My Back Page

A technician takes to the stage

When she’s not testing vision, Emily Bornemann is a guitar slinging punk rocker.

By Bill Kekevian, Senior Associate Editor

Editor’s note: My Back Page is a new feature about the life, passions and pursuits of ophthalmic professionals outside of the office. If you or one of your co-workers would like to share a story, please e-mail william.kekevian@pentavisionmedia.com.

By day, ophthalmic technician Emily Bornemann works at Barry Edison Ophthalmology in Eatontown, N.J. By night she’s forging her way through the storied underground punk rock scene of nearby Asbury Park as the guitarist and lead singer of the band Dentist.

“We started this project based on our love for surf rock and 90s indie garage rock bands like Pavement, The Breeders, and Modest Mouse,” Ms. Bornemann says.

The band’s crunchy guitars and Ms. Bornemann’s ghostly hooks are indeed reminiscent of the wave of self-styled college radio stars that briefly bubbled to the surface in the early 1990s.

Ms. Bornemann says music has always been a big part of her life. She picked up the guitar at age 12 and says she started writing songs almost immediately, without any formal music education.

Now, she works with a songwriting partner, whom after years of performing together became her husband last year. “I write about 50% of the songs and he writes the other half,” she says. “Sometimes if he writes music I’ll write the lyrics and the melody,” she explains.

With the already busy schedule of an ophthalmic technician, the addition of fronting a band sounds positively grueling. “We practice once a week and, if we have a show (which we do almost every week), then we practice the day of the show too.” But Ms. Bornemann is used to running around. “I’ve just been doing it for so long,” she says.

Dentist issued its eponymous debut album in May and is already hard at work on a follow-up. “We’ve pretty much already wrote the whole second album,” she says.

She says several of her co-workers have come to see the band play, hung articles about her band on the coveted break room fridge and have even bought the album. “Everyone is just super supportive,” she says. “If we’re going to go away for a few days on tour, they work around it and I’m super appreciative of that. I’m lucky.” Her skills have even come in handy in the office. “Sometimes my boss will have me sing to the patients, usually, around Christmas,” she says. “It’s almost like a double life, except that everybody knows about it.”

Both aspects of that “double life,” however, are vital. “Being an ophthalmic tech is the first job I’ve ever loved. Basically, my biggest passions in life are eyes and music,” Ms. Bornemann says. OP