Dental offices often offer quiet, stuffy, stark environs marked primarily with tidy piles of drab magazines and the occasional framed painting on a white wall. So the player piano in Dr. T. Bob Davis’ Lake Highlands waiting room is striking — even more so when he steps out of his examination room to play a ditty (which he says he doesn’t do as often as he’d like — he’s got teeth to fix, you understand).
Pleasant tunes, a fireplace and big comfy swivel rocking chairs keep you atypically cozy while awaiting your root canal. There’s nothing typical about this dentist, in fact — for the past 33 years he has led mission trips to Matamoras, Mexico, to treat children at the Matamoras Orphanage. Last month he led a group of 100 or so dental students and volunteer doctors who treated about 200 children.
He loves tinkling the keys for kids at the orphanage or in his office, but he also has recorded seven albums. In 2002 one of them was nominated for a Grammy. “All of my recordings are sacred/inspirational, but the Grammys don’t have that category, so I was nominated in the ‘pop/instrumental’ category,” he says. “But I like playing anything — pop, country and western, the music of yesteryear — and I’ll do banquets, weddings and, sometimes, a funeral.”