“I just kept them in my head”

Rosenblum’s path to music didn’t begin until college.

The native of Ontario, Canada has been in music since he was young. “It’s always been an important part of my life. I’m into a lot of different genres and I’ve always really gravitated towards classic rock. I think that’s where my heart has always been.”

Rosenblum’s favorites include Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and The Tragically Hip, among others, though now older with three children, she has allowed pop music to enter the rotation.

First picking up the guitar in his 20s, Rosenblum began playing music as a student in the dorms at the University of British Columbia.

“Honestly, I’ve never had a lesson,” he said. “I started playing there and then I’ve been playing guitar steadily for the last 30 years. Initially, I didn’t really sing. I was basically playing the guitar.”

Guitar in hand, Rosenblum went on to attend the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee to earn his M.D. and Ph.D. He later made his way to San Francisco in 2007, becoming a dermatology resident at UCSF.

He progressed to a postdoctoral fellow, junior faculty, and is now a full professor.

“tell a story”

Maggie LowePharmD, PhD, calls himself one of Rosenblum’s biggest supporters.

The assistant professor of dermatology in the School of Medicine started at UCSF as a graduate student in 2008, later joining Rosenblum’s lab. It’s not lost on her why music comes naturally to Rosenblum, a boss she called “an amazing mentor.”

“It tells a story,” Lowe said. “Science doesn’t mean much unless we’re able to put a cohesive message together. If you look at just one experiment, it won’t reveal much. But when you see a series of experiments used to ask and answer a question, that’s where Mike has a strength as a scientist. That lends itself well to music because you’re trying to tell stories through music.”

Science and music as a thread

Along the way, Rosenblum found others inside and outside of UCSF who shared science and music.

One was Rich Schneiderdr., School of Medicine orthopedic professor.

“We’re all in clinical departments,” Schneider said. “And for a lot of clinical faculty, golf is a hobby, which is fine, but I was never interested in playing golf. I have always been interested in playing music. With these intense day jobs, it’s important to have an outlet.”

Guitarist Rosenblum and drummer Schneider teamed up with Kaiser Permanente four-string guitarist and neurologist Ken Fox, MD, to form the blues and surf rock band Light Chain in the early days of Covid-19 pandemic.

“We originally started doing covers,” Schneider said. “Then, once we realized we could do more to challenge ourselves, we decided to write our own music.”

With these intense day jobs, it’s important to have an outlet.”

Light Chain bandmate Schneider revealed that Rosenblum’s creativity and drive drove him in his music and career.

“Mike is gifted in many ways,” he said. “He is full of creativity and full of energy. Whatever he does he accelerates, whether it’s his career in health or research or playing music. He is highly motivated and can achieve anything he sets his mind to.”

The band put together an album at Lucky Recording Company in Brisbane launched in 2023.

“I thought we made a really good album,” Rosenblum said. “At the same time, I was building my own records. It was different from the music we were making as a band. So, I kept it to myself and continued to record and improve at home recording. I wrote songs before that, but they were always for me. I never tried to record anything. I just kept them in my head.”

But the songs wouldn’t stick in his head for long.

Working with the contacts he had built through Light Chain, Rosenblum was about to embark on his first journey as a solo artist—one that would challenge his confidence as a musician and demand his creative expertise as a scientist and clinician.

From the sabbatical to the studio

For his solo music, Rosenblum wrote much of his songwriting during a 2022-2023 sabbatical after Light Chain finished recording.

During that time, he went on a journey that took his family to locations such as Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, London and Ireland.

Almost halfway through his vacation, Rosenblum returned to the Bay Area to test out his new songs with the same producers, Travis Kasperbauer and Mikel Ross, who helped make the Light Chain album a reality just months before.

“Their advice was to keep writing and ‘come back in six months and we’ll sit down and record it,'” he recalled. “It was just the positive reinforcement I needed.”

This was a lift from a production team that had previously worked with rock n’ roll legends like Jackson Browne and the Go-Go’s.

Self-described indie pop music – which Rosenblum wrote under that name PrettyBoy Chance – really took off when he returned from his sabbatical in July 2023. That’s when his producers called on guitarist Joe Gore and drummer Paulo Baldi to give the songs a whole new dimension.

Gore is a longtime guitarist for Tom Waits and has worked with Tracy Chapman, most recently appearing on stage with the singer-songwriter at the GRAMMY Awards for her duet with Luke Combs. Baldi spent a decade behind the kit with indie rockers Cake and recently toured with Les Claypool and Julian Lennon.

He’s full of creativity and full of energy.”

“Suddenly, the songs went from these scratch tracks I recorded on my gear at home to Paulo and Joe contributing in major ways,” Rosenblum said.

Then Rock n’ Roll Hall of Famer Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go’s, another legendary friend of Rosenblum’s producers, lent her vocals on a few tracks, a recording experience the UCSF dermatologist called— an “upper”.

Finished pieces in hand, now all Rosenblum had to do was release it to the world.

Generational art

Rosenblum’s father, an artist himself, painted many of the canvases that hang throughout his family’s homes.

For Rosenblum, this kind of generational artistry is the stuff this album is made of.

“That contribution will be a legacy that people will remember him by in our family,” Rosenblum said. “When I really threw myself into it, I thought, ‘Well, why do I want to do this?’ Why does it matter? I want to create something that reflects where I am in my life right now, that will at least last long enough for maybe a few generations of my family to keep it and be able to access it.”

PrettyBoyChance’s First Single “Dance With Me” was released in mid-September. The full-length debut album – titled ‘Chasing the Sun’ – came out at the end of October.

Fans will be able to hear the album this month at a launch show at the iconic Great Star Theater in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Despite the musical lifestyle, Rosenblum has no plans to quit his day job.

He remains focused on making discoveries in his UCSF lab, translating those discoveries into new drugs, and seeing patients at UCSF Health.

“I feel like there’s a lot of ways you can have a positive impact on people,” Rosenblum said. “You can do that through discovery and trying to create new drugs. You can also do it by creating a piece of art that people smile and sing to for part of the day.”