Ferry Cross the Hudson- The Rhodes
By Peter Aaron

The band on stage is four fresh-faced young white men, all dressed in black, playing tough R&B and jangly, minor key ballads and chirping out scrappy-but-earnest four-part harmonies. It’s textbook Merseybeat, and the audience is overwhelmingly high school-aged students swilling coffee, jumping around, dancing like their feet are on fire, and screaming along with the choruses. Is this the Cavern Club in 1962? Try again. One of the hundreds of U.S. teen clubs that sprang up in the wake of the British Invasion? Closer, but still off by more than 40 years. This is New Paltz, 2007 and the youthful quartet is The Rhodes, winners of this year’s Garage Rumble.

“Yeah, we love The Beatles,” says drummer and singer David La Viola. “But we actually listen more to the artists that influenced them—Sam Cooke, Little Richard, Ray Charles.” If you do a double take after reading that last sentence and learning that, at 21, LaViola is the oldest member of The Rhodes by four years, it’s safe to say you’re not alone. You read right: These likely lads will take classic rhythm and blues over mall-bait emo any day.

“It’s just such timeless music,” says singer and rhythm guitarist Derek Daunicht, 18. “That stuff, as well as The Beatles, plus Dylan and Johnny Cash, is what we relate to. Much more than music by indie bands, even though I guess we technically are an indie band.” Daunicht also cites Tom Waits as a favorite, while guitarist Robert Sciotino, 18, is a fan of Syd Barrett and The Libertines, and bassist Nicholas Imperial, also 18, loves Charles Mingus and James Brown.

Ex-Highland High School students and area natives all, The Rhodes got together in 2006. “[LaViola] and I had been in a prog rock band before that,” says Daunicht. “But after a while that music wasn’t very fun to play.”

“Or for the people in the audience to listen to,” adds LaViola.

After testing the waters locally and recording a demo CD, the ambitious foursome set their sights on the Big Apple. Using a one-room apartment in Jackson Heights as a base, the band played every bar or club gig available at night and busked on the streets by day. The experience was humbling, to say the least. “In Queens, we mostly played for the drug dealers that were working the block,” Daunicht says. “And in Washington Square, some crazy squatter guy tried to break the drums.” After two months of urban reality the group beat it back up north, reclaiming its slot on the local circuit and periodically trekking down to New York for gigs.

Last November the band performed in Woodstock’s illustrious Garage Rumble, an annual battle of the bands organized by tireless musical matriarch Kristin Garnier and featuring mostly teenage players. Competing against eight other promising young groups, The Rhodes were crowned the best band, winning a session at Nevessa Studios in Saugerties and an appearance on Time Warner Cable’s “Poughkeepsie Live.”

“I think we played really well and the whole experience was really great,” says LaViola. “And [Garnier] deserves a lot of credit for putting it together, she’s a real powerhouse,” offers Daunicht.

Not a band to rest on its laurels, The Rhodes have kept busy since the win, adding more and more shows to their itinerary and preparing to wax their debut disc. “It’s time for us to make our own classic album,” says LaViola. “And to show people what we think rock ‘n’ roll is all about.”

The Rhodes will perform on January 25 and the last Friday of every month thereafter at Muddy Cup in New Paltz. www.myspace.com/therhodesmusic