It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock ‘n’ roll. It’s even longer if you have to burn
dreary thruway miles from Ithaca to do it. Each week members
of The Black Arrows drive an hour and a half to converge at their bass player’s
home in East Rochester.

The quartet entombs itself in the tiny basement —
a loud and bleak cinderblock shoebox with no adornments except for a picture of
a snub-nose .38 — and hones a brand of rock music that hasn’t been heard in a
while.

The Black Arrows play rock music that goes a little
deeper — rock music with emotion and without the whine. They leave the
backbone in.

The band is still a newborn, barely clocking in a
year of existence. They’re at the teething stage, slowly becoming aware of what
they’re capable of.

In many fledgling outfits, the members’ musical
influences tend to conflict. And you would think The Black Arrows’ various
backgrounds would do just that. But the group’s positive push and pull blends
those influences into something completely new.

“There’s a lot of hardcore influence and then a lot
of early ’80s post-punk influence,” says singer-guitarist Nick Walter.

“I think the ‘hardcore’ is in the drumming mostly,”
says bassist Paul Phillips. Drummer Chris Romeis
explains why: “Breakdowns baby, breakdowns.”

And then there’s the blues. At a recent Black Arrow
cellar summit, Phillips and his twin brother Jay called up the ghost of Stevie Ray Vaughn by simultaneously jamming — or cramming
together — the guitar lead to “Texas Flood” with the bass walk to
“Crossfire.”

Jay Phillips loves SRV. He sold his motorcycle to
buy The SRV Signature Series Strat when Fender first
introduced it.

“On the day he [SRV] died,” says Paul Phillips, “my
brother put on a hat, cowboy boots, and a kimono and drank Crown Royal ’til he
couldn’t stand.”

Jay Phillips’ guitar is at the heart of The Black
Arrow sound. But it ain’tbluesy. It’s as wiry as he is, and it
stings and buzzes as if out of a rabid hive on fire. It is the direct opposite
of the tone you’d expect from an SRV disciple.

“It’s weird,” he says, “because I don’t hear a lot
of my influences in my guitar playing. A lot of the stuff I listen to, I don’t
think I play like that.”

“My favorite band is The Replacements,” Walter says.
“And I don’t think we sound anything like them.”

So with the influences sufficiently obscured, the
band is left to its own creativity and the benefit of having identical twins in
the outfit.

The Phillips brothers are identical. They sport matching chrome-dome do’s,
plenty of tattoos on their lanky frames, the same infectious smile, and a lot
of the same mannerisms. It’s spooky. They are in tune musically and
rhythmically, as well… and just a little off from the rest of the band.

“The thing is,” says Jay Phillips, “my brother and I
work on a different rhythm than anybody else. Every time we write a guitar part
or a bass part, it’s in a signature that nobody knows. As weird as what one
comes up with, the other one automatically gets it.”

The other two Arrows capitalize on this.

“They have a different sense of rhythm than anyone
I’ve ever met,” says Walter. “And that’s not bad or better, but sometimes it
makes it more interesting. It’s not a lack of rhythm. It’s a different rhythm.
I honestly think that’s what makes us good as a band and different from anybody
else.”

Besides having a penchantfor atypical rhythms, the band submerges most of its tunes in
minor keys — kinda sad and kinda
angry in a sort of veiled-disappointment kind of way.

“That’s because we’re really fuckin’
bummed, man,” Romeis says, half jokingly. And even
though he may be right to some extent, there is still an upbeat glimmer to the
Black Arrows’ rock ‘n’ roll.

The band has cranked out a four-song demo and has
pounded the pavement from here to Fredonia to Buffalo to Ithaca to Jamestown and beyond. They just wanna play. But being new is sobering at best, depressing
at worst. It’s hard to rock a crowd of eight people.

“We’ve rocked six,” Jay says proudly. “We did play a
show in Fredonia that was standing room only and there were people who had
never heard us that were jumpin’ and shakin’ the whole time we played.”

So it’s clearly not a question of talent. It’s
simply The Black Arrows’ rookie status.

“We’re somewhat of an unknown band,” Jay says. “So
we’re always put on first.”

The band hopes to pile into the studio for real with
Flaming Lips/Mercury Rev/Sleater-Kinney producer Dave
Fridmann and have an LP out this time next year. In
the meantime they’ll hammer away in the basement, on the road, and in bars that
tolerate rock bands trying something new.

“Like it or hate it,” Jay says. “When you see us our
songs have hooks.”

There seems to be a growing number in the “like it”
category.

“My wife loves
us,” Jay says.

The Black Arrows play with The Staggers and The Assault, Saturday, May 14, at the Bug Jar, 219 Monroe Avenue,
at 9 p.m. Tix: $5. 454-2966

This article appears in May 11-17, 2005.