And some people step out the door and into a field of roses and it's wonderful and there and they're wonderful and and doors open for them, and that's great. In the workaday world that I inhabit. There was a time where when I lived in Los Angeles in the early what do you call it, in the twenty tens, okay, before it even hit the teens, I was looking for an agent
and could not get one. And my audition to booking rate was three hundred to one. I kid you not, for every three hundred auditions I got one. And it sucked, of course. I mean sorry, can I say that on the radio. I beg your pardon. It was awful. I hated it, and I was afraid I was a failure. And I actually had some friends through this and other things that happened in my life. I was going to get out of the business, Morgan. I thought, this is ridiculous and it's not working for me. And I had
some fantastic friends. I had some fantastic friends who staged an intervention, Morgan. My friends from the game developers world, Uh, my audio buddies came and said, you can't quit.
So they were right. One of the things everybody has to have. You put the TV on and in ten minutes, just click, click, click the remote control and you'll see dozens, dozens of people who all at one time were like you. And the key is, you've got to develop a suit of armor for the word no, because you're going to hear that word more often than you hear the word yes.
Well, honestly, Morgan, you know what you hear. You hear crickets, you hear nothing because in this, in this it's not even no, it's you audition, and you put your you put your recording forward because you're not even in the studio with the agents anymore for the most part. But you put your recording and you send it out and you will hear nothing most of the time. And that's that's brutal because you don't know if I didn't make it,
why not. And that's why you hire a coach, or that's why you go online and find your heroes and see if they're teaching.
Yes.
So, for instance, people that we know and love, Patrick Frehley, for instance, Okay, who is the first one thing you probably heard him in was he was the bubble tape guy. Okay, remember that six feet of bubble You not them, that's Frayley. And he also exploded in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as the voice of Baxter Stockman and Kasey Jones and Vernon and Vernon and Krang.
And so if you get that nod, yes, and you just gave an example. One actor got to do four maybe more voices with those franchise right in the franchise.
And that's that's his claim. That was the beginning of a brilliant career that probably has about four thousand, four thousand known characters.
Now I'm going to take a break. When we come back, I want you to tell the story of meeting June foray, Okay, I miss her terribly. I truly don't know. Let me take my break and uh ten thirty. If you're seven ye o'clock, it's exactly ten thirty here in BZ. Temperature has gone down a degree sixteen degrees.
It's Night Side with Dan Ray on wb Boston's news Radio.
Dan, We'll be back tomorrow eight p m. Sharp A Morgan filling in. I forgot to mention on my show this Saturday, I will be joined by Ed Robertson, who writes very good books about classic TV. He wrote a book about Perry Mason, wrote a book about the TV show The FBI that was as thick as the Manhattan White Pages. He has a new book out, Men of Honor, and he focuses on four different TV shows, The Untouchables, Harry Oh, The Magician, and one other that escapes me
for the moment. But he'll be joining me on Saturday, and if you want to come play trivia with me, Interact live Tuesdays. I'm at the Midway Restaurant. It wasn't there tonight because I was here two sixty nine Washington Street. That's where you'll find me from six to seven point thirty. Right now, I've got TV Cooper and I are speaking about voice acting. She's one of the few people who has excelled in this world doing voices from video games,
TV commercials, all sorts of things. And tell everybody about meeting and interacting with June Foray.
I got to meet June fora at a gathering of voice talent. It was called it was the It was Voice Happening in California, and I honestly can't recall the year Morgan. I can't, and I apologize for that. But one of the guests, so people were there like Maurice LaMarsh and Rob Paulson from Animaniacs and all men of
wonderful people we were. I was on a panel, and you know, we did all manner of things for a number of days, and as things were wrapping up, June Foray was a special guest, as you might imagine, and she was in the lobby hanging out with us actors. She was there with a man named Bob Bergen. He was most famously the voice of Porky Pig. He's the one who decoded Porky Pig and was able to take over doing that and in inimitable almost shutter that mel
Blank invented, and he was her escort. They were great friends, and June looked like the best movie star you had ever met in your life. Oh absolutely, she was stunning, a complete knockout. And so I got to meet her, and I don't even know if I got a picture with her. We were so excited. You know, you don't always remember to get the photo, so I'm not sure
I've got a photo of that particular interchange. But that was the night I got to meet June Foray And let me tell you, Morgan, when she got up on stage, all of the guests were seated and the hosts of this event were asking wonderful questions, and it was like it was like you were in the studio when Rocky the Flying Squirrel was being recorded, because she was doing stuff she was Natasha, you know, she did something as Natasha's voice, and I thought I was going to fall
over sideways because it was just the same all and all. And she did a couple of things from from the the Warner Brothers, you know, she was doing uh, you know, the Winnie Witch, and that just unbelievable stuff. So fabulous and it sounded just the same. And she was in her nineties I think, I mean, it wasn't long before she left us. I was so grateful, grateful that I got a chance to meet her.
