It's Thursday night in the heart of Pittsford village. And like every Thursday night, The Chinchillas are piled into a basement that resembles a bomb shelter. There are no rations or provisions - except for beer. It's decorated in what you might call "early dorm room rococo," with mismatched furniture and blankets nailed to the ceiling in order to muffle the noise so as to not upset the suburban gentry outside. The joint is cluttered with speakers, drums, and the musicians who meet weekly to drink beer, commiserate, drink more beer, and play some of the best Americana heard anywhere today.

The Chinchillas - Peter Anvelt (guitar, vocals), Bill Ribas (guitar), Paul Ruske (drums), and Bill Corbett (bass) - are pretty sure they've been around since 1985, and that they've released roughly a dozen albums. Dates and specifics are fuzzy at best. Not all are sure what the website address is.

"I think it starts with ‘w,'" Corbett says.

You see, The Chinchillas are the sultans of sidestep, the vagabonds of vague. Not because they want to be coy or elusive. It's just that, well, they're too cool to chronicle. The only thing that comes close is a crusty and brittle piece of notebook paper that has the title of every song the band has ever written scrawled on it. The coffee (I'm assuming) stains and its rumpled condition give it the look and feel of a document circa 1860; an address, a declaration, The Chinchilla Manifest, a bill of rights and wrongs. Throughout our conversation, drummer Paul Ruske makes several attempts to count the number of songs on it. He eventually gives up.

"Just say 400," he says.

The Chinchillas play so rarely that each new album and each gig has the feeling of a comeback. "But we've never been gone," says singer/guitarist Peter Anvelt. "That's an illusion." The band did go south for a couple years in the mid-'90s, though.

"I wouldn't say we went south," Anvelt says. "We just took a back seat to raising families. We were playing out maybe twice a year. It's hard to be missed when you don't play out."

The Chinchillas came together in the winter of 1985 out of the wreckage of other Rochester bands like The Presstones, Anvil, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovels, and Cappy and the Frenchmen. New liquor laws and the vacuous dance-club drone had thrown a wrench in live rock 'n' roll's spokes. Ribas' best and worst memory of those days is a Chinchillas gig in Buffalo where the band was paid a grand total of $6.

"What was going on?" asks Ribas. "A whole lotta nothin.' It was a little dried up. Scorgies was turning into a comedy club. It was more of a dance hall scene. The drinking age got hit twice in the early 80's; the kids couldn't go out and drink. You had four years of people who used to come out that now couldn't. It was tough."

The Chinchillas played dives like Shatzees, Idols, and Friends and Players, and managed to lock onto some decent bills with bands like The Goo Goo Dolls (who had previously opened for The Chinchillas), 900 Ft. Jesus, Jerry Harrison, Jim Carroll, and perhaps a few others. Anvelt scratches his head and looks around the room.

"Didn't we open for the Ramones?" he asks.

The Chinchillas started out a straight-up, straight-ahead bar band a la The Replacements or Alex Chilton. The songs were edgy and loud, at times veering into punk territory with only their tight and bright construction to save them from cracking up in the impending chaos. It was in the mid-90's that this chaos grew to include the country/roots strain that predominates the Chinchillas' sound today. According to Anvelt this was - and still is - an unintentional augmentation, perhaps even a wrong turn in the wrong direction.

"I think we're taking a step backwards," he says. "It's easier to play."

Well no, it's not. The Chinchillas just make it look easy.

Americana's lean toward 2/4 and waltz time signatures is certainly less cluttered and may be easier for drunken feet to pick up on and dance to, but the boogie within the beat is deceptively hard to play. It's easy for a band to overplay it.

Ribas is an absolute twang-master who could play circles around anyone. However, he is spatially aware, utilizing the breaths between the flurries for added emphasis. You'd think the dude was raised in Bakersfield.

"And he doesn't even like country," Anvelt says.

And it's Ruske and Corbett who play like a two-headed beast that anchor the swing beneath Anvelt's haphazard strum and croon.

Anvelt's songs - simple little ditties about beer, blue collars, broken hearts, plane crashes, and more beer - are lyrically wry, subtle, and sly. He works their kinks out in his head and with his guitar before pitching them to the rest of the group.

"And if they say it's OK we keep on going," he says. "If they don't like it, we throw it away."

"Then how come our waste paper basket is empty?" asks Ruske.

The Chinchillas seems to be gigging a little more nowadays. The band has already released two albums this year, a children's record "Fuzzy Notes" and recent release "Wacky Doodle," and are putting the polish on "Broken Guitar" at Saxon Studios; it's due out in October. The band's entire catalog remains a bit cloudy. Maybe they should have included a discography on that ragged relic of a song master list. Some recordings have been forgotten, others were simply abandoned.

"We'd get started," says Corbett. "Then we'd never finish them because of money, I guess. Those $6 gigs just didn't add up."

The Chinchillas

Sunday, September 27

Naples Grape Festival, Naples

3:30-4:45 | free | naplesgrapefest.org

Myspace.com/chinchillasrockandroll