You won’t find much if you Google Don Boles, a doctor in Phoenix.
But, if you type in C-A-S-U-A-L A-L-I-E-N, you’ll find the other side of Boles ’75, an electronic music creator. Operating under the name Casual Alien, “Doc,” as he’s affectionately known in the music community, has spent his life creating waves of sound with computers.
Music came before medicine for Boles, who studied under Charles A. Dana Professor of Music Emeritus Dexter Morrill ’60 at Colgate and became one of the University’s first two electronic music majors. The two formed a friendship, and the Chicago-born Boles could often be found in Morrill’s studio, where electronic music greats like Bob Moog and Max Mathews were common guests. To entertain them, Boles made some music.
“[Morrill] would say, ‘Don, go ahead and make some thunderstorm.’ I’d hook up the synthesizer and all the wires and cables. I’d hit the keyboard and get this thunder, you know.”
But Boles’ dad was a physician surgeon at Northwestern and his grandfather a country doctor; his uncle, a neuropathologist, and another relative was an oral surgeon. The list goes on. So, he followed their lead and studied internal medicine at Universidad De San Carlos, Facultad De Ciencias Medicas.
On the side, throughout 40 years of treating patients, Boles played his music solo and in a variety of bands. “When I got to Arizona [after completing my internal medicine residency in Chicago], I managed to have this double life. The band people didn’t know what I did for a day job, and my day job didn’t know what I did for a night job.” One night he was on call at the hospital, wearing green scrubs, a white coat, and a stethoscope. He ran into James Brown’s bass player, who said, in disbelief, “That’s why they call you doc?”
Three years ago, Boles retired from the Phoenix VA Healthcare System. At the time, he was playing in seven bands.
Unable to stay away from medicine for long, Boles now serves as a medical director alongside his son, who owns Arizona Community Pharmacy. Based in Peoria, Ariz., the pharmacy dispenses medications to patients in care facilities like mental health institutions, and it works with the state regarding mental health patients under Medicaid. Longtime advocates for those less fortunate, the Boleses also provide breakfast for homeless Medicaid patients near the pharmacy. “We’re trying to protect a patient population that we figured would be very underserved and very underrepresented,” Boles says.
He still plays about 175 gigs a year, and though his live music was on hold due to COVID-19 at the time of print, Boles isn’t slowing down. He’s just holding his band practices online now.
“There’s another one today, in fact.”