Interview with Kathy Peck Musician, Executive Director and Co-Founder, H.E.A.R. (Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers)
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AO/Beck : Hi Kathy, it's a pleasure to speak with you again. Please tell me about H.E.A.R. and what got you interested in starting this organization?
Peck: H.E.A.R. is a not-for-profit organization. In fact, we're incorporated as a 501-C3. We've been around since 1988 and we are dedicated to the prevention of hearing loss and tinnitus, related to noise exposure. Basically, I started the organization because I am a musician with hearing loss and tinnitus. When I looked around for information specific to my needs and the needs of the people I worked with, I found a void. So basically, we decided to fill the void as best we could. Two physicians and lots of audiologists have helped us a great deal. The physicians were H.E.A.R. co-founder Flash Gordon and Jerome Goldstein past Executive Vice President of the American Academy of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery. They both brought a lot of knowledge and expertise to H.E.A.R. and we've been very fortunate to work with them both.
AO/Beck: Who are the audiologists that work with you at H.E.A.R.?
Peck: There are quite a few. Mont Stong is an audiologist and a Board Member. He's been with us over ten years and directs the hearing clinic. Another excellent audiologist who worked with us is Pamela Ball and she is a past Board member too. Rebecca Meredith is another audiologist who has worked with us and she's in the video we supply that is required materials to physics classes in some 3000 school districts. The National Science Foundation helped to fund this project and we collaborated with the American Association of Physics Teachers on the 'Medicine: Hearing Chapter' curriculum textbook unit for High Schools. In the video and textbook chapter we talk about audiologists, rock music, hearing loss, hearing protection and other related topics. It's a pretty neat physics course and video and we're very proud of it.
AO/Beck: How can we get a copy of the H.E.A.R. video?
Peck: The video is on our web-site: www.hearnet.com and the Active Physics website: www.its-about-time.com/htmls/ap.htm has it too along with the Active Physics textbook units. In fact, I hope your readers will ask their school districts to obtain a copy of the video and physics textbooks.
AO/Beck: How is the website doing?
Peck: We get over a million hits per year from all over the world. In fact, we were a trivia question in VH1 - Rock n Roll Jeopardy. Vince Neal from Motley Crew was asked 'What is the organization co-founded by Kathy Peck to help musicians with hearing loss'? He answered it correctly. We were thrilled!
AO/Beck: Who is the main target audience for H.E.A.R.?
Peck: Primarily we work with musicians, but of course we also work with fans, students and young adults to offer hearing information, free screenings, hearing protection devices and referrals to audiologists across the nation and even worldwide via the internet. When we started H.E.A.R. , noise induced hearing loss was pretty much unknown to many of us involved in music. H.E.A.R. helps to educate the musicians and the public.
AO/Beck: Tell me a little about your musical background please.
Peck: I'm a bass player and a singer-songwriter. The band, which my career was based on, was the Contractions. It was an all-girl, power-pop, punk band. We toured with the Go-Gos, and Joan Jett. We opened for Duran-Duran and others. Basically, we were a typical rock band with some nice successes, and a lot of sound pressure! By the way, we have a H.E.A.R. benefit CD called ' H.E.A.R. This' coming out this winter with tracks from bands who support our efforts. It even has a Contractions cut.
AO/Beck: Did you ever wear hearing protection while rehearsing or playing on stage?
Peck: No, none of us knew anything about it. Hearing protection simply wasn't a part of it, we never thought about it. Additionally, I know my tinnitus gets worse when I'm under stress and pressure and it makes it very difficult to concentrate.
AO/Beck: And if I recall, your husband played guitar with the Steve Miller Band for a number of years?
Peck: Yes, he played in the 1970s with Steve Miller on Fly Like an Eagle and he did a bunch of the tunes on the Greatest Hits CD and on Book of Dreams. He didn't wear hearing protection either. We just never thought much about it. In fact, he has been diagnosed with hearing loss and he's currently shopping for hearing aids. I think the hearing aids will help him a great deal as he's doing a lot of production work and he works as a audio consultant and studio engineer too. I think the hearing aids are going to change his life.
AO/Beck: Kathy, what do you currently do, regarding hearing protection, when you go to concerts and play bass?
Peck: I wear musician's earplugs whenever I know I'm going to be exposed to noise. The new earplugs are amazing, they are really very effective in reducing the noise level and I know the musician's earplugs have saved lots of music careers. There are much better choices in earplugs now for musicians to use that attenuate the frequencies for a more natural sound.
