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The term “corporate rock star” conjures up images of a ladder-climbing “suit” whose sole purpose in life is to impress the higher ups until he or she becomes one.

That hardly describes Russell Dimmitt, assistant vice president of bio-technical services for Renal Care Group, the 37-state outpatient dialysis services company formerly headquartered in Nashville. (RCG was recently acquired in a $3.5 billion deal by German dialysis giant Fresenius.) Though Dimmitt bosses over 300 biomedical technicians nationwide, he readily admits that he confines his time spent in business attire “to between nine and five.”

No, Dimmitt’s corporate rock star status is of a more literal bent. The guitarist and front man for The Renal Rockers, Dimmitt leads a hobbyist rock-n-roll band comprised of RCG employees which was recently among eight national finalists competing for the title of “America’s best corporate rock band” in an event co-sponsored by Fortune magazine and NAMM, the international music products association.

In competition with other corporate rock bands representing such Fortune 500 stalwarts as Johnson & Johnson and Hewlett Packard, the Renal Rockers rode the strength of a three-song CD submission and a performance in a regional competition to become one of the few corporate bands selected to perform at the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, last fall. The Rockers ended up losing out to PANTS!—a band representing McKinney, a North Carolina-based ad agency. (The Loaners of Quicken Loans finished second.)

Dimmitt’s Southern rock-influenced band got its start playing at RCG’s annual employee conferences. At one of them, a company vendor informed Dimmitt that competitor, California-based DaVita, participated in Fortune’s corporate battle of the bands. RCG CEO Gary Brukhardt encouraged Dimmitt to apply. “He approved it, and we submitted a CD,” Dimmitt recounts. “Leave it to competitiveness between CEOs.”

Terry Proveaux, director of investor relations for Fresenius, concurs that the company supported the band. “But don’t get the wrong idea,” she adds. “It’s not like we put them on the road or anything.”

As a result of RCG’s sale, Nashville is losing local control of one of the dialysis sector’s top companies to Bad Homberg, Germany. But Music City is also losing one of America’s best corporate rock bands, which Dimmitt says hasn’t survived the buy-out and ensuing workforce reductions. Dimmitt himself doesn’t expect to be with the company beyond its September transition.

Federal regulators required RCG/ Fresenius to shed 96 dialysis clinics as part of the deal. Nashville entrepreneur Jerry Tannenbaum scooped them up for $511 million. Dimmitt is currently helping Tannenbaum’s DSI Holding Co. with that transition. Perhaps the colorful doctor/entrepreneur Tannenbaum will see in Dimmitt more than just an able body that can help run his new company. He might just secure the cornerstone for a top-notch corporate rock band.

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