Black and white image of Joey Stuckey on stage, singing and playing guitar. Drums, lights and smoke are featured behind him.
What is your favorite memory/ moment that brought you lots of joy? I have so many, but the most recent one that I still find powerful whenever I am feeling down happened around February of last year. I am a blind brain tumor survivor and have a number of health challenges that I deal with everyday. I had to have a complete shoulder replacement in October of 2018 and while recovering in February of 2019 I finally felt well enough to go out to dinner with a friend of mine, but I still didn’t feel well and was a bit down because the surgery had been much harder than I thought it would be. I walked in to the restaurant and a young lady that was our hostess asked, “Are you Joey Stuckey?” I said that I was. She told me that I had come to her high school and performed and given an inspirational talk and that was when she decided to follow her dream of being a musician and I was the reason she was a junior in the music program at her college! I was over the moon! I felt like everything I go through everyday was all worth it if I could bless another person and inspire them to follow their heart and do what makes them happy—in this case music! What is something people generally don’t know about you? LOL Well, I am an open book and when we first meet, you get the full Joey Stuckey so most of my life is no secret. However, I do love collecting toys even though I am in my 40’s and my favorite to collect are sci-fi model space ships! I am still very much in touch with my inner 13 year old LOL. Who is Joey Stuckey? I have 2 things I usually say when I introduce myself. The first is that I am the official music ambassador for my hometown and the music city of Macon, Georgia. I also bill myself as “Little Joey Stuckey, sexy as Elvis with half the fat” LOL. What gets your fired up about the disability movement? I want music to be accessible to all people! So I work hard and am very dedicated to working on adaptive technology for the blind with music tools—both hardware and software. I also really make sure that I am treated fairly and have access to public events in line with the ADA. For example, getting care giver tickets to professional functions for my “seeing-eye-wife”, Jennifer. By-in-large most people are more than glad to do this, but a few people/companies aren’t and only abide with the ADA grudgingly. Too bad, but I refuse to give up and to be penalized for access and pay more than my sighted counterparts because I need a sight-guide. What is your advocacy platform? Dignity for all people and accessibility for all! What barriers or challenges do you face in this movement? As a blind guy, reading industry magazines and continuing education material can be challenging as much of it isn’t accessible. Sometimes this is because of the limitations of screen readers and sometimes it is just the format that these publications are in. I have a number of health challenges from the brain tumor, like a metal shoulder and metal hip and no adrenal function. Of course the big-one is I can’t drive myself. Come on driverless cars!!! What do you want those who do not identify with disability to know? It is okay to laugh in the face of adversity! The truth is, sometimes being blind is funny! I am blind and I wouldn’t be rational if I didn’t recognize my limitations, however, I am not defined in terms of those limitations, so there is much more to each being than their limitations! What areas are you still growing/hope to grow? Personally? Professionally? I am always trying to be more than I am now, in all areas of life from personal to professional, I hope I will continue to grow until I am gone from this world! Who was the person/role model who inspired you to look into disability advocacy? Why/how did they inspire you? My parents! They worked hard when I was a child to make sure I had a good life and was given the same opportunities as anyone else. So I just continued to do that for myself as an adult. When people look at you/up to you, what do you hope they see? A flawed person that is trying to be better everyday and a person who loves and wants to give back to the universe. I just want to leave the world a little better than I found it. What are your next steps? I am always working on a bunch of projects. I’ve got a head full of ideas and dreams LOL. Please follow my progress by visiting www.joeystuckey.com and www.shadowsoundstudio.com Also if you are blind and interested in assisting me to let music manufactures know there is a blind market out there, then please send me an email to info@shadowsoundstudio.com and at some point I’ll probably ask you to sign a letter I can present to these companies so they understand that making music and music making tools accessible is not only the correct thing to do, but there is money to be made from the blind music market. How do we follow you?! Website: Joeystuckey.com YouTube: youtube.com/user/SenateRecords Twitter: @Jstuckeymusic Instagram: @jstuckeymusic FaceBook: JoeyStuckeyMusic Newsletter: Joey Stuckey Newsletter Bandsintown: Joey Stuckey Spotify for JS3: Joey Stuckey iTunes for JS3: Joey Stuckey Sun Sessions Merch: Joey Stuckey Fan Zone: Joey Stuckey Want to be featured as an advocate??
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