Jack de Golia is “the Voice of Character.” He’s a veteran stage actor and public relations professional. Jack brings depth, warmth, and a wide range of character voicing to audiobook narration.
A native of San Francisco, Jack has a “neutral American accent.”
He’s a skilled character actor, with accomplished accents in High (RP) British English, Russian, Spanish, Texan, German, Southern, New York, and rural Western American English, among many others. Jack has pleased voice-over clients with commercials, video games, and e-learning work in addition to audiobook narration.
Jack’s audiobook work is at this Audible site.
Jack won AudioFile magazine’s Earphone Award in February 2018 for his production of the audiobook, Dirty Deeds. He also earned the special designation of “Audible Approved Producer” for the quality of his audiobook work.
A number of his books have been given very positive reviews in AudioFile Magazine, Audiobook Reviewer and reviewer blogs.
Jack holds a BA in Dramatic Art, and graduated with High Honors from the University of California, Davis. He’s a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.
Jack worked for over 35 years as a park ranger and later, a public information officer, for federal land management agencies in national parks, national forests, and other public lands in the West, as well as during wildfire emergencies nationwide. His work took him to national parks like Yellowstone, desert public lands in Arizona, and a national forest in Montana.
Jack has two grown sons and two grandchildren. Jack and his wife, a geoscience professor at UNLV, live in Henderson, Nevada.
How did you become interested in audiobook narration? What were your earliest days recording like?
I originally got into voiceover in 2009, specifically because of audiobooks. I’d been listening to audiobooks since they were on cassette tapes. But I was told by my first VO trainer that audiobooks didn’t pay any money so I should focus instead on commercials. I’ve done a few commercials, and really enjoy commercials with character voices. But my heart has always been in video games and longer form VO, e-learning and audiobooks. My degree is in Dramatic Art from UC Davis. Yet, my career before VO was in public information and education with the National Park Service and later the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service, mostly in the western U.S. Still, I was always looking for ways to be on stage, acting in plays from time to time during those years.
I booked my first audiobook in 2013, just days after George Whittam produced my first effect stack for Twisted Wave and delivered it—as it turned out, in the nick of time!
My earliest narrator days were consumed with the tech side of things. I developed a detailed “standard operation procedure” that I used to work as efficiently as possible. And that worked as long as I didn’t get carried away trying to produce “pristine” audio, which took forever.
According to your website, you perform “audiobooks, e-learning, cartoons, commercials and video games, and anything involving character voices.” How do the different media compare and inform each other’s performances?
All those genres have something in common, namely a microphone and a character, but that’s where the similarities end. Audiobook characters don’t require the same energy as, say, a cartoon character or video game villain. Still the basic questions for any character work are: Who am I? Where am I? What do I want? Why am I talking? and What am I feeling?
In your audiobook narration, you specialize in doing character voices. How do you determine what a character should sound like, and how do you keep all the voices straight in your head?
Well first of all I don’t try to keep the characters straight in my head. Once I “land” on a character voice choice, I copy a snippet of the character’s audio into a separate file, name the file for the character, and refer back frequently to it to stay on track.
I think one mistake new folks make is thinking their character dialogues have to be spoken in real time. I remind my students that VO is by and large, a recorded art form. So I pause to reset my brain, do the new character, adjust, redo as needed, and worry about the gaps later, in post production.
I’ve benefited greatly from Pat Fraley’s home study classes on character voices, especially his character voice elements grid. That expanded my possible character voice choices from the eight I do in the shower, to dozens. That took care of the physical side of a character voice. What’s then needed is the emotional side to give the character his/her uniqueness, and that can come from the questions I listed in the second question.
After a while, the main characters in an audiobook become second nature, become old friends, and I can go back-and-forth between them in dialogue more and more easily as the book moves along.
One thing I pay close attention to in making character voice choices is “sustainability.” Does it hurt? I once did a rough, gravelly voiced guy who I thought was a “one-line wonder.” Two books later in the series, he had a whole chapter and did me in for a week! So now I have to be assured that a character will be killed off—and soon!—and won’t come back as a talking ghost, before I do a voice “on the edge” like that.
You won an Earphones Award for Dirty Deeds by Armand Rosamilia. What was special about that book?
