225BatonRouge.com

HEART. WHEEZER. GIN BLOSSOMS AND THREE DOORS DOWN, 10,000 MANIACS. FOR A DOCTOR, IT COULD BE ER ADMISSIONS ON A CALL NIGHT FROM HELL. OR MAYBE IT’S A FLASHBACK TO THE MED STUDENTS’ CLINIC AT BIG CHARITY IN NEW ORLEANS. BUT FOR BATON ROUGE’S ROCKIN’ DOCS, IT COULD BE A LIST OF BANDS THEY’LL COVER WHILE PERFORMING AT SULLIVAN’S, GINO’S OR THE VARSITY. A SURPRISING NUMBER OF LOCAL PHYSICIANS ARE PASSIONATELY PURSUING MUSIC CAREERS. BY DAY THEY MAY HEAL BODIES, BUT COME NIGHT FALL THEY’RE TREATING SOULS WITH R&B, ZYDECO AND PARTY ROCK.

DR. TOMMY MICELI

In 1963, 17-year-old Tommy Miceli walked into his first recording session and walked out with a No. 1 hit single, I’m Leaving It Up To You with Dale & Grace.

Miceli had started taking guitar only a year or two earlier and joined a band in the summer of 1961. The Catholic High teenagers performed as the Knights, “anywhere people would let us—private parties, parking lots,” Miceli recalls.

After stints with Floyd Brown and the Crystals, the Dixie Crystals and occasionally with John Fred and the Playboys, Miceli and friends morphed into the Greek Fountains.

The name proved fortuitous as the sororities and fraternities at LSU and at schools in Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas and Florida booked the band for parties. “Here, in that era, we were top dogs,” Miceli says. “At our best, we were the most popular group in Louisiana.”

The Greek Fountains had No. 1 hits on the local charts with That’s the Way I Am and Counting the Steps, which had a Herman’s Hermits sound.

For Miceli, the party ended with the first year of medical school due to time constraints during the week. However, during the weekends, he frequently grabbed a flight to perform with his buddies in Memphis and throughout the Gulf South.

“I never did give (music) up,” says Miceli. Even as chief of emergency services at the state’s largest hospital, Miceli finds time to play with the Luther Kent Trio at Gino’s, or with the big band at larger gatherings.

“In high school,” he says, “if you wanted a band for a prom, you used black musicians, so we started playing that style.

Miceli has also remained faithful to his first love—his favorite guitar is still his 1961 Gibson ES175.

DR. PEGGY POLK

After her first year of pathology residency at Baylor University, singer/keyboardist Peggy Polk submitted some tapes to South By Southwest and soon left Dallas for an R & D contract with RCA Records in Nashville.

The Baton Rouge native began singing in a country band during college. By the time she reached New Orleans, she relied on the money from gigs to attend medical school full time with minimal loans.

After a year-and-a-half of the recording industry, she abandoned Music City for medicine.

“I’m a type A (personality). I like to work hard and play hard. Most musicians I have encountered are the opposite, so I didn’t fit in well in that aspect,” she says of her return to medicine. “At the time I was making those type decisions, I lacked insight into the valuable contribution entertainers make to society. I now see it, but I didn’t then. The contribution of physicians, on the other hand, was obvious.”

Ultimately Polk completed a highly competitive fellowship at the University of Alabama in dermatopathology. Shortly after returning to Baton Rouge to practice, she started the group Nightshift, and recently joined the Groove Factory, both of which perform R&B, funk and contemporary.

A competitor in West Coast swing, country and hustle contests herself, Polk is convinced the Black Eyed Peas may in fact hold the key to changing the stodgy image of couples dancing. “New music would bring in a lot of new people into dancing,” she says. “When you listen to Nelly, the Black Eyed-Peas, it’s really just foxtrot and samba and a little cha-cha.”

Far from seeing a relationship between medicine and music, Polk says, “The appealing thing (about music) is it’s just the opposite of medicine. I go to work in my conservative clothes and get whored up and go out to play.”

THE V-TONES

Stephen Gordon was destined to drum—on Quaker Oat cans as a toddler, on the dashboard of the car in kindergarten, and finally on a set of Ludwig drums his parents gave him in the sixth grade.

Those drums would take him from the St. Aloysius and Catholic High bands to performances with Tulane med school classmates as the Blebs and Proud Flesh, and eventually become the catalyst for the Baton Rouge party band The V-Tones. “When I had my storeroom sound-proofed (as a practice room),” Gordon recalls, “the company suggested I tell my neighbors what I was doing.”

Neighborhood rounds led the general surgeon to Kyle Talbert, a Mercedes dealer with a bass. Plans for a jam session quickly grew to include some of Gordon’s colleagues: guitarist/singer internist Curt Chastain and keyboardist/singer pediatrician Art Tribou.

