A Prairie Home Companion‘s Fred Newman shares his sound effects secrets

Voice actor Fred Newman has appeared in numerous films and television programs over the years, including voicing the titular Bigfoot in 1987’s Harry and the Hendersons, Doug’s dog Porkchop and best friend Skeeter on Nickelodeon’s Doug, and innumerable video games. But he’s probably best known for as the long-running sound effects man on American Public Media’s A Prairie Home Companion. With just his mouth, Newman can create auditory landscapes that make it seem like you’re right wherever he wants you to be, whether it’s a crowded city street filled with colliding trucks full of goop or a wooded glade near a lake filled with loons.

I spoke with Newman by phone and got a one-on-one performance and insight into how and why the actor does what he does.

The Pitch: My wife and I went to Minnesota last year, and while we were out hiking around, we heard a loon. Thanks to your work, I could not help but immediately think of you and A Prairie Home Companion as soon as the bird called.

Fred Newman: Well, I don’t know how you meant that, but that is the best compliment ever. I love that. No one’s ever said that before, but it’s lovely. It’s not a bird sound that I grew up with, but it seems to be necessary to be part of that show for 15 years. I have a bunch of different ways to do it. I used to cheat it, but occasionally, I can hit it dead-on with just my [makes loon call].

I used to do it by blowing through my hands — no, wait. I didn’t. I did it with a taxi whistle. I’d just jiggle my bottom lip. If you can do a taxi whistle, you can do a good loon.

It seems kind of astonishing at the wide variety of sounds you make without anything but you.

It feels like I’m an impostor as a radio sound effects person, because I learned all of this from storytellers in Georgia. Some of them, I learned on my own — just whistles and other things — but these old guys, they would tell stories, and it would just be part of the story. There was this old guy names Snipes. He was about 90 years old, and he showed me a water drip. I saw him do it — 90 year-old guy, craggy face, gray hair — and he’s about three inches from me, and he does a perfect water drip.

It was like, “Oh, my gosh!” I’m six years old, sitting in a sandpile beside him, and he taught me that sound one hot summer day — just the sound of that one drip, coming off of the nail shed. That really changed my life. I couldn’t believe that perfect sound could come out of such an old face.

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When you need a little extra, what do you bring on the road with you: is it a case of stuff?

No. The original sound effects guy was Tom Keith, who was with Garrison [Keillor] from the ’70s, and he died maybe eight years, and I overlapped with him for a few years. He’d do the St. Paul shows, and I’d do the road shows. He had a pair of old women’s shoes, with stacked heels, that were leather. No rubber on the bottom, and he’d put them on a lanyard, so they’d hang. I still do that — they feel like vestments when I put them on. Those are Tom’s shoes.

So, I can walk, I can talk, I can do other things at the same time — I can have two people walking down the street at the same time. I can have one [clicks his tongue] myself, and do the other with the shoes. Then I take a dog collar — one of those choker collars, a chain collar — with dog tags on it, and those are the only things I take, other than a jaw harp, and some of those squeaker toys, that I can use to articulate into becoming the voice of a fly or something. But that’s it. That’s all I take.

Another thing that is a go-to thing for me — because you really can’t do it with your mouth — in the old radio rays was balsa wood. They would crack it for timbers, creaking in a mine, or you could rub it for creaking timbers in a sailing ship or a stagecoach. I use what is ecologically horrible, and that is plastic plates. They have to be Hefty plastic plates that have a varnish coating on them, so they won’t get soggy on you, and they snap wonderfully. I use them a lot of time for when someone is just sitting on a chair: “Oh, take a seat.” You can hear the cushion just move a little on the seat.

That’s really all that I do. When I started, I’d get the props out and Garrison would say, “No, no, no. Do it with your mouth: it’s funnier.” He realized that I didn’t follow scripts so well. He didn’t know that I was dyslexic, but he knew that I would look down and lose my place in the script very easily. It was better if he just made it up, and if I made the sounds with my mouth, it was so much faster, because I didn’t have to pre-set anything.

So, when we do the road show like we’re doing, I might take the dog collar, I might take the plates, and I will take the shoes — but I will not know what’s coming. That’s what makes it different from the old radio sound effects, and I think it makes it more theatrical. It’s also just more in my wheelhouse to do it that way.

One of my absolute favorite bits on A Prairie Home Companion is where Garrison Keillor will make up a story on the spot, with you coming up with the sounds as fast as he tells the story. How are you not breaking as he throws these ridiculous situations at you?

That evolved over time, and as much as I love Chris [Thile] and I love the new show and the musicality of it, I miss what Garrison was. He thinks in sound. His words are loaded with not just images, but sonics: “an entire Chevrolet Camaro loaded with manure.” [deep breath inward] And then, you’d hear his noise hairs as in he inhales, and he knows how you’re hearing that. He’s really good at that. We don’t have to have a set script. There might be things we repeat in shows, but I don’t know what’s really coming.

Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home “Love and Comedy” Tour comes to the Uptown Theater on Tuesday, August 29. Details on that show here.