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. CONTINUE....
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