Published in the Quad-City Times on Sep. 16, 2024

At one point during the Alternating Currents music festival, Matt Ressler and Bambi Suits chatted at the Raccoon Motel bar. 

It was noisy, as Hembree, one of the weekend’s biggest acts, prepared to take the stage one room over. Hundreds of fans talked and ordered drinks over one another. The venue shook. It was packed wall to wall.

The two old friends at the bar understood each other just fine.

Ressler is a graphic designer and music fan born and raised in Moline. He’s been deaf since he was 9 months old, when a high fever caused 90% hearing loss in both ears.

Suits is a sign language interpreter also born and raised on the Illinois side of the Quad-Cities. She worked much of Alternating Currents weekend near stages, interpreting the music to help give it another dimension for fans like Ressler.

They can’t remember how long they have been friends, but it’s been awhile.

Ressler, a regular at the Raccoon Motel, is a huge fan of live performance from a range of genres. He particularly enjoys seeing pop rock bands, DJs, acoustic guitarists and hip-hop artists. 

Sitting down for coffee at Dead Poet’s Espresso in Moline last week, the two friends agreed assertively on one point: There should be more access for deaf and hard-of-hearing Quad-Citians — in and out of music venues. 

“Access is mandatory,” Suits said. “There’s no discussion. No excuse. No reason why access is not provided anytime, period.” 

She explained that the ideal standard would be American Sign Language available “in all places, at all times.” Ressler chimed in. 

“The reason I chose Dead Poet’s is because I come here frequently,” he said, through sign language interpretation.

“I’ve been coming here for years. It’s a family-owned business and I can communicate easily with the staff here. They can understand sign a little bit, and if not, they’re willing to read an app with me and communicate easily.” 

It’s not always that easy, Ressler said.

There are small things that hearing people take for granted in day-to-day life, like communicating with a doctor or dentist. Even getting asked for directions on the street can be frustrating, Ressler said. 

“I’ll say, ‘Oh, I’m deaf, I’m sorry, can you write it down?’ and they’ll just back away from me,” he said. “I can probably give you really good directions if you just take the time and communicate with me.

“The second I say that word, ‘deaf,’ the second I put my hand on my ear and say I’m deaf, that’s the moment the fear sets in.”

‘Deaf people do love music’

The state of Illinois’ Deaf and Hard of Hearing Commission estimates that there are 4,485 deaf individuals in Rock Island County and 20,832 with hearing loss, as of 2021. Iowa doesn’t have county-by-county numbers publicly available, but the State Data Center reported in 2022 that there are 124,187 Iowans, or approximately 4% of the state’s population, with some form of hearing loss. 

September is Deaf Awareness Month, which Ressler said is necessary to spread education to people about the needs of the deaf community. 

“Most hearing people can go their entire lives without ever meeting a deaf person, so they just don’t think about the deaf experience,” Ressler said. “Or they just ignore it.”

Both he and Suits wanted to make clear that accessibility should be for everyone, and money shouldn’t be an obstacle. They likened it to running a business without a ramp for people with mobility disabilities. 

One misconception about the deaf community, Ressler said, relates to music fandom.

“Deaf people do love music,” he said. “(It) can be very difficult to get somebody to come out because a lot of places will not provide interpreters.” 

Hembree is one of Ressler’s favorite bands because of their use of lights synced with the beats, a feature that he says is very deaf friendly. 

“I really do enjoy just being in a room and feeling the vibrations,” Ressler said. “When you’re not in a room and you can’t really feel the pulse of the room through a beat, it can be kind of boring.”

An interpreter can help make that feeling even more tangible. It goes beyond just lyrics, Ressler said.

“They need to show the visual aspect of the music,” he said. “They need to show what, exactly, the hearing person is hearing.” 

In an ideal world, Suits said, interpreters would have time to sit down with the artists before every show and discuss the setlist and the backstories for songs.

But in reality, at most shows, Suits said she looks up the lyrics online seconds before each song begins. 

Life as an interpreter

The state of Illinois’ Deaf and Hard of Hearing Commission reported that there were 842 licensed interpreters in the state, with just five active licensees in Rock Island County. On the Iowa side, the state’s department of public health cites 22 active sign language interpreting licenses in Davenport, Bettendorf and LeClaire combined. 

