Radio Interview: LA Voice Actor Bill Jurney (Summer 2011)
Here’s a transcript of a recent interview I did with ECU Alumni Association’s Radio Show: “A Pirate’s Life For Me.”
Opening: This is Bill Jurney, and you’re listening to A Pirates Life For Me. Here’s Paul and Jennifer.
Paul: Our guest is Bill Jurney. Bill is a Hollywood voice actor with more than 20 years in the business and owner of JurneyVoice Productions. Welcome to the show, Bill.
Bill: Hey, how’s it going East Carolina. What’s happening?
Paul: It is going great. Let’s start right at the very beginning, Bill, and tell our listeners how you became an East Carolina Pirate.
Bill: Well, I was in High Point, North Carolina and I applied right out of high school to East Carolina and got in and came to orientation, and the rest is history! I just had a great experience at East Carolina, it was wonderful. I also was on radio, I did a stint at WZMB when they signed on again. I did mornings for awhile and did some production. I was also on a station called “Big Wow,” when I first started. It was an AM station, I don’t even know if they’re still out there. And then there was WSFL in New Bern that I went to for awhile and did weekends on. I also had a stint on Channel 7 TV doing weekend sports.
Jennifer: Bill, as our listeners can already hear, you have a fantastic voice. What inspired you to be a voice actor?
Bill: In fifth grade I took a drama class, there was a dramatic teacher that came and I just fell in love with acting. When I was 14, there was a radio station in Greensboro, NC that had a guest DJ contest, and I wrote a letter and they called me and said, “You’re going to be the guest DJ this weekend.” So my folks and brother drove me to Greensboro, we parked near this building with these big antennas, and for the next hour the disc jockey pointed and me and I would talk over the records and do the weather and the public service announcements. I was sweating, I was nervous, but I knew at the end of that whole thing that this was the business for me.
Paul: Bill, in addition to the early resume, you already have quite an impressive resume with a client list that includes CNN, Wal-Mart, Petco, Disney, Miramax, TNT and many more. You’ve also spent almost five years as the staff promo announcer for CNN Headline News, where you received the Golden Addy Award for Turner Advertising. Talk about how you got into the business, I guess, with your East Carolina degree.
Bill: Well, I went down to Myrtle Beach, and I was a program director at one of the stations down there, and then I moved to Raleigh. I thought I would get into sales, but wanted to be behind the mic. I landed a job in radio production in Raleigh. It was WTRG then, I think it’s called “The River”now. I was doing commercials and I met a lot of really cool people. There was this guy from LA who came to teach voice-overs one weekend, and I took his course. And I thought, oh my God, this is exactly what I want to do! I made a demo, I started taking my tape out to ad agencies and recording studios. I started booking work, commercials for cars, furniture stores and this and that. In about 1986, I moved to Atlanta and I got on the radio there for B 98.5 FM Soft Rock. One of my agents got my demo into CNN and they had me come in for an audition. They subsequently chose me to do a promo. The thing ended up winning a Gold Addy Award which is the top award in promotion advertising. Then they eventually asked me to be staff there, so for nearly five years I was staff. That was really a highlight of my career, I’ve had a lot of other highlights, but working for a live news organization, coming in and doing the daily promos, narrating different sales pieces and news stories, that was really exciting.
Jennifer: Of all the voice-overs you have done, what has been your most challenging or most fun, and why?
Bill: Well, I think movie trailers are the most fun. CNN was great, and movie trailers are great. I’ve done a lot of movie trailers and I really love doing those because they’re challenging, the stakes are high, then you go to the theatre and you see the movie trailer and you hear your voice on it. It’s a big rush.
Paul: We’ve been talking with voice actor and owner of JurneyVoice Productions Bill Jurney, and you’re listening to A Pirate’s Life For Me. Well, Bill, we’d like to thank you for talking with us, and for letting us pass your story on to the Pirate Nation.
