Keith Brunson:
Hello again, and welcome to The Voice Choice. I'm Keith Brunson. Here on The Voice Choice, we get to meet the people you hear that you never see in documentaries and commercials and all of those voices behind the scenes that you hear but you never see. So today we're going to introduce to you a gentleman who began his voiceover career which led to a producing and a directing career and we welcome to the program, David Darby. David, welcome.
David Darby:
Hello. It's good to be here, Keith.
Keith Brunson:
Thank you so much for joining us. I call you the Man With No Plan. Would you begin your story as you shared it with me about the hitchhike from Louisiana into San Francisco? Tell us the story.
David Darby:
Well, after college, everybody was wondering, "Where do we go? What do we do?" We were all about 21 years old and there was one thing I was determined not to do and that was to head home, back to the parents to see what happened. So I thought ... It was almost like throwing a dart at a map. I thought, "Well, I hear they make movies in San Francisco, that's in California, rather. Why don't I go there?" So turns out I had a friend who was also going to the West Coast after school and got a ride with him and off we went to San Francisco, which began a lifelong, oh, effort of knocking on doors, looking for work and meeting as many people as I could.
Keith Brunson:
Is it true that you left with $230 and no connections in your pocket?
David Darby:
Oh, that's right. That's right. Because it didn't really found that you don't get assurances along the way and you have to put a little faith in serendipity, a little faith in the belief that things are going to work out, so long as you steer clear of trouble and you're aware of what's around you and you keep plugging away. I actually found that people were very welcoming to somebody who just kind of landed out of nowhere and took an interest in them to ask them for work. It was a fun part. Very little resources, looking to land a job before all the money ran out. Fortunately I did.
Keith Brunson:
How long did that take?
David Darby:
Two weeks.
Keith Brunson:
Two weeks.
David Darby:
Yeah. Two weeks in the life of a 21 year old is practically a career. I was in San Francisco. I was wondering, "Is anything going to turn up?" and I was looking at the next plan B, which was hitchhike to Los Angeles and try it all again there. Where the money would come from, I didn't really know. Wasn't being much supported by my family in this endeavor and really didn't want it because you go out, you're on your own, you need to do it on your own. Fortunately, I got a job at a film lab, which taught me a lot of the basics behind the scenes, what it takes to put together a film from a lab perspective, and that turned out to be great.
Keith Brunson:
Good story. After you worked at the film lab, when did you get into voiceover per se? Your first paying job. How long did that take?
David Darby:
Oh, that took a couple of years. I consider myself lucky because I was in the midst of voiceover.
Keith Brunson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David Darby:
I saw it all around me. I had grown up in a voiceover announce booth with Father who did voiceover. Because I went on to work with production companies, I had the opportunity to lay down tracks. If somebody says, "Hey, listen, we need a scratch track for this piece we're doing, here's the copy, step in the booth and read for us." Kind of without direction, without expectation, and really without much risk, I was able to practice, to try it out, and it made a little money doing that. While also being in the milieu of production, you could also see professional voice talent, work with them, be at their sessions when they were cast and they were doing the tracks for real.
Keith Brunson:
Your father had a dynamic effect on your life from the Montgomery, Alabama situation. Explain to the audience what it was like to have a father like him and the effect he had on your life.
David Darby:
It's interesting when you have a father who's a public figure in a way, because he was known by many, seen by many, so as a kid being out in public with the family was often a recognition event.
Keith Brunson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David Darby:
"Hey, you're Bart Darby. I know you. How you doing, Bart?" The good thing there was that Dad who was very well dressed, very good looking and everything, very poised, practically had no ego and nothing went to his head. He was friendly and open and receptive to everybody who came his way and he just wanted to do the best he could do it, whether it was on camera or on mic. So I saw this, I grew up in it. It was great fun to be around a television studio from the early beginnings in the 1950s in Montgomery, Alabama, then Birmingham, Alabama, up to the early sixties, onto New Orleans, where we had a lot of opportunities to go to the TV studio, hang out, be in the control room, sit in the booth real quietly when Dad did the station IDs. That was just an absorption, an exposure, that just went on year after year.
In fact, I once told my dad, "Hey, let me step in front of the mic. I'll do the next station ID. Nobody will know the difference, because I sound just like you. Give me a shot." Of course he never did. He was AFTRA, he wasn't going to do that.
