Doctor uses music as motivation in pandemic

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OMAHA, Nebraska (KETV) — The music roots run deep for family medicine Doctor Sebastian Lane.

“I was just always around it. Whether it was like Eric Clapton and all those kind of guys, literally coming by my grandparents’ house in Chicago. I was just surrounded by it,” Lane told KETV NewsWatch 7.

He learned his chops early from his grandfather, Blues Hall of Fame legend Jimmy Rodgers.

“I really put in my time growing up. I’ve been playing since I was about 3 years old,” he said.

The blues artist eventually hit the road on his own path, strumming his own songs on stages across the country.

“Mostly around the Midwest over the last few years, just ’cause with medical school, it was really hard,” he said. “But we would travel all over on the weekends and play shows.”

Lane’s tours hit a roadblock in 2020. Loud performances morphed into peace in the midst of a pandemic.

“I’ve done more this last year than ever,” he said.

Lane says his guitar kept him grounded while pandemic pressure skyrocketed. In the past year, the CHI doctor saw his coworkers treat dozens of intubated COVID-19 patients.

“They’ve been in it, day in and day out, having to deal with very sick patients and having to take care of themselves and still balancing everything out at work.”

Lane also watched his friends hang up their instruments and music venues shut their doors.

“Everyone’s kind of suppressed a lot of it,” he said. “I’ll go home and it’s kind of like my de-stress method that I use, and I’ll play music probably every night.”

Lane’s tunes took a different direction.

“My writing, I would say, is a little more emotional a little uplifting to people, because we’ve had a rough year.”

The tune started to change when Dr. Lane received one of the first COVID-19 vaccines in the state, as part of the effort to vaccinate frontline hospital workers.

“It’s huge,” he said. “I mean, having the vaccine and being one of the first couple people in Nebraska to get it — it was monumental.”

For the blues artist, it was a step closer to the stage. Dr. Lane and his bandmates are back performing, staying socially distant and jamming once again.

“I can’t even describe what it felt like to be on stage playing, because it’s not just the fact that you’re on stage. It’s like being with your group of guys that you’re playing with, meshing with them, getting in the groove and the live music.”