Now, I'm going to say something. First of all, June did hundreds of voices in her career. She worked for Jay Ward Studios, Disney uh Baptisarian who did the Alvin and the Chipmunks. She was Missus Frumpington on that series. Literally hundreds of characters. And I was fortunate enough to become friends with her. And I'm going to tell a quick story. The earthquake in nineteen eighty nine destroyed She
had antique dishes and they were her mother's dishes. The dishes got destroyed by the shake rattling roll of the earthquake. My ex had an antique store at that time and had antique dishes. My ex was kind enough to give me dishes to send to June. She called, be crying wrong.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I can hear it.
I can't say how much, as I think back this second, it touched me. And I was luck enough when she came to Boston with Bill Scott, who was Bowinkle I got to go to lunch with just the two of them, no reporters, no other people. I'm at lunch at the stock Yad with Rocky and Bowie. I was so happy.
But she was inspiring, such a professional and so inspiring because there were so few women in the biz in those days. You know, it was her, and it was the ladies from from Uh, you know, the Flintstones and then the Jetsons, and I mean they're really most of the most of our cartoon lives. Morgan Uh was populated by men, which is just the way things were, right, you know, And that was besides in those days that
was normal anyway. But having these magnificent actresses doing these fabulous voices across the spectrum of art was in fantastically indescribably inspiring.
Truly.
Yeah, yeah, it really was. It was something to really get your hooks into if you.
Want it, and you've got to really want it, and you may not get it, but step up to the plate and try.
So look for you here's here's my recommendation. You look for your heroes. And this is one of the things I can't even remember how I ran across it. Patrick Frehley, the Man I mentioned before was teaching in Los Angeles, and I had found him. I have I probably still have the cassette tape Morgan about how to do character voices for fun and profit is what his thing was.
Someone must have told me about him, and I looked him up, and I bought the cassette tape and I listened to his teaching, and I thought, I understand the way this guy is describing things. Yes, I learned more from Pat Freeley than anybody else on the planet, and that includes my high school drama teacher, who is who was just magnificent. Okay, but I'll tell you, when you find a good teacher, they they amplify your ability and accelerate your progress, And for me that was Patrick Freeley.
Look for your heroes online. See what they have for for little teaching moments. If they teach, like for instance, Bob Bergen also teaches, his workshops are booked, you know, a year in advance, if not more. But but if that's if you think that's I'm not even sure if you're the level yet. That's the thing you have to be concerned about. So you have to find the teachers who can make you as good as you can be and then you take a next step.
But for.
Just looking for things that will give you a taste of things like Steve Bloom, the Fellow who is the voice of so many anime UH productions that are known and loved, especially Cowboy Bebop. He's the voice of Spike Spiegel. Find him online and you'll see these little vignettes of teaching that you that are for free. Patrick Freeley has a free page of stuff, So find these guys, look for your heroes and of the worldware and one of the things that the younger people do, some of my
students are on something called Casting Call Club. I think that's what it is, and it's a group of people who do stuff for free. You don't you're not going to get you're not going to get work straight away. But it's people who are making like mods for games where they have a game that can be modified and they want to put their own voice, they want to put their own dialogue in it, and they'll hire these younger or or you know, more new afters to do stuff because you've got to be you've got to be
willing to work for nothing. For a little while I did, I worked for college kids did I hear voices for projects for college kids? And then you find stuff out there there is and that's you work your way up and.
Be willing to start. Not just at the bottom rung of the ladder. The river stoppers are under the legs of the ladder. I've got to take you know. I only have about another twelve minutes with you. This is night Side. Dan's off tonight. He'll be back to my morgan filling in time and temperature ten forty four sixteen degrees.
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World Nightside Studios on WBZ News Radio dB.
Cooper is here in dB. I don't know if you've heard the commercials that we just played. Did you hear them?
I got to hear some of them. I was actually talking to your producer. Okay, I was. I must say, Rob, do be a favor.
Don't play the whole thing. Just play the beginning of that SUPERU commercial. Oh you don't have it? Okay, it's not loaded. The commercial goes it's a female.
Yeah. I think I might have heard this one before he came and spoke to me.
Yeah, it's a really cool day today. I want to go outside and play it's kind of a sing songy voice. And at first I thought you could have recorded that.
Well.
I used to, you know, I used to be on Busy as a commercial voice for like thirteen years, right, I know that.
I know that. Yeah, because I was going to ask you to mimic that commercial. Just just that line.
Tell me what the words are again.
It's a really cool day today. I want to go outside and play. And she says, it's.
A really cool day today. I'd like to go outside and play.
Yeah, but you know what, Yes, but you didn't hear it, so it's not to ask you.
Yeah, I can mimic some things. I'm not a mimic. My son is an impressionist. Okay, he can. He can actually do. He's got an automatic ability to do the placement of other people's voices, because the business of doing impressions or impersonations isn't just saying the words they say, but it's it's the ability to make all of the biomechanics of your vocal apparatus do the same thing those guys are doing.
