Neurologists by day, rock 'n' roll stars by night. Six Stanford doctors show off their melodious side with performances in their rock-and-roll cover band, The Hypertonics.

As if being respected neurologists wasn't enough.

The Hypertonics has performed '70s rock covers for 2½ years, playing such sought-after gigs as the Neurocritical Care Society's annual meeting and faculty birthday parties.

No, but really, they're good. Dr. Christanne Wijman, MD, Ph.D., commands the microphone while Dr. Frank Longo, MD, Ph.D., tickles the keys. Dr. Greg Albers strums the guitar as readily as he once did as a teenager, when he started playing.

“It was really just for fun” in the beginning, Wijman said in a Stanford report. Wijman is the band’s unofficial manager and director of Stanford's neurocritical care program. “Every time Frank would come to my house, he’d go straight to the piano.”

Wijman first got the idea for The Hypertonics when she saw a similar group of musician-neurocritical care doctors, the Codes, at a medical conference. After discovering that some of her colleagues shared similar skills, Wijman knew she had to try.

Dr. Violinist Charlene Chen, MD, studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music before deciding to practice medicine. Dr. Viet Nguyen, MD, played the guitar in three bands at once while studying molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley.

The Hypertonics gets its name from a medical condition (of course) for abnormally high muscular tension.

While rehearsals are usually disrupted by the absence of one or another physician who is on call that night, The Hypertonics plays on with recordings of their missing members.

The most recent addition to the group is the drummer, Dr. Paul Singh, MD, with his Master of Public Health. He also has the most groupies, according to a Stanford report. “He's gorgeous,” Wijman said, followed by Albers' clinical assessment. “He's got the biggest biceps.”

Longo, also a professor at Stanford, can boast a bit of his own entertainment fame, as he was dubbed a “Rock Star of Science” by GQ magazine last December—complete with a full-page spread of Longo standing next to Bret Michaels, musician/singer and reality-TV star.

As it turns out, the neurologists aren't the only musically endowed at the hospital. When Greg Kaufman, Stanford Hospital Music Program director, asked if other hospital staff were interested in putting on a concert, he got an overwhelmingly positive response.

“There's a number of really wonderful musicians who are also caregivers,” said Kaufman. To exhibit their musical abilities and bring together the hospital community, Kaufman has organized a Caregivers Concert series for 2011.

The series will feature four concerts throughout the year, beginning with an inaugural concert by The Hypertonics on Jan. 20, at 7:30 p.m., in the Arrillaga Alumni Center Ballroom on the Stanford campus. Future concerts will feature the vocalists, classic and jazz musicians of Stanford Hospital & Clinics.

So what is it about neurologists and caregivers that they also happen to have a knack for music?

“I've had the same observation with some surgeons as well," which is incredible dexterity applied to an instrument, Kaufman said in an e-mail interview. “I think, overall, though, creative people look for additional outlets to their 'day jobs.' Medicine/caretaking certainly calls for a high level of skill and creative thinking.”

The Stanford Hospital Music Program was created in 1992 to provide music to patients, visitors and staff. The program has six house musicians, who perform at patients' bedsides, in the library of the apartment complex for transplant patients and twice a week in the hospital's main atrium.