We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ian Ketterer a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Ian thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?

I was born with no ear on my right side and no thumb on my right hand. I had to teach myself a different way of playing piano. But my most unexpected issue I ran into was when I was mixing my band Among Authors’ first full length record. I was 30 years old at the time, and it was the first time in my life that I felt legitimately handicapped. I thought to myself “wow, ya know what, no matter what I do, I will never be able to hear in stereo.” My life has always been in mono, but up to this point, I never really noticed, it was just as it was. When you’re born with certain things, you adapt as a child, without even realizing you’re adapting. Before you know it, you’re achieving goals just like any of the other kids. However, when I started mixing the first album, I learned really quickly that I had no idea how to overcome this massive handicap.

I spent months listening to music, with the sole purpose of understanding how I personally perceive stereo, despite it all audio only ever coming into my left ear. I would listen to bands like Radiohead, who I know hard panned many sounds left and right. I would turn off the right speaker, then I would turn off the left speaker. I did this with many artists for a long time. I would analyze how those records were mixed only by listening to one of the speakers at a time. This is different from listening to a stereo mix in mono, where everything is just put into the center. I realized how often artists were hard panning various sounds and throughout my life I always just interpreted sounds that were hard panned to the right side, as quiet. I never actually interpreted them on the right side. Once I realized this, I was able to start taking in all the audio from my left ear, the understanding that quiet sounds might just be on the right side versus actually being quieter.

The funny thing is, to this day, sometimes I put things on the right side that I personally don’t want to hear as much, but that others might still want to hear equally haha.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m Ian. I have a band called Among Authors. It’s my life. My band is an outlet of who I am as a unique individual with my own story. But the band name was chosen because it’s not just about me, it’s about everyone else on this planet who also have stories to share that mean something to them, and that they feel need to be heard.

I was born with no ear or thumb on my right hand. I was also born with a Tracheoesophageal Fistula, which is when the tube that leads to the stomach, and the tube that leads to the lungs are not connected in some way. This particular issue was fixed with emergency surgery at birth.

In 2008, at age 23 I underwent open heart surgery to fix a random aneurysm in my heart. I had just booked the first six shows ever with my band, and I had to cancel all of them because the doctor said I would either die within six months, or I could get this surgery. To be honest, I wanted to play the shows and then do the surgery, but my mom was standing next to me at the time, soooooo, yeah, all the shows were canceled.
Apparently when you get open heart surgery, they have to collapse both your lungs. They didn’t tell me this. So after my surgery I had to rebuild my lungs up to normal capacity in order to sing again. Within one month after surgery I rebooked all the shows I originally had to cancel. In 2009 I relocated the band to Seattle Washington to take the next step in our music career.

One of my proudest moments in our music career so far, is when we received an email from NPR’s Bob Boilen, who invited us to come to Washington DC to perform an official NPR Tiny Desk session. I called my brother Jay (who is also in the band) and asked him “Hey, did you see the email from Bob come through? Is this fake?” We didn’t actually believe it. So many greats have performed on Tiny Desk, and we were an unsigned band who wrote, produced, mixed and mastered their first full length record in their basement. And this is why this moment meant so much to me. It was this album that I struggled emotionally for months on, trying to overcome my hearing handicap of being born with one ear and being deaf on my right side.

Bob Boilen gave me a belief in myself that I can do this, I can do whatever the hell I want in life if I just focus, put my head down, and work. And nobody can take that away from me.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

There is a very specific goal and mission driving my creative journey, but my goal is different from my mission.

My goal is to be performing for hundreds of thousands at a time, and connecting to all of those people from the most personal and vulnerabl way I know how, through music.

My mission is to help people understand that they have full control in giving themselves permission to be just that, themselves. I want people to feel beautiful and not ashamed to be who they are. This is something I struggle with every day, and something music helps me with. We are a beautiful species who are able to think freely and creatively, and oftentimes that freedom comes with negative connotations. I want our music to speak to those who need it to, and I want to help any way I can through this music.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

If you are a non-creative (which I honestly don’t believe exists), then I say to you… Take a walk into nature, take a massive breath, pick up a rock and see what’s underneath and be amazed by it. After that, think about your life, and what the most difficult moments in it are. Think about the home of the insect you saw under that rock, of which you just ripped off its rooftop, its shelter. And then realize that we are not that dissimilar to those insects. This is creative thinking, and you just did it. You are creative. It’s also realistic thinking, and something we all need to remember. This is what my band is about. This is what my life is about. Trying to see the beauty in everything, in myself, in others, and understanding that we are all going through so many hardships that are all relative. We need music to get through life’s toughest moments, but we also need it to inspire that creative side in us all.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://amongauthors.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amongauthors
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amongauthors
• Twitter: https://www.x.com/amongauthors
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/amongauthorsband
• Other: https://youtu.be/j0uhEHIU6Sk?si=2ZT5tOm8RLHxs2sV

Image Credits
Ian Ketterer (in all photos) Jonathan Livingston Jason Ketterer Patrick Brockwell Bob Boilen (in NPR photo)