By ELIZABETH SHEPHERD
For The Beachcomber

If the name “Voice of Vashon” hadn’t long ago been claimed for the local radio station, it might well have been an apt moniker for islander Jeff Hoyt.

Hoyt speaks with a resonant, mellifluous sound that is instantly recognizable to many locals. As the program director of Voice of Vashon, he has recorded many of the station’s public service announcements and he co-hosts the Morning Scramble show once a week. For years, he’s also emceed Vashon Allied Arts’ auction, the Vashon Community Scholarship Foundation’s spelling bee and the Strawberry Festival parade.

But many islanders might not know that Hoyt’s dulcet cadences aren’t only familiar here at home. They’re also heard on a daily basis by thousands, sometimes even millions, of people worldwide. He’s a top-tier voice actor who does it all: radio and television ads, web video, film narration, online learning courses and increasingly, audiobooks.

On a recent morning, Hoyt welcomed a visitor to the state-of-the-art recording studio in his home on Vashon, and explained, in an aw-shucks kind of way, the appeal of his particular voice.

“I’m the least versatile guy I know,” he said. “I don’t do dialects or extreme characters. I get cast to just be me, being me. Fortunately, there is a huge call for that. If people are looking for an everyday guy with a non-‘announcery’ voice, I can do that.”

His resume includes such household names as Bon Marche, Anthem, Blue Cross, Ford, Holland America, Mercedes Benz, Nintendo, Federal Express, Microsoft, Pizza Hut and Gillette. Recently, the Billy Graham Evangelical Association hired him to narrate three television documentaries, one of which is a television special about the famous preacher’s life.

Hoyt’s wheelhouse as the voice of the average Joe has earned him what he called “a very good living” in a highly competitive and increasingly global field. But he quickly clarified what he means by that.

“To me, a very good living is to make a livable salary, to be able to work from home in my bare feet and be able to go on vacation whenever I want,” he said. “Those are the things, to me, that make my job really enjoyable.”

Indeed, on the day he showed off his studio, he was dressed casually in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt and was shoeless. With a solid build, Hoyt has a physical agility that belies his 61 years — perhaps the result of his longtime involvement with the Vashon Island Rowing Club. A clearer sign of his age is a pate that is bald on the top but fringed around the perimeter with wiry white hair. His blue eyes signal both a keen intellect and a friendliness to others.

Some say that Hoyt’s successful career is owed to those smarts and people skills. Jamie Lopez, Hoyt’s Seattle talent agent — one of 13 middlemen he employs in various cities — had praise for Hoyt’s business acumen.

“A lot of people are talented. But I think what makes Jeff special is the service he provides,” Lopez said. “He’s super responsive and he over-delivers. He’s also a very warm and genuine guy. I think that might also be his secret rocket sauce.”

Brian Walter, a multimedia producer who has known Hoyt for 20 years, praised Hoyt’s mastery of the new technology that has kept his field ever-changing.

“He was the first guy to get a laptop, he had one of the earliest cellphones, and he was one of the first to have Wi-Fi,” Walter said. “He was one of the first voiceover guys who could do everything himself. He’s very skilled at an esoteric job.”

Hoyt’s easygoing yet efficient style was in evidence as he opened his recent workday with rehearsing, recording and editing a spot for a regular client, Washington State University. Somehow, he zipped up the process in less than five minutes. Next, he took a call from a producer and audio engineer in Pittsburg and worked amiably through several different takes of an ad for a bank.

“I regard this as my morning aerobic mouth workout,” he said, adding that he also does several auditions a day, all from home.

Hoyt’s studio has not only high-end digital equipment, but also homey touches, including fiberglass sound absorbers covered with a his children’s artwork.

Family is important to Hoyt, and he has collaborated with his wife, Cindy Hoyt, on everything from their VoV morning show to their four-year stint as head writers of The Church of Great Rain, a well-known Vashon variety show. Cindy also helped him write and edit two one-man shows that he performed on Vashon and in Seattle.

“When I write anything, it goes to her first,” he said. “Cindy has an editor’s sensibilities and can cut down something to its essence really quickly.”

The couple has two grown children, both of whom, Hoyt said, have inherited his silken vocal chords. Natalie Hoyt, 25, recently signed a contract to narrate her fourth audio book and has East Coast representation for her work. Eli Hoyt, 23, currently works as a flight instructor, but Jeff said he’s looking forward to hearing the gravitas with which Eli, as a pilot, will make announcements from the cockpit.

Natalie and Eli are the third generation of Hoyts with “the voice,” Jeff said.

“My voice came from my dad,” he said, explaining that his father was an award-winning TV news director and anchor. “He was a huge influence on me.”

Hoyt got his start in the radio business after college, where he majored in TV, radio and film. At age 26 — by then attuned to the volatility of a career as a deejay, after he was fired from a job — he and a friend took over a struggling recording studio in Little Rock, Arkansas, and built a creative services company called Hoyt & Walker.

The company became a pit stop for Bill Clinton during his “comeback kid” gubernatorial bid of 1982. Determined to answer any negative ads against him in the same news cycle, Clinton persuaded Hoyt & Walker to open their studio any time of the day or night to help produce immediate responses. The sessions often went on into the wee hours.

“I remember one night when Hillary fell asleep on our office couch,” Hoyt recalled.

By 1988, Hoyt was eager for a change and had fallen in love with Seattle during a trip with Cindy to scout good locations for his line of work. He and his partner first split their Arkansas-based business, Hoyt working from afar, and three years later they each amicably went into business for themselves.

In 1995, Hoyt stopped creating ads and began to focus almost exclusively on his work as a voiceover artist.

“By then, I had written, produced and directed 10,000 radio ads,” he said. “I thought, ‘I don’t have any new ideas.’”

He got the idea to move to Vashon in 1999, but first, he said, he had to make sure the island was equipped with the digital phone technology he needed for his home office. He still recalls the day he called CenturyTel to ask.

“As it turns out, they had installed [the service] the day before,” he said. That sealed the deal.

In his 16 years on the island, he’s occasionally opened his studio to help islanders who need his expertise. One of his favorite such favors, he said, was when he helped local aerial artists Esther Edelman and Martha Enson edit music for a performance. He loved watching them pantomime their high-flying moves as the music played, he said.

And despite his busy schedule doing voiceovers, he still occasionally takes jobs as an ad writer, director and producer. Currently, he’s directing a series of spots for the Central Washington State Fair.

In a long career, of course, not everything has rolled Hoyt’s way. But he’s found ways to laugh at the twists and turns. In 2005, he narrated the award-winning documentary “The Heart of the Game,” but after the film was picked up for distribution, Hoyt’s narration wound up on the cutting room floor. The rapper Ludacris was hired to replace him.

“I told people, ‘I just got replaced by Ludacris. I find that ridiculous,’” he said.

These days, Hoyt is also facing the inevitability of his vocal chords beginning to thin as he ages. That explains his increasing focus on recording audiobooks.

“The reality for voice actors is that they fade when they get to be about 70,” he said. “But in audio books, to have an older narrator is an appeal factor.”

And in the end, Hoyt is confident he’ll be able to keep doing the work he loves.

“I’m really good at sounding like a regular guy,” he said. “I’ll always be a regular guy.”