Fred Newman is a celebrated actor, writer, storyteller, and vocal sound effects creator.

He has appeared on dozens of television programs, especially with Nickelodeon, PBS, and Disney Channel. He is well-known for his role as sound effects performer on the long-running radio program A Prairie Home Companion, now celebrating a 50th anniversary tour.

His performances where he provides astonishing vocal sound effects to improvised stories are legendary. Newman is, without question, a champion of storytelling and a devout lover of ambient sound.

Fred Newman will be the guest during the Saturday, December 2 presentation of The Flagpole Radio Cafe at Edmond Town Hall. The local show draws inspiration from the venerable A Prairie Home Companion, while enjoying its own distinctions as well.

Newman recently spent a few minutes chatting with Co-Producer Martin Blanco. It was a lively conversation frequently peppered with the vocal sound effects and impressions Newman is so famous for.

Martin Blanco: While in college, it wasn’t obvious that you would have a career in the arts not to mention one as prolific as it is eclectic. You graduated from Harvard Business School and then worked at Newsweek magazine. How did you transition from that world to the arts?

Fred Newman: Little footsteps along the way. I grew up in small-town Georgia and lived just across the street from my grandfather’s farm. I wasn’t on a farm, but I was around a farm and animals and all that. The one thing I feel as I get older and look back, is that I was really lucky that I had these great parents. I never ever doubted that my parents loved me. They didn’t say it; I just knew it.

I love sounds; I love stories and so I grew up at the foot of great storytellers. Every day my father would sit down at the table at six o’clock straight up; we’d sit down my brother, sister, and mother. Dad would say, “So what did you do today?” And if you didn’t tell the story in a certain way, Dad would correct you. Stories just became the way you communicate, not as performances, but softly over a table.

There was a woman that worked with the family, Dot was her name. And she would take me to the “black” side of town. And she said, “you got to hear this storytelling. You’ll love this.” There was a store called Jack Fling’s Cash and Carry Grocery Store. The Fling family owned the funeral home, and a Ford dealership, and an insurance company (I liked the funeral home — Fling Funeral Home was just great. It just sounded like you’re putting a garter on your finger and flinging it). So, Jack Fling was this great barrel of a man. He told stories. He’d rear back in a chair and put a loaf of Merita bread behind his head for a pillow and he would tell the stories.

But now you have to understand where this was. This was on the corner of Country Club Road and Red Line Alley. This is the mid-Fifties, and it’s on the “white” side of town. It’s a little mom and pop grocery store, but it is near a former slave cabin and servants’ quarters on a “black” street that still is there today on the “white side” of town. Everyone [black and white] from town came into this place to get cold Coca-Colas, and Moon Pie, and would sit down to hear stories from a mix of folks like Bread the Yard Man, Lawyer Weldon and all these people. That’s what I grew up with. My mom would just let me play there. There was a ballfield across the way from it and I would go every day after school, and I’d listen to these guys tell stories. And I learned all these things, like how to bark like a dog [he barks convincingly like a dog], and all this sort of thing.

MB: What compelled you to apply to Harvard?

FN: I went to the University of Georgia where I studied Political Science and took up metal casting. As soon as I graduated and took off the cap and gown, I was literally driven to Atlanta Airport and went overseas to Finland where I worked as a blacksmith for six months. Then I went to England, and I learned about carpet sales. I came back and was a carpet salesman in Dallas.

After a couple of years, I applied, as a lark, to Harvard Business School. And I got in — “Blacksmith in Finland, carpet salesman. Give us some of that.”

MB: Did any of your experiences at graduate school put you on the performing arts path?

FN: I realized that storytelling was what I did at Harvard Business School. There was a Professor Hayes. He was a finance guy and on the board of IBM. One day he said, “Mr Newman lay out a case.” And I did not have a clue. I had not looked at the case. And the deal is if you’re not prepared for class, you will fail that course. And I didn’t know what to do. In desperation, I stood up and put my hands on either side and I bat them like a fly. I made the sound of a house fly [he makes the sound of a fly] and I stepped around the room and I landed on the back wall of the classroom. And the place went crazy. And I just stayed there on the wall and the teacher started stuttering [he stutters]. It was an amazing moment. Afterwards, I went down to Professor Hayes and I said, “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t prepared.” And he said, “That was a very creative solution.”

I passed the course, and it gave me the confidence to go with what my strength was. I ended up graduating with honors, and I learned the strength of storytelling.

Then I went on to Newsweek magazine. During my two years there, I was doing a little stand-up comedy with my “sounds.” And I realized that the sounds were really cutting through. I’m doing my sounds and stuff like a foghorn, something where everybody’s riveted, and then I would tell stories with live sounds and things. So then I wrote a book, MouthSounds, where I show people how to make sounds.

One day around the time the book was coming out, I told my boss, “I’m just going to the john, I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Instead of the john, I went across the street and auditioned as a book author for The David Letterman Show, it was his live morning show. I went on an interview there and they said, “Come on the show.” I realized that at that time, book authors were touring. When I came back from Letterman, I told my boss that I was resigning. And he said, “what happened in the bathroom?”

So I left Newsweek, and I put my suits in the freezer and started doing television appearances wherever. And it was the best discipline.