Keith Brunson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David Darby:
That's just kind of an early thing. "Let me have a shot, Dad, give it to me." Life is like that. You want to take the reins, you want to carry the torch.
Keith Brunson:
Well, let's let the audience hear what you sound like. So Mike, go ahead and roll the audio track. Let's just take a quick listen to David's voice and the influence his father had on his life.
David Darby: [In Cutaway]
And now please welcome back your host, Jason Silva. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the day two general session of Information on Demand, Think Big. Our next guest claims to have access to portal worms that let you see into the future. Please welcome strategic advisor, innovation and strategy at Citigroup and visiting professor of engineering systems at MIT, the eminent Irving Wladawsky-Berger.
Keith Brunson:
One of the things that I noticed, yeah, about your video and documentary work that you're involved in right now was I could not help but notice your strong stance with the CDC against the opioid crisis. We're going to let them hear that after you explain to me your passion for why this has to leave society.
David Darby:
Well, it was an honor, really to be asked to record a series of PSAs and longer narration that promotes the use and the awareness of the drug Narcan. It's a vital tool in saving lives for EMTs, firemen, policemen, and even in homes. A lot of people, they have Narcan in their homes because if somebody's at risk for whatever reason and they happen to experience an overdose, with Narcan they can reverse the effects and give professional medical technicians a chance to save a life. It's made a big difference. A lot of people will acknowledge how important it is to what they do out in the public saving lives.
Keith Brunson:
Okay. Let's take a look at that video right now and we'll come back right after we hear it.
David Darby: [In Cutaway]
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, overdoses have reached epidemic levels. Anyone who takes prescription opioids, such as oxycodone, morphine, and codeine, or illegal opioids, such as heroin and members of their household are potentially at risk of experiencing an accidental life threatening opioid overdose.
But what happens during an opioid overdose? Due to their effect on the part of the brain which regulates breathing, opioids in high doses can cause people to experience signs of breathing problems and severe sleepiness or not being able to respond, potentially leading to death. Narcan nasal spray is the first nasal formulation of Naloxone to be FDA approved as a prescription medicine for the emergency treatment of a known or suspected opioid overdose.
Keith Brunson:
Well, it's obvious that you have a lot of passion about Narcan and are very present to this opioid epidemic that we have in this country. We'll talk more about your passions after we take a break and from our sponsor, Shure. We'll be back right after this.
Eric Holloway:
This segment of The Voice Choice is sponsored by Shure and this is the voice of God. Actually, I'm not God at all. I'm Eric Holloway, a voice actor, and when I want to sound my very best, I depend on Shure microphones. It delivers the sound I want. So how am I doing?
Keith Brunson:
David, when I talk about the Man With No Plan leaving Louisiana, making it to San Francisco, working within two weeks, being a vagabond has been a lifestyle that's really worked for you, hasn't it?
David Darby:
You face this concept of aloneness. Whether I was hitchhiking or going up in the Shenandoah Mountains in Virginia to camp alone, just really to think, it's a youthful journey and it's a very romantic one. I found it was right for me. I enjoyed it. It was reflective because prior to the college experience, I wanted to go into politics. I was really interested in government. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. In high school I'd always run for office, so I'd had a chance to get up and give speeches and get the vote. Well, it was kind of exciting.
When I got to college. It just didn't work out for me for no particular reason. I wanted to find out more and particularly I wanted to find out more about myself. As I think a lot of young people do, that involved a lot of writing, a lot of thinking, a lot of reflecting on what life is all about. That led to just spending time alone, going places, doing things, and taking risks in order to have these experiences. I always felt that if you open yourself up to the possibilities, things will happen. It's not unlike what they say. The phone's not going to ring until you start putting calls out there. You make yourself available, then good experiences can come. Having a kind of a positive outlook helps too, because you're not fearful and you don't think you're going to meet with harm.
Keith Brunson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), right.
David Darby:
I kind of think that you can build the world around you to an extent as you would have it. When you greet life with expectation and you put in the work necessary, you are likely to get the results you were going after.
Keith Brunson:
Al Pacino says the secret to his success is, "I show up." One of the things that you did is with nobody to invite you into the community of show business is you showed up. Talk to our audience about how important it is to get the very basics right.
