You’d be forgiven for thinking Dr. Rocket is the guy with the guitar, not the band. It’s a common mistake, at least as old as Alice Cooper (yup, Alice Cooper is a band!) But Nick Noemi has been playing a lot on his own lately, and his partner Mason Kline hasn’t been around much at all. He’s been toiling in the music studio, mixing the band’s upcoming debut album. The songs are all finished — getting them to sound good is another story.
“When you’re mixing, you’re making really small changes to a lot of different sounds that will change the overall sound,” Kline said. “You’ve gotta understand the difference that those changes make.”
Dr. Rocket’s self-titled album, slated for a July release, is the culmination of Noemi and Kline’s musical partnership. The two Eugene natives have been buddies since high school, when they played in jazz band together, and they attended the University of Oregon together as well, with Noemi studying advertising and Kline studying music.
During this time, Noemi translated his love of ’60s pop like the Beatles and the Zombies, as well as ’70s glam rock like David Bowie and T. Rex, into original compositions. Noemi’s glam inspiration included his stage name, which he derived from bizarro music personality and Bowie affiliate Klaus Nomi. (Noemi’s real last name is Carver.)
At the behest of his friend Jack McNutt, he started performing his songs, initially in a two-guitar duo with McNutt and then as a guitar-drum combo with Kline.
“If Jack hadn’t pressured me to play with (Mason), it probably wouldn’t have happened,” Noemi said.
Now UO grads, Noemi and Kline gig regularly at venues like Sam Bond’s and the Wandering Goat, in addition to playing a healthy bunch of house shows. For extra glamor, they can nearly always be seen wearing the long, loose-fitting South Asian garments known as kurtas.
But as a ’60s- and ’70s-inspired rock band, Noemi finds it difficult to carve out a niche in the scene.
“There aren’t really bands in Eugene that are similar to us,” he said. “It’s kind of weird. Typically when you go to a show and you know one band, you know you’ll like the other because they’re paired together (by genre). But in Eugene it’s like, ‘Here’s a folk band, and here’s this reggae hip hop band! You’re gonna love it!’”
As such, the band’s long-term plan is to move to a larger urban center. Noemi’s considered New York –“in New York you can play a show every night if you want” — and Austin, Texas.
But for now, they’re sticking around their hometown. And once their album drops and Kline climbs out of the shadows, there’ll be a lot more glam in Eugene.

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Dr. Rocket’s self-titled album, slated for a July release, is the culmination of Nick Noemi (pictured) and Mason Kline’s musical partnership. The Eugene natives have been buddies since high school, when they played in jazz band together. (Photo courtesy of Nick Noemi)