Join us for a webinar on breaking the myth of “You Can’t Be a Mom in The Music Industry”

Saturday, August 1 at 11 am PST

Register here

In this webinar, you will meet several women working within the industry and are at different stages of their careers and parenting.  They will share with us wow they are navigating parenthood and their careers.

Moderated by Karrie Keyes – Monitor Engineer Pearl Jam/Eddie Vedder, Executive Director SoundGirls and single mom to twin daughters that are now 24. Her girls started life on the road in utero.

With

Erika Earl – Audio Experience Engineer / Hardware Developer

Erika is working on the new frontier of spatial, immersive and interactive ambisonic audio. After working as Director of Hardware Engineering for Slate Companies and Head of Technology / Chief Tech for the Village Recording Studios, Erika co-founded Earl Virtual Innovation Lab, or Evil Tech, and XR Creative to work with artists and engineers on the next generation of audio tech and experience design. When she’s not wielding a soldering iron, recording, or immersed in a VR headset, you will most likely find her spending time with her 14 year old Daughter and 6 year old son writing songs and volunteering in her community.

Leslie Gaston-Bird (AMPS, M.P.S.E.) is author of the book “Women in Audio”, part of the AES Presents series and published by Focal Press (Routledge). She is a voting member of the Recording Academy and a freelance re-recording mixer and sound editor. She was a tenured Associate Professor of Recording Arts at the University of Colorado Denver and Fulbright Scholar; prior to that she worked as a sound editor for Post Modern Company, Colorado Public Radio, and National Public Radio. She is on the advisory board for SoundGirls. Leslie is the proud mother of a 10-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter.

Kille Knobel has been the LD for Pearl Jam for 20 years and has toured with Cher, Bette Midler, Temple of the Dog, Soundgarden, The Smashing Pumpkins and many others.  When she is not on the road, she works on The Jimmy Kimmel Show and wrangles her three sons- 15, 12, & 11.

Karen Loria is the Operations Manager for Pearl Jam. She started her career in the music business working for Righteous Babe Records while pursuing a graduate degree in photography at the University of Buffalo in NY.  She moved to Seattle and started working with local music venues in various positions supporting live shows. In 2006 she was drafted to the PJ organization and has spent the last 14 years supporting the band both on the road and in the band’s HQ as the bands Ticketing Program Manager, Tour Photographer, Fan Club Co-manager and now the Operations Manager.  Karen is a mother of 2 little boys, 5 and 3 years old, and holds a Board Position for Keep Music Live, a nonprofit aimed at assisting Washington State independent music venues impacted by the Covid-19 closures.

Jeanne Montalvo is a Grammy-nominated audio engineer and radio producer. She was selected amongst thousands of applicants as the 2018 EQL resident at Spotify Studios and Electric Lady Studios in New York City, assisting in the recording process for artists like John Legend, Alessia Cara, and many more. She also recorded sessions with Ivy Queen, Making Movies and Ruben Blades, Flor de Toloache, and Williamsburg Salsa Orchestra. In 2017, she was nominated for a Grammy Award as Mastering Engineer for Vladimir Horowitz: The Unreleased Live Recordings, and her recording of Multiverse by Bobby Sanabria’s Latin Jazz Big Band was nominated for Best Latin Jazz Album at the 2012 Grammy Awards. She’s worked at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Tanglewood Music Festival, and worked on live recordings with Spike Lee and Al Kooper. She broke into radio after receiving her Masters in Music Technology from New York University, working as an audio engineer and producer for National Public Radio and the Duolingo Podcast. She is also the creator of “Live from Latino USA” a live and (mostly) unplugged video series that features Latinx talent from Jessie Reyez to Jose Feliciano. She is currently the treasurer of the Audio Engineering Society New York Section. She is the mom of a 2 1/2-year-old toddler.

Tina Morris started her career in music as a guitar and Music Production/Engineering student at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Immediately after college she started her professional career at Sound Techniques giving her a head start as an engineer and studio tech and working with some of the best in the business. After years of gigging with her band as a heavy metal guitarist, working as a freelance engineer for NPR, Q Division Studios and The Blue Man Group she decided to move to LA with her husband. After moving she landed the position of head evening tech for The Village Studios.  Continuing to impress employers and clients alike with her expertise, Tina’s hard work was rewarded with a promotion to her current position as Studio Manager of The Village. Now the proud mother of her son Jackson, age 10, Tina still manages to balance her role of manager and mom.

April Tucker (CAS) April has worked in Los Angeles for 15 years in post-production sound for films, television, new media, and marketing/advertising. She has performed nearly every role in the process from the bottom up; she started as a PA at a studio and worked her way up to re-recording mixer – doing everything from Foley, ADR and sound editing along the way. She is mom to a 3 year old boy.

Society tells us that being a mom means putting your dreams on hold. If you are working in audio, tour production, or the music industry you are told you simply can’t be a mom because of the long and sporadic work hours, travel, and simply being on tour for several weeks/ months each year.

It’s easy to fall into that belief and give up on our dreams because that’s what society tells us. Society also tells us this only applies to women, no one in the industry cares if our male counterparts are dads.

What we are not told is that it can be done, it might take a village, but it always has. How much better you will be as a mother who is following her passion. That it is possible to be working in a field you love and also a mother. It isn’t easy, but it is certainly possible – just look at your own career path, which certainly was not easy.