I was on a kid show called Livewire on Nickelodeon. It was their very first sort of talk show for teenagers. On the show, I did my housefly routine. I stood up. I had a microphone on that was tethered to me. I got up and went through the studio [makes the fly sound again], and off the set. The mic ripped off and I eventually landed on the back wall of the studio. And the whole show kind of stopped. The audience thought it was hilarious. A week later the producers call me and said, “We’re looking for a new host for Livewire would you be interested?”

And that was my break into television. I did 200 one hour shows. I was horrible, horrible. But I learned a lot and I haven’t had a real job since then. And that was 1980. I was swimming upriver, and I had no idea where the river was going. It feels better this way. Storytelling was at the heart of it.

MB: What is your sense of the oral tradition and bringing stories to life with the human voice?

FN: It’s so basic. I don’t know if anthropologists would actually agree with me, but the definition of humans when we were coming along was that we are the toolmakers. And now we know that we’re not. Ants make tools too. Animals all over the world use tools; they manipulate objects and use them to get food and so forth. Toolmaking doesn’t make us unique.

We are Storytellers. We can’t not tell a story. And everything in our culture is about getting stories across to other people. What’s happened to storytelling is so fragmented now. But we’re still just sitting around the fire. It may be a phone, but we’re sitting around communal fire, and we swap stories, and we swap them faster.

I like sitting across from someone and talking to them. And if I want to talk to an audience, I’m there in the moment. It’s a piece of jazz; we’re going back and forth. And I try to keep it as intimate as possible. That’s why I think Garrison Keillor and I worked so well together. He was very improvisational. I’m doing a lot of his reunion shows now coming up. In the show, Garrison is laying a simple story, but you will see eyes glisten, and jaws drop as 2,000 people are hanging onto his word.

It’s pretty amazing to see what a story can do. I worship that. Religion is stories, and we fight over the stories. It’s what makes us human.

MB: How did you come to be part of A Prairie Home Companion?

FN: The first show I did was David Letterman, that morning show. The second show I did was A Prairie Home Companion as a book author, which is the only thing lower than a sound effects person. There’s no real rehearsal at all.

When it’s my spot, Garrison does his introduction [in Keillor’s voice], “This is Fred Newman author of MouthSounds and we’re going to talk to him,” and I walked out. I didn’t know enough not to sandbag the host. I went and said in the voice of a child, “Hi. My name is Baby Elizabeth,” and he said [in Keillor’s voice again] “Oh, baby, Elizabeth come sit on my lap.” And he mimed picking me up. Like I was really heavy. People are laughing. And I pulled out a harmonica and I did this little song called “Baby Blues.”

[He sings] “My diapers ain’t sweet. I got prickly heat. I say that in bed. Oh, baby blues.” And this was all just done there live. I was pretty fearless in that way because it seemed like oh, this is just storytelling. I had never heard of the show, but I loved what he was doing. I made a note that any time Garrison called, I would be there. I would drop whatever I’m doing to do A Prairie Home Companion.

Every couple of years I would get called for a Christmas show or a Fourth of July show. Tom Keith was the sound effects guy from day one until 2008. Around 2000, Tom decided not to do the travel shows. Garrison called me up and asked me to do them. When Tom died, I started doing the home shows as well. So I’d commute every week from New York to meet them wherever they were. We did as many shows in New York metro, as we did in Minneapolis. And that went on for 17 years, I think a good long time.

MB: Now you’re doing 50th anniversary reunion shows. I know there’s one coming up at the Town Hall in New York the weekend after our Flagpole show. What are these reunion shows like and what do they mean to the people performing them?

FN: We’ve done maybe five or six so far, something like that. We love working together and always have a great time together. It feels like a homecoming. The same thing goes; there’s almost no rehearsal. Garrison will have a script, and we’ll read it on Friday night. Then it’ll be different the next day, and we don’t get to rehearse it. And it just goes, you know. If one makes a mistake, if someone falters, the other will jump in there and fill the hole. It’s a great sort of live jazz thing.

I’ve never seen such adoring audiences that are so open, that will let you take them anywhere. And you know, if something doesn’t work, they go with you anyway. The greatest gift of all is to have audiences like that.

So Garrison is the greatest master I have ever known. He always had a script folded in his top pocket. He opens it up backstage and onstage he delivers it fresh night after night, even if we’re doing a month of tour. I have nothing but huge respect for him, because I learned so much about performing from him, just being offstage listening.

MB: You just revealed the secret of performing. The best actors, storytellers, musicians are good listeners.

FN: And you bring up something that’s the most important thing in my life: listening. I still record dawn and dusk wherever I go. Even on my honeymoon 100 years ago, I was recording dawn and dusk, just because that gave me the energy of where I was. It’s so hard to do that now with the noise pollution and with earphones; we’re passing through environments while only listening to our own environment. Everyone is separated. We’re no longer linked acoustically, like we used to be — riding the subway together and such. I think it’s one of the reasons for the great fragmentation that we’re seeing. People aren’t listening in groups, and it leaves us untethered.

I’m sitting and looking at a pond right now that I did record last night. I protect what I’m listening to because it’s really important. I have studied a sort of anthropology of sound. I always say, “Seeing is believing, but hearing is feeling.”

MB: We look forward to seeing and hearing you on December 2. Thank you, Fred.

Flagpole Radio Café is an evening of engaging music and compelling comedy performed by local professionals. The next show is Saturday, December 2, at 7 pm, at Edmond Town Hall, featuring special guest Fred Newman. Tickets are $45 for general admission seating. Visit flagpoleproductions.org or edmondtownhall.org for tickets or additional information.