David Darby:
Well, you need to see yourself in the position where you want to be. If you want to be in front of the mic and you want to be telling stories and you want to be voicing commercials or whatever it is, you do have to see yourself in that role. Breathe it, think it, and live it and make yourself available to all those opportunities that come along. I was able to, and this helped a little bit, as a director-producer, I was able to see what real pros do and benefit from that. My immersion included a lot of that. On the other extreme, my immersion in the world of voice acting, if I walk down the street, I'm reading out loud to myself every sign that I see, every billboard. How do those words play? It's just a play of words and the color and the shape that they take on that's really very dramatic. You're creating an inner world while putting out there and projecting the outer world that the viewer can enjoy.
I think that's the source of honesty. It is a challenge for everybody who wants to be a voice actor. People need to feel you're speaking to them, that you're speaking from the heart, that you're getting honestly of yourself, that you know your subject, that you've got something you want to share off of the script page that reflects who you are and you want other people to know about it too. I think that's what compels action, because a lot of what we do is to, oh, influence behavior, whether it's through a purchase or whether it's through joining a common cause or simply to enjoy and grow through information in the documentary realm, let's say.
That for me was the path. One of the things I think I noticed that people who do a lot of radio have an opportunity to just speak and that's what you need to do, I think, to find your own voice. Just speak and have it flow naturally. It's not about getting that page and saying, "Okay, let the performance begin. I'll reveal myself through this copy." That's the superficiality of it and you have to move beyond. Internalizing things, really ... It's act and you need to give of yourself and that's what audiences, viewers respond to.
Keith Brunson:
Talk to us just a little bit about what you're working on now. It's not like we're speaking only of your past life, but you have a project that is coming up of which you are above the line, meaning producing, directing. Tell us what you're working on.
David Darby:
Well, I'll have a series of short documentary films coming up that are sponsored by a corporation that'll be used at a tech conference. They really tell the story of individuals, many of whom are quite young, who have taken up their passion to influence climate impact on the earth, to make food delivery and resources more available to more people using technology.
Keith Brunson:
Mm.
David Darby:
Individuals who look at cyber security and say, "Where are we at with this and what can we do to make ourselves more secure?" Short little stories like that where I'm able to interact with people, capture what they have to say, and really go in for the essence of who they are. You could see it as the same kind of discovery process that you go through when you're voicing a script. You just really want to get down to the essence of things and you want to be moved and you want to move people.
Keith Brunson:
With this particular project, you're going to be able to do just that.
David Darby:
I think so. I think so. I'm fascinated by the subject, but I'm always fascinated by anything I step into. You've got to own it. You've got to make it your own. That's my philosophy. That doesn't always, for some, make a requirement because everybody has their technique of how they get to where they need to be for something to be delivered and to be effective. But I'm ready to engage when I go in, whether it's in front of a microphone, engage with the copy and engage with the listener, or whether it's telling a story from behind the camera to really give to the audience this realistic feeling that's what this person's all about, isn't it fascinating?
Keith Brunson:
Looking back on it, on that given day from Louisiana with $230 in your pocket, was it worth it to take that risk?
David Darby:
I had a mentor always used to say he was a momentum player and there's a lot of truth to that. I feel myself I'm a momentum player because with very little in the way of resources and getting the ball rolling, one thing does lead to another, but you have to a kick it off and get it going. I think of a lot of people ... Generally people are, they want to hire you. They want to bring you in. They're looking for somebody so I think it's important to also remind yourself that you've got what they need. It's not just that you want what they've got, but you have something to offer. Know what that is, make it clear, appealing, and attractive to whoever you want to join forces with or work for, and that'll set into momentum this kind of event after event. Eventually it takes you places.
Keith Brunson:
How important in the early years was training, studying the voice, being coached? What role did that play?
David Darby:
That's a big role and classes are great, but every teacher will tell, "Don't live ... A class is not a career. Workshops are not a career. Do them and get out and do the hard work of marketing yourself." We can all do better at that. I feel that I can, but study being around others who are also studying is so key. I've taken lots of workshops, individual coaching, classes, basic acting classes too, which is very important. One of my first voice coaches said, "David, this is all great. I think we've got some nice tracks we've laid down here. You need to acting class. It could be at the YMCA, it could be anywhere, but just go study basic acting." That's a very freeing experience. I did that and I got a lot out of it.
