More Music From The Lost Great Plains Recordings
Something From Nothing
The Voiceover Grind
When you make a living with your voice, you sometimes take on work that’s far from glamorous. Sure, it can feel important at times. But over the decades, I’ve spent countless hours narrating tractor sales training videos, describing corn seed genetics, or instructing State of Indiana employees on how to use their accounting software.
Back in the early 2000s, I made weekly visits to the former Great Plains Recording Co., where I recorded scores of on-hold messaging scripts. It might have been a car dealer’s hold message in Colorado or a furniture store in Kansas City. If you called Tavern on the Green in Manhattan to make a reservation back then, that was me, kindly asking you to “hold for just a moment until someone can take your reservation!”—before launching into menu specials and upcoming events.
I often had ten or fifteen scripts at a time, earning $10 per script. On a good voice day, I could power through them in an hour or two. Not bad money. But for better or worse, I always saw it as the grunt work of voiceovers. There was an additional upside to the extra income.
As a singer-songwriter, it was only natural that I occasionally traded my voiceover work for studio time at Great Plains. Joe Koelling, the studio’s owner and producer, was always supportive of my songwriting and generously lent his skills and musicianship to the handful of tracks I recorded there.
Recently, I unearthed some old thumb drives containing those lost Great Plains recordings, and listening back, it felt like I had written them just yesterday.
(See my previous Substack post about the song Showtime.)
Something From Nothing
Years later, I rediscovered Something From Nothing and was reminded that I originally set out to write a whimsical song about fame—the fickle, unpredictable nature of who becomes a star and who doesn’t. But the song took a different turn, leaning more cynical than whimsical.
The idea started with a simple do, do, do, dooo melody that came to me during a long walk. To this day, I still create little earworm melodies in my head as I walk, setting them to the rhythm of my steps. When I got home, I picked up my guitar, found the right chords, and waited for inspiration to strike.
Auto-Tune and the Early 2000s
Around the time I was writing the song, Auto-Tune had become the secret weapon of the recording industry. Suddenly, pitch correction wasn’t just a tool to clean up minor imperfections—it was the foundation of entire careers.
Many of the biggest pop stars weren’t great singers, but with the right production, they achieved fame, fortune, and mass adoration. Their songs were undeniably catchy, their images perfectly packaged for teenage consumers, and their performances often little more than highly polished lip-sync routines.
As a sometimes-pitchy vocalist myself, I had mixed feelings. On one hand, the technology was impressive. On the other, it was disheartening to realize that authenticity was taking a back seat to marketability. I promised myself that I’d always stay true to my voice, no matter how many retakes it took to get close enough to perfect—my own, admittedly loose, definition of perfect. After all, if I wanted to perform my songs live, I needed to sound like me, not a machine-polished version of me.
At the same time, I was watching legendary artists—the ones who had once filled arenas and sold millions of records—struggle to book small venues and dinner theaters. Some were simply surviving on their merch and mixtape sales in the lobby. Meanwhile, newcomers with little more than manufactured talent were topping the charts.
That paradox fascinated me. Why does one artist, whose talent is engineered in a studio, skyrocket to fame while another, whose raw talent is undeniable, struggles to book a bowling alley gig?
Recording the Song
As it turned out, Something From Nothing didn’t directly answer that question. Instead, it played with the contradictions of fame—the mystery of why one artist captures lightning in a bottle while another is left in the dark.
The recording features some stellar guitar work by Joe Koelling, with Krista Haugland providing beautiful keyboard layers and backing vocals. I was struggling with the lyrics for the refrain when Joe suggested I keep the original do, do, do, doo’s as placeholders. In the end, they stayed, becoming part of the song’s hook.
Listen to Something From Nothing on Spotify (below) or wherever you stream your favorite music.
You can also listener HERE:
You want somethin’ but you got nothin’
So you take a little somethin’ that you ain’t got
And you mix it in with a little spin
Til your little bit of nothing is gettin’ hot
And the people start comin’ — yeah the people start runnin’
To get a little some of what you still ain’t got
And they keep on comin’ to get a little somethin’ from nothin’
Yeah they keep on runnin’ to get a little somethin’ from nothin’
Ain’t it somethin’ how much they can stand?
You got nothing to give but they don’t give a damn
And they keep on comin’ to get a little somethin’ from nothin’
Doo, doo, doo, dooo
Doo, doo, doo, doo
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doooo
You had power but you lost your juice
You’re just hangin’ with your cord just danglin’ loose
You’re lookin’ for a plug all over the place
You used to tap into a gullible human race
Cause they had the power to make you man of the hour
But an hour of power was all they could give
So you keep on comin’ to get a little somethin’ from nothin’
Yeah you keep on runnin’ to get a little somethin’ from nothin’
Ain’t it somethin’ how much you can stand?
You still got something to give but they don’t give a damn
And you keep on comin’ to get a little somethin’ from nothin’
I am honored to be invited to open for Chip Albright and Friends, Sunday, April 27th at xBk Live. Doors open at 4p and the show starts at 5p. Hope you can make it!