Suits said there were three types of venues in terms of accessibility: ones that always provided interpreters, ones that provided interpreters by request and ones that didn’t provide interpreters at all. 

She wants to see more businesses fall into that first category, to make this region a safer space for deaf and hard-of-hearing residents. 

“Why can’t the Quad-Cities become the next deaf Mecca?” she said. 

Ressler and Suits praised local organizations such as the Quad City Music Guild, Silvis Public Library, Davenport Junior Theatre, Vibrant Arena at The Mark and Alternating Currents as spots that have been accessible. 

Suits also commended the Mississippi Valley Fair, which provided interpreters this year for the “first time in a long time.” She worked all but one night of the fair’s grandstand schedule and joked that T-Pain’s set was the loudest one she’s ever seen, topping indie rock band Dinosaur Jr. 

“We did have deaf people there every single night, and every night, more and more deaf people would come up and introduce themselves,” she said. “That’s what always happens.” 

As someone who grew up on classic rock, she particularly loved interpreting for the Bret Michaels and Alice Cooper shows. Suits said, in a perfect scenario, interpreters would be able to match with artists that fit them the best. 

“We try hard to fit our clients’ needs, so I am maybe not the best interpreter for T-Pain — I am a white, red-headed woman in my 40s,” Suits said. “There is probably a much better-suited interpreter out there.” 

Interpreting first piqued Suits’ interest when she was a kid watching deaf actress Linda Bove on Sesame Street. She also remembers a sleepover as a teen, when a deaf friend of hers was frustrated by the lack of captions on a late-night VHS watch of “Evil Dead.” 

After high school, she studied at Scott Community College, which she said has the only ASL interpreting degree program in the state of Iowa.

“I was in the right place,” she said.

Suits now works as an interpreter with Hands Up Communications, an Iowa-based organization that placed interpreters at Alternating Currents and the Mississippi Valley Fair. Hands Up is owned by Joseph Featherston, a man who is deaf, something Suits has a lot of pride in. 

One of the interpreters Hands Up utilized for Alternating Currents, Alexa Deen, said she enjoys interpreting as a way of meeting new people. 

“Language in general kind of opens you up to a new culture of people,” Deen said. “I find that exciting.” 

So what’s next?

As for the complications of interpreting music, Deen, who is based in Chicago, said one tricky part can be standing so close to the speakers. Sometimes the noise comes out jumbled and an interpreter can miss part of the song.

That’s why, often, they work in teams to back each other up. 

Beyond that, sign language isn’t always universal. ASL has regional dialects — Ressler said that simple words like strawberry and pizza have different signs across the country — and not all deaf people use signing. 

Both Deen and Suits said they worked most often in educational settings. Deen said many major musical artists had their own interpreters who were deaf themselves. Those are called certified deaf interpreters, or CDIs.

She highlighted one prominent CDI being Matt Maxey, a Georgia-based interpreter who works with Chance the Rapper and goes by the name DEAFinitely Dope. 

“Interpreting is still a young profession,” Suits said. “We are now just getting to a point in 2024 where we are recognizing people are different, right? All kinds of different.

“I feel like this generation is really embracing and accepting diversity like never before, and we can only go up from here. That’s my hope anyway.”

One step hearing folks can take, Ressler said, is learning to sign, especially as social media has made ASL education more accessible. Though he warned that people should be wary of sources.

“Always use a deaf teacher,” he said. “Do not just fall for a hearing person who is teaching on social media for clout.” 

Technology has made communication easier for the deaf community in many ways. Transcription apps and texting have made connecting simpler, whether it’s at the bar or at the doctor’s office. Captioning on movies and TV shows has made entertainment more accessible, too. 

And while medical devices like cochlear implants can restore hearing for some, Ressler said that’s something he’s not interested in. That connects to another misconception about the deaf community, he says.

“People always think that they can fix deaf people,” he said. “They fail to see the person as a person.” 

For businesses that don’t provide interpreters, Suits asserted once more that there are no excuses.

“Money (is) not an obstacle because every interpreter I know does not care about money,” she said. “We are not wealthy. We go to work because if we don’t go to work, somebody else doesn’t have access to their job, or their event, or their family, or whatever.”

Ressler chimed in over the coffee shop table. 

“If there’s a will, there’s a way.”