What’s special is Armand Rosamilia, one of several “unsung” authors whose books I’ve had the privilege of narrating. He has written zombie stories, horror stories, and a series of “slice of life” stories that I narrated, set in his home town of Flagler Beach, Florida. Another of the books I narrated for him is Skulls and Bones, which is a short story collection. Beasties is one of my favorites in that. So when he came to me about Dirty Deeds, I was ready and excited. The story is about James, an older private detective, who gets paid to kill kids not wanted by their wealthy parents. It’s a horrific premise, but Armand puts the saving twist on it by having the detective kidnap the kids and then place them in loving homes with foster parents. And he pockets the cash, too, of course! Along the way we meet some New Jersey mobsters, some FBI agents, and James’ amazing young assistant Marisa, who was one of the kids he rescued back when. Dirty Deeds 2 is out now, and DD3 is working its way through the ACX [Audiobook Creation Exchange] approval process. I think there’s at least a DD5 in the works.
The Earphones Award was just wonderful to get. And it told me that the work I produce at ACX is good quality on lots of fronts.
Timing is important in audiobooks, but especially thrillers and comedies. How do you determine the perfect timing to use for any given book?
I don’t think about it or analyze it, I go do it and then see if it works. Then I tweak as needed.
Of the many books you’ve recorded, which ones are most memorable to you?
Recently, I was part of a Blackstone Audio book called The Other Side of Everything, with narrators Katie Schorr and Lisa Flanagan. We each were first-person narrators of different chapters. The interesting part of it was that there was very little character “slop over,” and we each pretty much had our own set of characters. I played a retired guy dealing with his elderly neighbors while murders started taking out people in their group. It wasn’t until the audiobook came out and I listened to the whole production that I was fully struck by what a great job the three of us did! Each of us brought our unique sounds and I thought it worked well.
I’ve also been exploring public domain histories and mysteries via Spoken Realm. I just narrated an 1870 journal about a trip an early-day University of California professor took with 10 students to Yosemite. That was quite a trip in those days: horseback, six weeks, tough conditions.
I’ve also loved doing the Dirty Deed series, The Project series (by Alex Lukeman), and Vince Trigili’s Lost Tales of Power series.
Another set of stories are the Triple Shot series by Tonia Brown. I did several, and they’re very fun and cleverly written. My favorite is a short story about a vampire who goes to the dentist because one of his fangs fell out. (See Triple Shot of Vampires.) I read an excerpt of that at Johnny Heller’s New England narrators retreat last October. Great fun.
I also have a pseudonym and some erotica titles. But, that’s all secret information!
Out of your accomplishments, of what are you most proud? What has been your biggest challenge?
I’m proudest that I have a career in audiobooks. It’s what I do every day happily; it occupies my thinking. It’s one of the focuses of my teaching at Melissa Moats’ The Voice Actor Studio in Las Vegas.
I’m also proud that I was able to finally outsource the editing and proofing a few years ago. My wife complained about being an “audiobook widow” until I turned over the tech work to other ears. And using that process, with editor Chris Rain, I earned an Earphone Award.
My biggest challenge: building a career in Flyover Country (the 48 states that don’t have New York or L.A. in them). I live in Las Vegas, but I’ve enjoyed going to APA [Audio Publishers Association] events in L.A. and to regional workshops. The next mountain to climb: APAC 2019 [Audio Publishers Association Conference]. Maybe.
What advice that you were given when you started out do you now like to pass on to new narrators?
Study acting.
Technically, be organized and systematic. Follow a set of steps each and every time. Balance production with perfection. If you obsess, you’ll never get anything done. If you don’t pay attention to details, your audio will suck. Finding the balance is key.
What other narrators have most inspired you in your career?
In no particular order: Greg Tremblay, Johnny Heller, Steven Jay Cohen, Rosemary Benson, Jennifer Dixon, Al Kessel, Bob Sauer, Abby Elvidge, Daniel Dorse, Simon Relph, Gaynor Kelly, Simon Vance, Scott Brick, Andi Arndt, Tim Danko, Jeffrey Kafer, Ann Richardson, Paul Ruben. . . and before I list everyone I know or don’t know on Facebook, let’s just say the audiobook narrator community is a nurturing, learning group and I wouldn’t have lasted without them.
To check out more about Jack, visit the following sites:
www.jackwestcoast.com
Audible site
Audiobook Reviewer
AudioFile Magazine
