Ex-Chelsea Grin Guitarist is Training as a Surgeon
Aspiring musicians, take note: when you one day wake up and realize that being away from home for three-quarters of the year in a cramped, filthy, traveling fart box kinda sucks, you can always go back to school to get an advanced degree and bring in those big bucks you dreamed rock stardom would bring you! Let former Chelsea Grin guitarist Dan Jones be your inspiration.
Jones, who left Chelsea Grin in 2017 after performing on their first four albums, signaled as early as 2015 that he had other ambitions, stepping down from touring to spend his summer researching microbial mercury methylation at a genetics lab. Since that time he enrolled in — and subsequently completed — medical school, and has now moved onto searching for a residency, the period in a young doctor’s career when they work in the real world under direct supervision of an established practitioner in their chosen field. The process of finding a residency can be fraught with anxiety, as to-be-residents need to be specifically invited by a doctor and program (“matching”).
Good news for Jones: having now completed medical school, he has found a match! The guitarist will be training at the Department of Surgery at Weill Cornell, a prestigious facility in New York City. Jones, who still references his past life in his Twitter handle, @dan_grin, tweeted his excitement, saying:
“Absolutely thrilled to have matched at Cornell in NYC for my general surgery residency! This is a dream come true. Thank you to all who have supported me along the way. @WCMSurgery see you in a few short weeks!”
I’ve lost count of how many close friends and family members of mine have been treated at Weill Cornell, so Jones is presumably in good hands — and vice versa.
How would you react if you were about to go under the knife, asked about the tattoos peeking out from under your surgeon’s gown, then learned he was a longtime member of an internationally touring metal band? I think I’d be stoked! Even if we’ve poked fun at Chelsea Grin over the years, there must be some corollary between the skills it takes to shred and those necessary to perform surgery.
Best of luck to Jones. Residency ain’t easy!
[via Loudwire]