Shortly after the group added Ford TV pitchman singer Gaynor St. Romain, and Curt’s brother Sonny, an attorney and guitarist/singer.

The band’s first public performance attracted a crowd of 300 at the Fairview Club.

In 2003, radiologist Robert Miller took over as lead guitarist and infused Collective Soul, Fuel and Three Doors Down into the retro repertoire.

The Eunice native from a musical family once considered a career in music, “I knew academics was a much safer bet. I had no desire to live out of a truck, eat balogna sandwiches and be poor until I made it. My dad preached (against) it every day.”

Yet, Miller explains the allure music has for many doctors—its continual challenge, and their pursuit of perfection.

“I can do medicine. This is a way to step away from it,” Miller explains. “I’m such an analytical logical person. In medicine, you work down a flow chart based on the information. Music has so many options, and it’s so abstract.”

Recently, the V-Tones played at Sullivan’s, opened for the Terms at the Varsity, experimented with an unplugged session at the Buzz, and are booked to play a casino in Reno.

And the name? “The ‘V’ has come to mean lots of things,” says Gordon. “Viagra, vasectomy or vintage. We play vintage music; my drum kit is vintage.”

Dr. Chris Belleau

Medical gig: Physical medicine and rehab specialist

Musical gigs: Uncle Remus, Proud Dogs, Zydeco Hounds, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown

Chris Belleau had spent three years studying for a music degree at LSU when Uncle Remus changed everything. Classes at Southern University led the trombonist to gigs with the band that played music by Earth, Wind & Fire, K.C. & the Sunshine Band and the Commodores for black social club dances around the state.

“I played whatever I could get and gradually became more focused on jazz. LSU was more classically oriented, which was great training,” Belleau says.

Belleau had picked up guitar and harmonica. His interest in the history of blues harmonica and jazz intensified on the road with Uncle Remus, and soon drove him to intensive jazz ensemble training at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

He later received a degree in general studies from LSU in Shreveport and played in house band at a local bar. “I enjoyed being a college student, making extra money; it was a great life,” he says. “I met some other people who were going to med school and decided I might be interested in that.”

LSU med school and a physical medicine residency limited Belleau’s band gigs. Still, he taught himself to play the Cajun accordion and sing for fun and found himself occasionally playing Zydeco and blues on stage in the French Quarter. He also played on recording sessions as a trombonist and harmonica player for Ernie K-Doe, Irma Thomas, Charlie Rich and Barbara George and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown.

In 1997, he released songs recorded in Baton Rouge and Shreveport as the Zydeco Hounds’ Shake It Don’t Break It, a CD that sold several thousand copies.

In recent years, Belleau insists he’s gone from Zydeco Hound to lone wolf.

While he’s given up regular gigs for more time with his wife and five young children, Belleau played for what was Gatemouth’s last Jazz Fest, and recently at the International Accordion Festival in San Antonio with Augie Meyers, formerly of the Texas Tornadoes.

Still, the physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist admits, “Music is always on my mind, and I think of everything I do in the framework of being a musician. When time to decide on a specialty, I thought of music again. I enjoyed spending time with the instrument, developing a rapport with the instrument.

“In my choice of specialty, I have to develop a rapport with patients and encourage progress and nurture improvements in neuromuscular pathways similar to those necessary to play music,” Belleau says. “Especially in brain injury patients, it’s working with the same neurological pathways in the brain and muscle patterns.”

Dr. Tom Guillot

Medical gig: plastic and reconstructive surgeon

Musical gig: Chris Guillot Band

It is good to be king, and even better to orchestrate your coronation with a command performance from your favorite band.

And that’s what plastic and reconstructive surgeon Tom Guillot did when he booked the Chris Guillot Band to initiate his reign as 2006 King of Orion. The event was both a family affair and celebration of Guillot’s lifetime of music.

“I played trombone in high school, then I started taking guitar lessons with Randy Rea. In college, I played with the LSU Golden Band from Tigerland All-American College TV Band,” he recalls with a laugh. “In 1971, it was a really big deal. It was sponsored by ABC and Chevrolet. We went out to California to play on TV.”

After receiving an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, Guillot completed medical school, residency and fellowship training in Louisiana, playing with various bands along the way.

“To me, music is not only an art form—it’s the same with a plastic surgery—it’s about the relationship between sciences and mathematics. For example, an octave is the doubling of a frequency.”

The Guillot band features Tom’s 12-year-old son, Christopher, who plays 11 instruments, including guitar and lead vocals; Christopher’s godfather, Joe Dick, on bass and keyboard; and Tom’s first guitar teacher, Randy Rea.

Tom is content to back his son’s musical endeavors literally and figuratively on Beatles ballads and Green Day rants everywhere from a New Orleans recording studio with Lil’ Queenie to the Spanish Town parade, coffee houses and festivals throughout south Louisiana. Even after Carnival, the krewe of Chris will rock on.