AO/Beck: Does H.E.A.R. also run a hearing clinic?
Peck: Yes, we do. We've run the clinic since 1988. We started in Haight-Ashbury and now we run it out of the office. Mostly we run it in the evenings and we offer free screenings and consultations with the audiologists. Mont Stong, Jonathan Lipschutz, Cathy McCaffrey, Angela Bourne and Robert Baker are all audiologists who volunteer to staff the free clinic.
AO/Beck: Have you published any data on the patients you've seen at the free clinic?
Peck: We hope to do that soon. We've got ten years of audiometric data and tons of surveys on hundreds of professional musicians. So, I can't promise a date, but we hope to get something published soon. We've got tons of great data and we'd be happy to share it. We have a statistician Lauren Gee and audiology researcher Helen Simon working with us now to interpret the result and do a statistical analysis. Of course the major hurdle for us is finding funding to help support our work. Money is tight. We're essentially a public service organization and volunteers do the majority of the work. The Grammy's and the National Organization for Hearing Research (NOHR) gave us the seed money to begin working on the research grant. E-A-R gave us 60,000 earplugs to distribute for the national Lollapalooza Tours. Those donations really help us spread the information and help the recipients too. We are very grateful to E-A-R, the Grammy's and NOHR for their contributions.
AO/Beck: Kathy, what can audiologists do to help H.E.A.R.?
Peck: We would love to establish a large referral base for musicians seeking audiologists across the USA. If the audiologists check out our website (www.hearnet.com), they'll see how to sign up and they can download information from us. There are so many venues for hearing protection...dance clubs, music concerts, and we need to be visible in these areas. We have PSAs coming out with Spinal Tap, Tony Bennett and others. You can find some of the PSAs on our web site. It's very exciting for us. The audiologists are obviously the primary professionals involved in hearing loss and hearing protection and we love to work with you guys to help spread the information to the musicians and the rest of the patients.
AO/Peck: Kathy, it's always exciting to speak with you.
Peck: Thanks Doug. I hope the audiologists get in touch with us and help us spread the word about musicians and noise induced hearing loss and tinnnitus into the music stores, the concert halls, the record stores, dance clubs and everywhere else. Noise induced hearing loss is preventable and we're happy to work with audiologists to spread the word and help educate the public about noise and it's impact on hearing.
Peck: H.E.A.R. is a not-for-profit organization. In fact, we're incorporated as a 501-C3. We've been around since 1988 and we are dedicated to the prevention of hearing loss and tinnitus, related to noise exposure. Basically, I started the organization because I am a musician with hearing loss and tinnitus. When I looked around for information specific to my needs and the needs of the people I worked with, I found a void. So basically, we decided to fill the void as best we could. Two physicians and lots of audiologists have helped us a great deal. The physicians were H.E.A.R. co-founder Flash Gordon and Jerome Goldstein past Executive Vice President of the American Academy of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery. They both brought a lot of knowledge and expertise to H.E.A.R. and we've been very fortunate to work with them both.
AO/Beck: Who are the audiologists that work with you at H.E.A.R.?
Peck: There are quite a few. Mont Stong is an audiologist and a Board Member. He's been with us over ten years and directs the hearing clinic. Another excellent audiologist who worked with us is Pamela Ball and she is a past Board member too. Rebecca Meredith is another audiologist who has worked with us and she's in the video we supply that is required materials to physics classes in some 3000 school districts. The National Science Foundation helped to fund this project and we collaborated with the American Association of Physics Teachers on the 'Medicine: Hearing Chapter' curriculum textbook unit for High Schools. In the video and textbook chapter we talk about audiologists, rock music, hearing loss, hearing protection and other related topics. It's a pretty neat physics course and video and we're very proud of it.
AO/Beck: How can we get a copy of the H.E.A.R. video?
Peck: The video is on our web-site: www.hearnet.com and the Active Physics website: www.its-about-time.com/htmls/ap.htm has it too along with the Active Physics textbook units. In fact, I hope your readers will ask their school districts to obtain a copy of the video and physics textbooks.
AO/Beck: How is the website doing?
Peck: We get over a million hits per year from all over the world. In fact, we were a trivia question in VH1 - Rock n Roll Jeopardy. Vince Neal from Motley Crew was asked 'What is the organization co-founded by Kathy Peck to help musicians with hearing loss'? He answered it correctly. We were thrilled!
