What happens when a top-tier hand surgeon swaps scalpels for a six-string guitar? In Fort Worth, you get Dr. Stephen Troum \u2014 a man who stitches tendons by day and rips solos by night, fronting the Troumatics as they roll out their second full-length album, “Keep on Flowing,” on Nov. 18. For Troum, medicine and music aren\u2019t separate worlds \u2014 they\u2019re two sides of the same coin, each demanding precision, passion, and a steady hand.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Born and raised in Greensboro, North Carolina,\u00a0Troum\u2019s\u00a0early fascination with the human body charted his path to a career in medicine. \u201cMiddle school, junior high \u2014 I was always mesmerized by how the human body worked,\u201d he recalls. Anatomy, physiology, the\u00a0mechanics of healing \u2014 it all fascinated him. That curiosity led him through Emory University in Atlanta, Wake Forest University for medical school, a general surgery residency at Mercer University, and finally, a hand surgery fellowship back at Wake Forest.\u00a0Nearly three\u00a0decades later,\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0a respected hand surgeon in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, board-certified and recognized by the Texas State Legislature as an honorary Surgeon General of Texas in 2004. His research has appeared in top journals, and\u00a0he has been featured in national media outlets, including The\u00a0Wall Street Journal\u00a0and The\u00a0New York Times. He currently works at his own practice, Privia Medical Bone & Joint Clinic, and operates at Baylor Sergicare in Fort Worth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But beneath the white coat and scrubs\u00a0beats\u00a0the heart of a musician.\u00a0Troum\u2019s\u00a0love for music started at home, with a piano, an acoustic guitar, and a pair of bongos in the house. From the recorder in elementary school to self-taught guitar chords in adolescence, music was always part of the fabric of his life. \u201cOnce you learn three chords, pretty much, you got a lot,\u201d he says with a grin. Over the years, he refined his craft \u2014 first dabbling, then performing, and now fully committing to the\u00a0Troumatics, a three-piece band he fronts alongside drummer Dan \u201cSonic Boom\u201d Elliot and bassist Wyatt \u201cDoc Riot\u201d Webb, a family physician.\u00a0Troum\u2019s\u00a0stage name? \u201cDoc Roc,\u201d of course.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The band\u2019s first album,\u00a02003\u2019s\u00a0“Watch Me Burn,” announced their arrival on the Fort Worth music scene with raw energy and hooks that stuck. Now, “Keep on Flowing”\u00a0is a reflection of\u00a0Troum\u2019s\u00a0world view \u2014 introspective, socially conscious, and grounded in resilience. The album\u2019s lead-off single, “I Am a River,” finds its roots in the tumult of recent years \u2014 pandemic anxieties, political strife, and the blurring lines of truth in the media. \u201cWe\u2019re metaphorical rivers flowing through life,\u201d he says. \u201cAt some point, we have to find a way to coexist with all these challenges.\u201d Unlike “Watch Me Burn,” which leaned heavily on relationships, “Keep on Flowing” addresses the broader, more complex canvas of existence in the 2020s.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Recording the album was a patchwork of studios and collaborators \u2014 from Joe Tacke at Cloudland to Todd Pipes and Peter Wierenga, with a couple of songs carried over from earlier sessions with Taylor Tatsch. Each track is a testament to the band\u2019s commitment to craftsmanship. \u201cI hope listeners go on that journey, enjoy the musicianship, enjoy the songwriting, and if they want to dive deeper, find something personal in the lyrics,\u201d Troum says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite the weight of his medical career, music is never a mere hobby. The band has been a serious project for the past three years, building momentum with radio play, festival appearances, and a supportive Fort Worth music community. Troum is conscious of timing. \u201cI\u2019m always worried I\u2019m getting too old for this, and maybe I already am,\u201d he admits. \u201cBut as soon as I thought of it, I said, let\u2019s just do it.\u201d His instinct has been vindicated \u2014 the snowball of success is rolling, and there\u2019s no sign of it stopping.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Troum\u2019s\u00a0dual existence is a testament to the possibility of pursuing both craft and calling. By day, he\u00a0operates\u00a0with surgical precision; by night, he channels raw emotion through guitar strings and lyrics. And as Fort Worth listens to “Keep on Flowing,”\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0hearing a man who has learned to keep both his hands and his dreams alive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI do love doing the music part of it,\u201d he says reflectively.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0certainly a passion outside of my profession that I like doing.\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0going to retire eventually from medicine, but I can continue to do music as long as possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What happens when a top-tier hand surgeon swaps scalpels for a six-string guitar? In Fort Worth, you get…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":386182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,8067,12043,7371,7372,184368,14467,11878,14838,1083,10763,5921,358,7453,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-386181","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-artist","10":"tag-arts-and-culture","11":"tag-fort-worth","12":"tag-fortworth","13":"tag-hand-surgery","14":"tag-health-and-wellness","15":"tag-live-music","16":"tag-local-music","17":"tag-medical","18":"tag-stephen-montoya","19":"tag-style","20":"tag-texas","21":"tag-top-story","22":"tag-tx","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-united-states-of-america","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115567429119216994","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}