INTERVIEW: Voice Artist Jeff Hays
I listen to many audiobooks; as someone juggling family life with an endless passion for reading, any chance to sneak in a good story is precious. Last year, I dove headfirst into the phenomenon known as Dungeon Crawler Carl. The book itself is amazing, but the audiobook series truly takes things to another level, thanks mostly to the incredible talent of voice artist Jeff Hays. Jeff is like a one-person theater with over 200 audiobooks to his credit; he brilliantly brought characters like Carl and Princess Donut to life with his voice acting.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeff where we chatted about his approach to voice acting, his company Soundbooth Theater, and the voices he’s crafted to vividly bring Matt Dinniman’s story to life.
[GdM] Do you ever hear a character’s voice in your head when you’re not working? For instance, do they comment on your grocery shopping choices?
[JH] Haha, no. Fortunately the voices in my head get plenty of time to come out and play when I’m actually narrating. They’re content to keep to themselves and rest otherwise.
[GdM] What’s the longest you’ve ever had to record in one session, and how did you manage to get through it?
[JH] I’ve done 8-hour sessions before. That’s including small breaks of 5-15 minutes. As long as the voice I’m narrating with is close to my normal voice, I can do that with little issue. Never tried to narrate longer, but once I’m done with an 8-hour session, my voice is pretty tired but not painfully so.
On Dungeon Crawler Carl, I max out at about 5 hours. Carl’s voice is significantly deeper and more gravelly than my natural voice, so it fatigues my voice much faster. In fact, I really need to build up to sessions that long. When I narrate for DCC, I can feel my throat get uncomfortable, and it deteriorates in quality rapidly once I do.
[GdM] Vocal fatigue is real. What’s your go-to remedy when your voice is shot?
[JH] Whisky. Now, this is specifically the answer to the question AS WORDED. If my voice is SHOT, meaning it’s to the point it hurts or sounds bad, whisky can help me make it a few more minutes. But I haven’t done that in ages, and I don’t recommend it. I don’t recommend EVER narrating while your voice is shot, or recovery takes longer, and you may even damage your instrument.
To MAINTAIN a healthy voice for LONGER as you narrate, I recommend green or otherwise lighter colored hot tea, honey, and lemon.
[GdM] LitRPG, fantasy, sci-fi—you’ve done it all. Which genre feels the most like home for you?
[JH] LitRPG without question. I’ve done so many books in the genre, and so much of my business is catering to the LitRPG reader/listenership, that I’m always expecting stats, loot, game chat and snark in books that I read now! Though I love the genre, I do wish I worked more in different genres, just to change things up. As a reader, genre is not usually something I look for because I like it all and only really care about quality. But I am disproportionately attracted to noir and horror.
[GdM] Are there any dream books or series you would love to narrate?
[JH] The Aldair Chronicles by Neal Barrett Jr., The Reincarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony, Dragonlance by Weis and Hickman, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, anything by Dashiel Hammett…
[GdM] Jeff, let’s talk about Soundbooth Theater! Please give us a general overview for those unfamiliar.
[JH] Soundbooth Theater is the audiobook and Cinematic Audio production company that I started about 4 years into my narration career, in 2017.
As this company has grown—much faster than I could’ve possibly imagined, btw—my philosophy as a narrator and producer has spread throughout all the productions we now put out.
Fiction is made up. If I want listeners to stay engaged: as a narrator I have to convince them it’s real by feeling the way the author intends for the reader, whether broadly for the work as a whole or from one scene to the next, and channelling that to the listener.
Characters are the most important part of any story, so they need to be brought to life for the listener by the actors portraying them. The more closely the actor can believably sound how an author intends, or how a listener might imagine a character of that description, the more easily they can see those characters interact with each other within the work.
It wasn’t too long until I brought my true love, music, into our productions, and then sound effects. We’ve been practicing and slowly incorporating more and more of these elements into our productions, until the point we finally started making full-on audio drama. (Cinematic Audio sounds sexier, which is why we use that term, but we know audio drama is nothing new) And then, of course, when we got to a point that we wanted to produce more in this style, that’s when we made the decision to start our own distribution platform!
[GdM] Did you always envision it as the powerhouse it is today, or did it evolve organically?
[JH] Absolutely not. I figured the brand would help other narrators find success by giving us all a banner to share. Instead, it became a brand that meant quality, excitement and sincerity amongst listeners. Authors and publishers have noticed this, and now see our involvement in a project as a significant value-add, since throughout the years we’ve recognized our flagship titles and served them fantastically well by associating voices and sounds that resonate for listeners with them. Combine this formula with something as brilliant and widely appealing as Dungeon Crawler Carl, and now we’re almost a household name in the world of audiobooks, and I never would’ve imagined such success in my early-to-mid career.
[GdM] What was the catalyst for starting Soundbooth Theater? Was there a particular moment when you thought, “We can make this bigger and better?”