AO/Beck: Who is the main target audience for H.E.A.R.?
Peck: Primarily we work with musicians, but of course we also work with fans, students and young adults to offer hearing information, free screenings, hearing protection devices and referrals to audiologists across the nation and even worldwide via the internet. When we started H.E.A.R. , noise induced hearing loss was pretty much unknown to many of us involved in music. H.E.A.R. helps to educate the musicians and the public.
AO/Beck: Tell me a little about your musical background please.
Peck: I'm a bass player and a singer-songwriter. The band, which my career was based on, was the Contractions. It was an all-girl, power-pop, punk band. We toured with the Go-Gos, and Joan Jett. We opened for Duran-Duran and others. Basically, we were a typical rock band with some nice successes, and a lot of sound pressure! By the way, we have a H.E.A.R. benefit CD called ' H.E.A.R. This' coming out this winter with tracks from bands who support our efforts. It even has a Contractions cut.
AO/Beck: Did you ever wear hearing protection while rehearsing or playing on stage?
Peck: No, none of us knew anything about it. Hearing protection simply wasn't a part of it, we never thought about it. Additionally, I know my tinnitus gets worse when I'm under stress and pressure and it makes it very difficult to concentrate.
AO/Beck: And if I recall, your husband played guitar with the Steve Miller Band for a number of years?
Peck: Yes, he played in the 1970s with Steve Miller on Fly Like an Eagle and he did a bunch of the tunes on the Greatest Hits CD and on Book of Dreams. He didn't wear hearing protection either. We just never thought much about it. In fact, he has been diagnosed with hearing loss and he's currently shopping for hearing aids. I think the hearing aids will help him a great deal as he's doing a lot of production work and he works as a audio consultant and studio engineer too. I think the hearing aids are going to change his life.
AO/Beck: Kathy, what do you currently do, regarding hearing protection, when you go to concerts and play bass?
Peck: I wear musician's earplugs whenever I know I'm going to be exposed to noise. The new earplugs are amazing, they are really very effective in reducing the noise level and I know the musician's earplugs have saved lots of music careers. There are much better choices in earplugs now for musicians to use that attenuate the frequencies for a more natural sound.
AO/Beck: Does H.E.A.R. also run a hearing clinic?
Peck: Yes, we do. We've run the clinic since 1988. We started in Haight-Ashbury and now we run it out of the office. Mostly we run it in the evenings and we offer free screenings and consultations with the audiologists. Mont Stong, Jonathan Lipschutz, Cathy McCaffrey, Angela Bourne and Robert Baker are all audiologists who volunteer to staff the free clinic.
AO/Beck: Have you published any data on the patients you've seen at the free clinic?
Peck: We hope to do that soon. We've got ten years of audiometric data and tons of surveys on hundreds of professional musicians. So, I can't promise a date, but we hope to get something published soon. We've got tons of great data and we'd be happy to share it. We have a statistician Lauren Gee and audiology researcher Helen Simon working with us now to interpret the result and do a statistical analysis. Of course the major hurdle for us is finding funding to help support our work. Money is tight. We're essentially a public service organization and volunteers do the majority of the work. The Grammy's and the National Organization for Hearing Research (NOHR) gave us the seed money to begin working on the research grant. E-A-R gave us 60,000 earplugs to distribute for the national Lollapalooza Tours. Those donations really help us spread the information and help the recipients too. We are very grateful to E-A-R, the Grammy's and NOHR for their contributions.
AO/Beck: Kathy, what can audiologists do to help H.E.A.R.?
Peck: We would love to establish a large referral base for musicians seeking audiologists across the USA. If the audiologists check out our website (www.hearnet.com), they'll see how to sign up and they can download information from us. There are so many venues for hearing protection...dance clubs, music concerts, and we need to be visible in these areas. We have PSAs coming out with Spinal Tap, Tony Bennett and others. You can find some of the PSAs on our web site. It's very exciting for us. The audiologists are obviously the primary professionals involved in hearing loss and hearing protection and we love to work with you guys to help spread the information to the musicians and the rest of the patients.
AO/Peck: Kathy, it's always exciting to speak with you.
Peck: Thanks Doug. I hope the audiologists get in touch with us and help us spread the word about musicians and noise induced hearing loss and tinnnitus into the music stores, the concert halls, the record stores, dance clubs and everywhere else. Noise induced hearing loss is preventable and we're happy to work with audiologists to spread the word and help educate the public about noise and it's impact on hearing.