Keith Brunson:
For those of you who are watching this show no matter where you are in the world, if David has in some way interested you with his journey and you're thinking that just maybe just sort of not really sure you might have the it factor, we can offer you voice classes at voiceshopcoaching.com. The way that it works is that you simple contact us and then from there, we can put you in an entry level class, or if you want to learn how to do a dialect, but just go to voiceshopcoaching.com and you will be able to get the coaching that you need no matter what your level is.
I noticed, David, in conclusion, that you have a bit of a interest in vintage cars.
David Darby:
I do.
Keith Brunson:
They're beautiful.
David Darby:
They're fun.
Keith Brunson:
I've been a sports car guy all of my life and as we're looking at these picture of you in these beautiful beasts, how many cars do you have in your collection?
David Darby:
Oh, I don't have a collection. It's kind of a one of a kind thing.
Keith Brunson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David Darby:
Growing up my father with no mechanical experience purchased 1953 MGTD. He took it-
Keith Brunson:
Good car.
David Darby:
Yes. He took it down to the frame and did a frame up restoration all by himself without prior experience. That's terrifying to me, but watching that and being around it I think it instilled a love for British vintage cars. Mercedes-Benz was a client for a long time and through working for Mercedes-Benz, I developed a passion for their cars. I tended to work this way, that whatever project, became a devotee of whatever product I was working on. Certainly with cars, that's pretty darn easy. Walking up Broadway in Manhattan in the Upper West Side, I spotted a 1970 280 SE four door sedan, a garden variety car, but a classic and very good looking and I took the plunge.
Keith Brunson:
As you should have.
David Darby:
Yes, yes. Because I think that reality sometimes just needs a chance to catch up with your dreams, but you need to have the dream first. You don't want to get hurt in the process, you don't want to go broke and you don't want to deprive others of what they might need, but if you seize that thing you have a passion for, then you get a chance to live with it and then you get a chance to maybe learn a little bit more about yourself. The current automobile I have right now is a 1967 Morgan Plus 4 and-
Keith Brunson:
Oh, shucks.
David Darby:
That car has just sort of rekindled my wanderlust from decades ago, because I love to get in the car and just go. With my wife as navigator, we just pull out the maps and say, "Here's a road we've never been on," and we go places where we don't see other cars, all we see are beautiful, windy roads and scenic vistas with farmhouses and everything else. That's a great way to get out there and just sort of take in the world. Sometimes I think, "Maybe let's just get in that car and keep on going," because it's such an adventure and such fun.
Keith Brunson:
Well, as we conclude, I would like to know what's left for you to prove?
David Darby:
Well-
Keith Brunson:
What's left to do?
David Darby:
Ah, I ask myself that. I really do. Maybe part of this is having grown up in the South and we live by our stories. Sometimes we mythologize our lives and we expand them. We might sentimentalize them, but whatever it is, for good or bad, we hold our past and our hands and we say, "Wow, what was a value there? What were the good times we had and the fun people we've known along the way?" I would say, well, we've got great memories, but what about the future? What are going to be our memories for the future? That's what you have to do now. I tell myself, "It's not it over. Keep building those experiences, because you're going to have a lot of fun, not just doing them, but a lot of fun looking back on them"
What lies ahead is really how to stage this coming out of COVID-19 isolation-
Keith Brunson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David Darby:
And confinement and what will happen then? I'm really looking forward to when, whether it's finding new ways or reverting back to old ways, people getting together and doing what we love most. I can't wait to get back into the booth at a recording studio because that's a very special place. You've got people on the other side of the glass, the script is there, it's spontaneous, it's happening in the moment. You can see when people are happy, you know when you've got it right, and you get a chance to try it again, to experiment. I'm really looking forward to being back with people, recording great tracks, and also being on the road with a camera and capturing great stories.
Keith Brunson:
Well, I think that we, as a society, are almost there, at least I hope so, but I would like to thank you, David, for joining us today here on The Voice Choice. Big inspiration, not just your story, but I've got to say your cars. I love them, I can't help it. It's a condition that I have. Love the sexy sports car, always have.
David Darby:
We got to express ourselves, right?
Keith Brunson:
Yes, we do. Thank you so very much for joining us today and we will speak to you next time.
David Darby:
Thanks for having me and good luck everybody out there. Know that the fun lies ahead.
Keith Brunson:
Thank you so much for those kind and closing words, David.
David Darby:
You're very welcome.
Keith Brunson:
Bye.
David Darby:
Bye-bye.
Keith Brunson:
See you.