[JH] I was getting tired of working alone. I was happy to finally be creative in my work, but missed the social and cooperative aspect of being in a band. It wasn’t so much a business decision, as just a way to make my work more fun and exciting, and also to help other narrators find more success. Also… I was getting kinda sick of doing female voices. I got really good at them. That was one of the little tricks I was able to do to get a little extra attention back then, but not something I wanted to be known for the rest of my career. And of course, I believe that the best actresses are always just going to sound better. So, I found Laurie Catherine Winkel eventually, and recruited her to replace me in a series I was narrating in first-person as a female character (A Witch’s Path), then I found Annie Ellicott, I convinced her to stay at my house so she could do some female characters in my latest project, I directed her and trained her, and the rest is history.
[GdM] Soundbooth Theater is known for its full-cast performances, sound effects, and original music. What inspired you to push beyond traditional narration and create something more theatrical? Were you influenced by any specific full-cast audiobook or program?
[JH] There were some initial inspirations in audio drama. Locke and Key was pretty big when I first started narrating. I’d listened to Neverwhere in college. And as a toddler, I listened to a lot of storybooks on cassette from the library. But the real inspiration—for both audio in general and acting—has always come from film and TV, as the Cinematic Audio moniker implies. As a musician, I’ve always been obsessed with sound, so it was only natural that my desire to incorporate more sound into our productions would eventually result in this direction for me.
[GdM] What’s the ultimate dream project for Soundbooth Theater? What would you LOVE to produce without limitations or budget constraints?
[JH] Legends and Lattes! I’ve read both books in Travis Baldree’s series, and not only do I think we can bring it to life beautifully, but I think the format of the stories lend themselves really well to our production style and an episodic release. Plus, we could work with Travis on original stuff, make a sort of cozy sitcom out of it. (please don’t take that word with it’s often negative connotation, I think we could make a really compelling and heartfelt “sitcom”)
[GdM] Dungeon Crawler Carl has become a phenomenon. I powered through the series (books 1-5) and barely slept for two weeks, and “God Damnit Donut” has now entered my permanent lexicon.
[JH] Thanks for being obsessed! Apologies for the ear worm.
[GdM] The audiobooks are developing a cult-like following, primarily due to your incredible narration. When you first read Matt Dinniman’s work, did you immediately know it was something special? Did you think, “Yes… a talking cat with a Mid-Atlantic accent?”
[JH] I immediately knew I wanted to work on it, and that it fit my own tastes perfectly. However, that’s not often a good indicator of commercial success! I had no idea it would do even close to as well as it did, so for that I will always be bewildered and incredibly grateful.
[GdM] How did you develop Carl’s voice? Did you go through multiple iterations, or did he just come to you fully formed?
[JH] It was pretty much instant. I saw the picture of him on the cover, noticed he was a big, chill dude, and I’d been using my Patrick Warburton impression as a character voice for a long time, so that was already pretty well developed. He’s been in so many roles I loved, but always type-cast in this way, so it was a no-brainer.
HOWEVER, you will notice that Carl’s voice has developed even more over time, and he sounds pretty different from what he did in book 1. I would attribute that to me becoming more familiar with the character as the series went on and just naturally adjusting along the way.
[GdM] Does Matt ever play the “let’s stump Jeff” game with unusual accent combinations? For example, an Icelandic rugby player with a New Zealand accent and a lisp? Or perhaps a thousand-year-old surfer in the body of a teenager who is both Zen and keen on tasty waves?
[JH] Several times a book, now! Just listen and you’ll notice. I say BRING IT ON!
[GdM] Do you have a favorite moment or scene from the series that was particularly fun or challenging to narrate?
[JH] When Donut gives Bea the business. Listeners who’ve made it that far will know exactly what I’m talking about. The Butcher’s Masquerade is my favorite from the series, both in the story and my performance, and it also happens to be the only one I narrated cold. Meaning, I didn’t preread it before narrating. That scene caught me off guard, and made me tear up REAL bad. But the moment is incredible, and I still sometimes watch myself in the youtube video that’s out there and remember the feeling.
[GdM] Fans love your ability to make the humor hit just right. Comedy is generally tricky, but it seems like it would be doubly hard in an audiobook. How do you handle comedic timing when it’s just you and the mic?
[JH] It’s never just me and the mic. The scenes and characters are alive and vivid in my mind when I perform. Timing in a scene is an organic thing that happens between speech and thought for characters, so it emerges from the vision I have of them.
[GdM] With the series growing in popularity, would you be up for reprising your role if Dungeon Crawler Carl ever got an animated series or video game?
[JH] Hell yea!… for the right price. I’m VERY busy.
[GdM] Finally—be honest. Do you ever randomly slip into Donut’s voice when you’re off the clock? Maybe when ordering coffee?
[JH] Honestly, no. My character voices are for entertainment only! I keep my work and my personal life as separate as possible. At least when it comes to my voice.
Jeff Hays is a voice actor with tremendous range, a producer and narrator of over 200 audiobooks—including the beloved Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman—a musician and composer and Founding CEO of Soundbooth Theater. His creativity coupled with unrelenting ambition led him to launch Soundbooth Theater at the crossroad of these mediums.
This interview was first published in Grimdark Magazine Issue #42
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