Voice actor chose to play Jones in very familiar fashion to Hogs' fan base

DALLAS — While some of the Arkansas fan base may not recognize the voice of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones at all, a large portion, most of whom live in North Texas, recognize both voices of Jones immediately.

For decades now, Dallas radio host Gordon Keith of "The Ticket" has been performing on-air skits as the "Fake Jerry" Jones. It started as a highly played-up departure from the real Jones, but as the years have passed, the owner of that Cowboys that is a former Razorback has drifted toward his fictional counterpart enough that it's hard to tell the difference at times.

However, at some point in the near future, everyone on earth will have the opportunity to see if they can discern the two. That's because Keith has wrapped doing voiceovers for an upcoming 10-episode cartoon series called "Keeping Up with the Joneses."

The premise of the show is the Newberry family moving into a wealthy Texas neighborhood where it turns out they are neighbors with the Jones family. However, unlike Ronald Reagan, who was a neighbor of the Banks family on "The Fresh Prince of Belair" through name drop only, Jones is an active part of the show.

While the "Fake Jerry" voice is what really launched Keith's radio career at the Marconi Award winning station, it was his unwillingness to respond to e-mails that almost kept him from riding it to an acting credit.

I started getting these emails from a woman who claimed she was a Hollywood casting agent," said Keith on "The Musers" podcast, a work separate from the trio's usual morning broadcast. "And I'm really bad about returning emails and going through it. I mean, I have emails stacked up from about 15 years of stuff I'm getting around to responding to. So I see it, [but] I didn't respond. And I saw she sent a follow up. Don't respond. Third one, I just say, 'Okay, I'll get to it. I'll get to it.'

"So time goes on and eventually my our boss from the radio station in Dallas, he says 'Hey, this woman called me up. She's a casting director for Warner Brothers in LA and they're trying to get a hold of you, and you won't respond to their emails.'"

Feeling guilty, Keith finally reaches out to Warner Brothers and finds out he has been hand-selected to try out for a role he has played for pretty much all of his adult life — Jerry Jones.

"She says, yeah, there's this new show, and it has Jerry Jones in it, and one of the creators has been asking [that] I read for it, to come in and read for this part of Jerry Jones. And so I said, Yeah, that sounds good to me."

Despite all of the experience of performing as Jones, Keith was uneasy, especially once he saw how the audition was going to unfold.

"We had this big Zoom call, and I was pretty intimidated by this, because it's like, I've never done anything like that before in my life," Keith said. "I'm going to read for a part on a national show as a ridiculous voice.

"When it comes time for the Zoom call, you know, there's all those people in the room, and I have to do the Jerry voice and, and they were great and nice and, and lo and behold, I get the follow-up after that meeting that, yeah, you know, you got the deal where we send the contract to," Keith said. "What's your agents name?"

It had never occurred to Keith that he would need an agent in this situation, so he didn't have one available to handle the contract details. However, everything got sorted out and by late July he felt comfortable enough to announce he had wrapped all voice work on the character.

"So, I should try to approach him this training camp and tell him, break the news to him," Keith said. "I'm gonna break the news. I wanna say, hey, look, I just want you to know that there's a cartoon of you that's about to come up nationally, and I have wronged you, and I just wanna apologize for what you're about to see and then just walk away and see if he has any reaction."

Keith is used to tough audiences, although this may present a much different dynamic. When word finally trickled out that he was the one performing the "Fake Jerry" part on Dallas radio, he started getting positive feedback from members of the Cowboys organization.

The team shared stories of people coming up to them and talking about how much they loved specific "Fake Jerry" and also "Fake Chan Gailey" while citing specific lines. However, it wasn't until the man himself officially recognized the character that the worries or tension settled.

"I remember one time when we were talking to Jerry about this, about the fake Jerry, and he was with somebody else, I can't remember, and he said, 'Oh yeah, these are the guys that do the fake Jerry voice on their show,'" fellow Musers co-host Craig Miller said. "And then he turned to one of his buddies and hit him and goes, 'And they really give it to Jerry Jr,' like Jerry thought that was funny."

There is no official release date for the project at the time of publication. However, it is confirmed that it will air during the Adult Swim portion of Cartoon Network line-up.

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