Bill: I really appreciate being a part of your show, and I really encourage the students at East Carolina to give it their best, to find their passion and go for their dreams, because it can really happen, you’ve just got to believe in yourself.
Jennifer: Thank you Bill.
Paul: Bill Jurney’s website is www.jurneyvoice.com.
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The High Point Enterprise Sunday (January 16, 2011)
The business of talk: Voice-over industry takes lots of patience, work
by Jimmy Tomlin
1 day 15 hrs ago | 164 views | 0 
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DON DAVIS JR. | HPE Shirazi Hunter, owner of VoiceTracs studio in High Point, admits he’s in a competitive field.
Practically overnight, Ted Williams – the Ohio street person with the golden voice – went from homeless and hopeless to limitless. Within days of being discovered, he was showcasing his impressive voice on national networks and recording a commercial for Kraft macaroni and cheese.
But generally, in the voice-over industry, there’s no such thing as an overnight success.
“I think for most people, it’s a long journey,” says Bill Jurney, a former High Pointer who spent four years doing voice-overs for CNN – where he won the industry’s coveted Gold ADDY Award – and now maintains a steady voice-over business in Los Angeles. “It’s building your skills as an actor. It’s reading thousands of audition scripts. You learn something every time, and over time you can develop your craft.”
Shirazi Hunter, owner of VoiceTracs studio in High Point, agrees that it typically takes time to break into the voice-over industry.
“My business has been developing for a few years now,” says Hunter, whose credits include voice-overs for Open Door Ministries and the Triad Health Project. “It’s a very competitive market, so it takes a while to develop some business.”
And contrary to common belief, it takes more than a golden voice to strike gold in voice-overs.
“I think the primary thing is acting,” says Jurney, whose 20-year career in voice-overs has included everything from movie trailers, audio books and commercials to infomercials, corporate videos and even telephone system recordings. “The voice is really secondary. What’s important is being able to convey what the writer of the script wants you to convey. The trend is not toward big voices – the trend is toward acting. Real is what’s really in.”
Again, Hunter agrees.
“As far as voice talent is concerned, you’re more than just an announcer – you’re an actor,” he says. “You have to do different characters. You may be working on a script that requires you to be funny, and if you had to read that script a hundred times, it wouldn’t be funny anymore, but you, the voice talent, still need to make the listeners find it funny.
“Then you may be reading a script the next day that calls for a very serious delivery – say, if you’re doing something for a funeral home – and you need to be very cool and calm and serious. It’s all about being able to interpret the copy and deliver a believable character.”
Jurney, who grew up in High Point, got interested in radio when he was about 14. He used to call football games with local broadcasting legend Max Meeks at A.J. Simeon Stadium, and he worked a number of radio-station jobs as he moved toward what would eventually become a career in voice-overs. Like many voice-over talents, Jurney works primarily from his home, where he has his own studio.
Hunter, who also has a home studio in his attic, got into the business about five years ago, when an instructor at Guilford Technical Community College encouraged him to think about a career in radio.
“I could wake up to your voice in the morning,” Hunter says the woman told him, alluding to his deep, mellow voice.
He’ll graduate this month from the Carolina School of Broadcasting in Charlotte.
“I’m ridiculously passionate about (the voice-over industry) – it’s a thing that consumes you,” Hunter says. “My wife will tell me ‘You need to come to bed,’ because I’ll be up late at night working on a script or reading. That’s how much I love it.”
While Jurney and Hunter are both complimentary of Ted Williams’ golden voice, they were less enthusiastic about his future in the voice-over industry, because he hasn’t paid his dues.
“It takes persistence, acting ability and business skills, too,” Jurney says. “It’s not just about the voice.”
Hunter, alluding to Williams’ substance abuse problems – he just checked into rehab – points out that he’ll need to work through those issues first.
“I’ve been through my own personal experiences, and the only way I’m able to do what I do today is by dealing with those demons,” he says. “We all have to pay our dues. There’s no leapfrogging over it or around it.”
jtomlin@hpe.com | 888-3579
———-
INTERESTED?