I dabble, and one of the things I use as an example is quick drama grad it's a low it's a low registered voice. Oh the thing around here, boy, and don't you forget it? And that's close.
It's not exactly you gotta but you gotta get. You gotta get your whole throat and ball there. Uh they're Morgan inside. You have sending around here, Baba Luis, and don't you forget it?
And very good that you knew. His full character name was Bubba Louie.
Oh gosh, ire, I've got the quick drama grad game. Dude, I'm I'm Aicionado.
Let me tell you. That was Dars Butler. He in the lou of Anna Barbara characters, Huck and Yogi and quick drawing, and I could go on. He was my first professional interview. Oh supposed to be on with me for an hour. He stayed for three.
On the planets Butler, Oh, I was walking on air. Yeah, I'll bet you were in heaven, in heaven, in everything but body wow. Wow.
When I began, I always tried to get voice actors. Lucille Bliss was Olive Oil and Casper and other characters for Max Fleischer. And give me a second. I get a mental block because I had so many of them. And that's why I love you and what you do because you do it so well.
You know who I wish I could have met as Paul Freese. He did. Yeah, man, Yeah, I grew up with records of these guys. So I had a Yogi Bear record, and I had a Ludwig von Drake.
Record, Professor Ludwig von Drake.
That's right. I am a genius, make no mistake, Ludwig von Drake. That's me, very good.
May I tell you a June story?
I wish you would.
This is a quick June story on this subject of records. I'm in third grade. I'm a huge fan of Rocky Bowinkle, and I have a Rocky record called I Was Born to be Airborne.
I got it, and I could sing it.
For you right now. But since you've got it. I was speaking to June, one of them many times I interviewed her. I brought up that record and I started to sing a line. Now this is forty years later. She sang with me word for word of that record. Yeah, and to Sore among the Stars called Novemn. I was born to be Airborne. I was born to be airborne. Now, some squirrels may live in a tree, it goes on. I have just stop myself or el sing the whole
gods darn thing, but she's hurt me. Forty years later she remembered the lyrics.
Oh, I wonder how much she heard it because you and I listened to that record until it wore out.
Correct.
Yeah, those are That's what those stars did for us. Did you Did you ever know about the Silly Record with Stu Hample? Tell me you know the Silly Record? It was it They began as the Silly Book. The Silly Record had songs and little stories and things, and uh, I can't even find it online right now offhand, but it was one of the ones that I would listen to all the time, and we would sing the songs from it in my family and stuff. It's just part. It becomes part of your culture. It becomes part of
your familial cultures, the things that resonate with us. And that's one of the reasons why I love this work so much. I have to tell you, I have to let me tell you something, so I I one of the things that happens when you make something iconic is that people grab onto it and they make it their own, like you and I did with Rocky. Yes, you know, for instance, okay, because we saw beyond Stars just as playing as playing could be. Don't get me started. But here's the deal that I found out. I went to
the Monster Trained subreddit. So you know about reddit, of course, there's a Monster Trained subreddit. Reddit is a kind of like an aggregator of articles and conversations, okay, R E, D D T. And there are different chapters all over the place, and one of them is for Monster Train the game, and someone for the simple love of the characters I did posted a questionnaire about what is your favorite spawn sound for the morsels? And he wrote down all of the little morsel sounds. Do we want the
do we want the point? Do we want? Boops? Do we want? Do we want? Or dog or whatever it is, and he made a little questionnaire out of it, and there were hundreds of people voting on it, because that's just I mean, it's not like putting out a record, but what it is is actually seeing the way the work I've done for something fun, seeing how it affects people, and seeing how they have it they take it into their lives as something wonderful. I have this feeling, especially
as a voice actor for video games. It's a sacred trust. We've only got so many minutes on this planet, Morgan. We're only allowed to tread the earth for so long. And when someone takes their time and chooses to spend it with me and my cohort, people doing voices for the game they're choosing to play, Yes, that's the best feeling in the world.
And on a lesser level, I get some of that because I've been doing radio for so long and people listening may remember an incident and interview and they're telling me what I did, and that shows me how important that moment was to this individual. I don't understand it on that level. And you know, I'm looking at my computer and it tells me someone's calling in right now and I only have I only have ninety seconds left.
Make it happen.
They hung up.
That's too bad.
That's too bad. I will have you on again. And you know there have been times that you've blown up my phones, and I hope next time you will do that because you are such a treasure, and you, alike June's foray to me, you have done you have done such memorable and tremendous work that I embrace and I go back to thirty years with you, and I marvel at all you have done, and I marvel at all that you will continue to do. So, dB, I thank you for coming on and I look forward to our next time.
Okay, same here, I'm looking forward to it.
You take care now, thank you, bye bye. One more hour of Dan Ray, I've got the speech improvement company. Dennis Becker will be joining us after the news here on nightside time ten fifty eight sixteen degrees