Meet the bands of Doc Rock
The inaugural “battle of the bands” fundraiser benefits research and critical clinical needs at the Mitchell Cancer Institute, Children’s & Women’s Hospital and University Hospital.
Five bands will rock the stage at Doc Rock, set for Thursday, March 31, at the Soul Kitchen in downtown Mobile. At least one member of each band has ties to USA Health.
Tickets for Doc Rock are $25 in advance and $30 at the door. Doors open at 7 p.m. For more information, visit the Doc Rock website.
Ayers Brothers Band
Twenty-one-year-old twin brothers Andrew and Bryan Ayers are the foundation of the Ayers Brothers Band, who are raising funds for the neonatal intensive care unit at Children’s & Women’s Hospital.
As a newborn, Bryan Ayers spent 30 days in the hospital’s NICU – “the best place in the world for me to be. Thanks be to God!” he said. Participating in Doc Rock is a way to give back to the place that gave him a start in life.
Andrew Ayers is a soulful keyboardist who fell in love with music early in life. At just 12 years old, he formed the band Stereo Dogs, featuring his brother Bryan on drums.
A year later, they enlisted musicians Jamie Newsome and Jordan Steele and started playing regularly at local and regional venues such as Callaghan's Irish Social Club, Bluegill Restaurant and The Shed BBQ & Blues Joint. Over the years, the band has been invited to play at many Southern music festivals including BayFest, TenSixtyFive, SouthSounds Music & Arts Festival, Hound Dog Music Fest and the National Shrimp Festival.
In 2019 they changed the name of the band to Ayers Brothers Band. Newsome now lives in Auburn and Steele in Nashville, so the Ayers brothers pick up various notable musicians for gigs in the region from Mississippi to Florida.
“Our music has transformed from a straightforward rock to having a more funky twist on any song we do,” Andrew Ayers said. “Whether jazz, funk, reggae, blues, pop or rock, we have it covered.”
Bearhead
Bearhead honors a mythological figure believed to lift downtrodden spirits through interpretative and transcendental artistic performances. Band members say they learned from the music of the Allman Brothers Band, Tom Petty, Led Zeppelin, John Prine, Widespread Panic, Wilco, The Rolling Stones, Hank Williams, Phish, J. J. Cale, The Meters and many others, including regional and local Gulf Coast musicians.
The band’s experience runs from boogie chillin’ with Hank Becker to live and late-night venues, opening for Jerry Lee Lewis and the Derek Trucks Band, plus studio work in the southeast United States and Rocky Mountains region, and many festivals along the way.
Members include University Hospital’s medical director for anesthesia, Kai Rodning, M.D., who plays an organ for the group. Taylor Weldon, a grateful patient, plays electric Fender and Gibson guitars. Other band members include Michael Berson and Jason Dabbs, who punches clockwork time on the drums. Caine O’Rear plays rhythm guitar and sings lead vocals. Gene Longenecker, M.D., plays bass guitar.
Bearhead is raising money for the University Hospital anesthesiology department.
Dr. John and the Burning Sensations
With a goal of raising funds for the Mitchell Cancer Institute, Dr. John and the Burning Sensations features a husband-and-wife duo of surgeons.
“We are excited to perform at Doc Rock and have a good time for a good cause,” said John Hunter III, M.D., a colorectal surgeon at USA Health. “Our band started playing together years ago at the Cedar Street Social Club in downtown Mobile, and we’re ready to show more of our musical influences to the city.”
The married couple of the six-member band brings the bass and harmony. John Hunter plays the bass, and his wife, Rachel Hunter, M.D., a breast surgical oncologist at USA Health, is a vocalist who lends an authentic country sound. Johnson Hardy, a general surgeon at USA Health, plays the guitar. Hunter Pipkins brings his distinct vocals along with a guitar and fiddle. Dave Jernigan and Karl Betts are multi-instrumentalists, who play the fiddle, banjo and guitar to name a few, and vocalists.
John Hunter said the audience can expect a variety of musical genres during the performance.
“We play a mix of bluegrass, folk, Americana and country music,” he said. “We have influences like John Prine, Billy Strings and Hank Williams, and we can’t wait for the audience to hear it.”
RL6
Just call them the bad boys of internal medicine.
Officially, they are RL6, a rock band made up of three interns, one resident and two chief residents at the USA College of Medicine: Drs. Chance Dickson, Reid McClenny, John Anaya, Enrique Vazquez, Justin Ellerman and Gideon Dosunmu.
“We formed this band in mid-December specifically to play at Doc Rock, and we hit the ground running,” said Anaya, who along with McClenny make up the guitar section.
McClenny, an internal medicine intern, proposed the idea of forming a band after a few of the guys had jammed informally at Ellerman’s house, said Farheen Surtie, M.D., band manager and a third chief resident for internal medicine. Soon they had recruited Dickson for lead vocals, Vazquez for bass, Ellerman for keyboard and Dosunmu for drums.
The name RL6 for the six-member band, which is raising funds for University Hospital, was borrowed from a line of software used by hospitals to report safety concerns or events. “We thought it would be a funny play on that name to call ourselves the ‘bad boys’ of internal medicine,” Anaya said.
Although 1950s rock-and-roll landed RL6 a spot in the competition, the band’s playlist offers a wide assortment of tunes. “Our music interests vary greatly from classics like Queen to more popular artists like John Mayer and The Killers to thrash and death metal,” Anaya said.
Surtie said the group plans to create T-shirts for their supporters to wear at Doc Rock. “All of us are excited that our group of internal medicine residents were accepted to play at a battle of the bands,” she said.
For now, RL6 is rehearsing two to three times a week depending on the busy schedules of the residents. “It has become an outlet – something to do and something to look forward to outside of the hospital,” Surtie said. “It’s one way to stand together and gives us all something to root for.”
The Shotcallers
Based in Mobile, The Shotcallers formed in October of last year and play a variety of musical styles ranging from the blues to classic rock, funk, hip-hop and pop. Their rendition of Zac Brown Band’s “Chicken Fried” secured them a spot in the Doc Rock lineup.
Jessica Casey handles lead vocals: Matt Jones plays the electric guitar; Spencer Gayles plays the bass; Zack Stringer is the drummer; and Ryan Wright plays the acoustic guitar and performs vocals. You can catch him singing lead on a cover of Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me” on a new video the band posted recently on YouTube.
Gayles and Wright are both respiratory therapists at Children's & Women’s Hospital. Wright also serves as a respiratory therapist for USA Health Mobile Diagnostic Center’s Allergy and Asthma Clinic in west Mobile.
Before they take the stage at Soul Kitchen on March 31, the five-member group will play the new rooftop venue above Greer’s Market in downtown Mobile on March 25.
“We are looking forward to sharing the stage with all the bands and getting to entertain our colleagues,” Wright said. “We also are looking forward to winning some money for Children’s & Women’s Hospital’s cardiopulmonary department”