For more information about voice-over artists Bill Jurney and Shirazi Hunter, visit their websites.
Jurney’s website is www.jurneyvoice.com.
Hunter’s website is www.voicetracs.com.
| | 1 | |
Practically overnight, Ted Williams – the Ohio street person with the golden voice – went from homeless and hopeless to limitless. Within days of being discovered, he was showcasing his impressive voice on national networks and recording a commercial for Kraft macaroni and cheese.
But generally, in the voice-over industry, there’s no such thing as an overnight success.
“I think for most people, it’s a long journey,” says Bill Jurney, a former High Pointer who spent four years doing voice-overs for CNN – where he won the industry’s coveted Gold ADDY Award – and now maintains a steady voice-over business in Los Angeles. “It’s building your skills as an actor. It’s reading thousands of audition scripts. You learn something every time, and over time you can develop your craft.”
Shirazi Hunter, owner of VoiceTracs studio in High Point, agrees that it typically takes time to break into the voice-over industry.
“My business has been developing for a few years now,” says Hunter, whose credits include voice-overs for Open Door Ministries and the Triad Health Project. “It’s a very competitive market, so it takes a while to develop some business.”
And contrary to common belief, it takes more than a golden voice to strike gold in voice-overs.
“I think the primary thing is acting,” says Jurney, whose 20-year career in voice-overs has included everything from movie trailers, audio books and commercials to infomercials, corporate videos and even telephone system recordings. “The voice is really secondary. What’s important is being able to convey what the writer of the script wants you to convey. The trend is not toward big voices – the trend is toward acting. Real is what’s really in.”
Again, Hunter agrees.
“As far as voice talent is concerned, you’re more than just an announcer – you’re an actor,” he says. “You have to do different characters. You may be working on a script that requires you to be funny, and if you had to read that script a hundred times, it wouldn’t be funny anymore, but you, the voice talent, still need to make the listeners find it funny.
“Then you may be reading a script the next day that calls for a very serious delivery – say, if you’re doing something for a funeral home – and you need to be very cool and calm and serious. It’s all about being able to interpret the copy and deliver a believable character.”
Jurney, who grew up in High Point, got interested in radio when he was about 14. He used to call football games with local broadcasting legend Max Meeks at A.J. Simeon Stadium, and he worked a number of radio-station jobs as he moved toward what would eventually become a career in voice-overs. Like many voice-over talents, Jurney works primarily from his home, where he has his own studio.
Hunter, who also has a home studio in his attic, got into the business about five years ago, when an instructor at Guilford Technical Community College encouraged him to think about a career in radio.
“I could wake up to your voice in the morning,” Hunter says the woman told him, alluding to his deep, mellow voice.
He’ll graduate this month from the Carolina School of Broadcasting in Charlotte.
“I’m ridiculously passionate about (the voice-over industry) – it’s a thing that consumes you,” Hunter says. “My wife will tell me ‘You need to come to bed,’ because I’ll be up late at night working on a script or reading. That’s how much I love it.”
While Jurney and Hunter are both complimentary of Ted Williams’ golden voice, they were less enthusiastic about his future in the voice-over industry, because he hasn’t paid his dues.
“It takes persistence, acting ability and business skills, too,” Jurney says. “It’s not just about the voice.”
Hunter, alluding to Williams’ substance abuse problems – he just checked into rehab – points out that he’ll need to work through those issues first.
“I’ve been through my own personal experiences, and the only way I’m able to do what I do today is by dealing with those demons,” he says. “We all have to pay our dues. There’s no leapfrogging over it or around it.”
jtomlin@hpe.com | 888-3579
———-
INTERESTED?
For more information about voice-over artists Bill Jurney and Shirazi Hunter, visit their websites.
Jurney’s website is www.jurneyvoice.com.
Hunter’s website is www.voicetracs.com.
