#hoh!john

Yes!!!! Complete Hc's are what I live for!!!!

Roger has had to navigate in a world where people don't know BSL, so gesturing is how he gets by. He's an expert at understanding gestures so of course Charades is a walk in the park for him.

Brian lost his hearing over time, going completely deaf by 20, so he had a lot of years to practice his singing. Once deaf, he used his muscle memory and perfect pitch to be able to keep singing. It takes a lot of work to learn new songs, but it's fun and worth it.

John's a speed demon on his bass. And the piano too! His fingers are so agile and he's even a little ambidextrous from signing all his life. It really helps in the instrument department.

Hearing aids back in the day were. Huge. Not cute. Fiddly. But John so desperately wanted to be in a band. He knew he’d have to wear his aids so he could hear everything. The guitar and the vocals and when they said it was too fast or too slow. Things he’d struggle to pick up without them.

He goes to the doctor and get’s himself a pair. And oh my god. They’re worse than he thought. They have these big ear plugs and the battery hangs in a box around his neck. No way to hide it. But anything to keep playing, yeah? He’s not too sure. 

John walks into practice one day and everyone is like...uhhhhhh. He’s like these...monstrosities are hearing aids. I need them to hear better. Let’s not talk about them too much. Pretend they’re not there.

Which is easier said then done because the damn things keep giving him issues. They drain of batteries sooo fast. They’ll be in the middle of a song and everything suddenly goes very quiet. John yells out, “What happened to the amps??” and the boys are like, WHY ARE YOU YELLING NOTHING HAPPENED?

Or the ear pieces start to hurt his ears if he has them in for too long. They kinda stretch his ear and it gets pretty tender at times. He has to take them off during breaks, which leaves him prone to missing out on some things said. Like if Roger suddenly has an idea about the song they’re practicing, he won’t hear a word of it. The boys are really good at getting his attention and speaking loud enough for him, but sometimes they forget! 

Sometimes, the volume goes all wacky and John’s convinced there’s a ghost in his aids doing this. The volume will shoot up or go to 0, all without him touching it. 

He wires his Deacy amp to have a deep bass, so if he stands close enough or sits on it, he can feel the beat and never get lost!

He can’t hear himself very well, which is why he’s an ‘awful’ singer. He can’t trust himself to stay in tune so he prefers to not sing at all. Or only do backup vocals live with his mic turned way down.

John loves to hum though. Where ever he is, you’ll hear him humming to himself. He likes the feeling of his vocal chords vibrating more than the actual sound, since he can’t hear it. He makes up some pretty interesting tunes! Tone deaf but interesting!

He does wear hearing aids, mostly during the writing and recording process and on stage. The hearing aids of the past were far too big and bulky for him to feel comfortable wearing it to the grocery store or what not. Once sleeker and slimmer designs come out, he does end up wearing his aids much more frequently!

He learned to speak before his hearing loss but he was still quite young, so he has a deaf accent. A mild one but noticeable.