By Jenna Somerset

Oct. 2008   Detroit, MI USA:

If you take one cup of family, add in a tablespoon of humble beginnings, include a teaspoon of the Billie Holiday song catalog, flavor it with poems from deceased poet Charles Bukowski, add a ¼ cup of New York City lifestyle, then toss in some rock and roll flavored clothing and hair plus a music catalog spanning two decades to taste, sprinkle in some flamenco guitar, a pinch of Jimi Hendrix, put it all in a blender and hit the mix button, what would you get? How about musician Steve Conte!

Steve is currently touring with The New York Dolls and is in the process of starting his new band, 'The Crazy Truth'. Having been in the music game since a kid, Steve grew to fame in the early 90’s through his band 'Company of Wolves', signed by Mercury Records. From that time forward, he has worked with some of the industries best musicians and bands, including Paul Simon, Simon and Garfunkel, David Johansen, Peter Wolf, Willy DeVille, Maceo Parker, Billy Squier, Suzi Quatro, Jill Jones, Phoebe Snow, Chuck Berry…this list could go on for years. He has done studio work for countless projects like anime series Wolf’s Rain, vocals for video games like Sonic and the Secret Rings and Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity.

 

 

Steve was at home in New York City between the worldwide touring schedules of The New York Dolls, and was working on cutting a deal for his 'The Crazy Truth project. Via phone, he was able to take some time to share his past, present and future plans with us at SoundCheck-Magazine. Lucky us!

 

SoundCheck :  SoundCheck-Magazine is proud to interview Mr. Steve Conte, a legendary vocalist and guitarist, currently a member of The New York Dolls and just getting started with his latest project, 'The Crazy Truth'. Steve, such a pleasure to talk!

SC: Here to deny or confirm rumors (laughing)?

SoundCheck :  Exactly! So you are a native New Yorker?

SC: I was born in upstate New York. I lived in New Jersey for my teenage years, and moved back into Manhattan.

SoundCheck :  Did music bring you to Manhattan, or family?

SC: Absolutely music, I was living in New Jersey at the time when I knew I should be getting my shit out there. At that point, the only thing New Jersey was known for was Springsteen and Bon Jovi, neither of which style I really wanted to do. I didn’t do either one of those types of things. I wasn’t like metal and I wasn’t a singer/songwriter this early. Although I respect both those guys for what they do, but I thought I needed to be in a scene where rock and roll was happening.

 

SoundCheck :  One thing that strikes me immediately about you is that music is a family business. Tell me what it’s like to play with your brother John and do you still perform with your mom, Rosemary, both successful musicians?

SC: Yea…it was an amazing upbringing. We had guitars and drums in my house when I was little, which definitely was the thing that got us interested. Then,  when my parents split up, we were little kids, I was the oldest, I was 12 , we were on welfare and food stamps and everything, we didn’t have any money for clothes and shoes, just tough times when you are a teenager. My mother went out and bought me this, at the time, a hugely expensive Martin acoustic guitar when we couldn’t even eat. And I thought “Wow, this is just too amazing”. I had to live up to this instrument now. So I practiced my ass off to make her feel like she didn’t waste her money and the family’s food for like a month. I guess she had that much faith in me. I pretty much stayed in my room and practiced through dinner sometimes, through the weekends, when my friends would be outside playing, and when I was older my friends would be outside in the car beeping the horn waiting for me, and I was still inside practicing. She really inspired me. I did some of my first gigs ever with her, it started at like church concerts, playing Dylan, Beatles, folk songs and stuff like that. She’s a Billie Holiday style jazz singer, and she taught us her whole jazz repertoire. From there I really got a taste for music outside of the three chord rock and roll song.

 

SoundCheck :  Is Rosemary still performing on stage?

SC: She sort of retired from performing only because my brother and I have moved to the city and away from there. Honestly, she doesn’t carry the PA system anymore. She is concentrating on teaching, she teaches voice, is a great voice teacher, and is also a hypnotherapist. She helps people deal with their anxieties about stage performance. She is an all inclusive performance teacher…she helps people lose weight, stop smoking, all that.

 

SoundCheck :  Obviously your family is tightly knit, what type of influence did your family have on your music career and specifically the path it followed?

SC: We should also talk about my brother John. When we were growing up at first he was the guitar player and I was the drummer and one day I picked up his guitar and I started writing songs immediately. I didn’t know what I was doing. I started playing one string and made up lyrics and I thought wow, this song writing thing comes pretty naturally to me. So I thought I can’t be a drummer and be behind the drum set, and be performing. I thought I need to be out front. So I started taking guitar lessons, and quickly I surpassed my brother’s level, then I became the guitar player and he switched to bass.

 

SoundCheck :  How old were you at this time?

SC: We were about 11, I started playing drums when I was 7 and I really got serious about the guitar when I was 11, my brother was 10. It was somewhere around there, 10 or 11 years old. And we both played drums. Ever since then we always switched off and stuff, but then he became a phenomenal bass player and I became a real guitar player. So we both sort of dabble in drums. It was really great always having a family member to jam with. I mean, I’d come home and I’d go to my brothers room where he was practicing bass and I’d bring my guitar in there, we’d write songs or jam to The Who or Zeppelin, Stones or whatever. There was always somebody there in the house that shared my passion for Rock and Roll.

 

SoundCheck :  It appears then you naturally gravitated into rock, and that is why you took that path?

SC: Yea, the first guitar player that I heard that I wanted to sound like was Santana. My first guitar was a Sears, from the catalog. A Sears guitar and amplifier set, a little cheesy cheap piece of crap that just didn’t hit that sound like Santana. I didn’t know anything about fuzz or two amps or anything like that as a kid…so I plugged it in and it kind of went DOINK, and I thought that doesn’t sound like Santana. So I just started strumming cowboy chords, the open chords at the top of the neck. Doing that you can play a lot of Beatle songs, a lot of Dylan songs, so I started out with songs, not so much learning rock and roll riffs, but songs and I think that gave me a good basis for timing, groove, rhythm and melody. Then by the time I was doing that for quite a while, it was natural to move into electric and get my sound I was hearing in my head out of the amplifier, you know really rock out. But I think it was important to have that basis of song playing, you know simple chords. You heard a million times, people saying they heard the Beatles or Stones or whoever. The Beatles and Stones and Dylan did it for me, in the early years Chuck Berry. I always went back into the older music, to the blues, R&B, song music from way back before I was born…and jazz.

 

SoundCheck :  Your Crown Jewels project started off with huge success in the 90’s some of the success reaping critical acclaim, constant national airplay, multiple movies and TV shows. I still see you are putting on an occasional Crown Jewels show, plus stepping in for the late Johnny Thunders with the New York Dolls and your brand new project Steve Conte and The Crazy Truth. How are you balancing this impossible workload?

SC: Well yea, it is pretty crazy. Honestly, I haven’t been doing any shows with my brother in the Crown Jewels or The Contes because he and his wife are working on a children’s music project, they have a kid’s rock and roll band, which is really cool. So we took a break from working together and I got my band together, which for the first time doesn’t include my brother, first time in my life I am not playing original music with him, which is interesting. So really right now I am biding my time between the Dolls and the new band, The Crazy Truth, and of course what other projects come up in New York. If the phone rings at night and if someone wants to give me money, I could do it (laughing), playing sessions, kind of whatever happens if I like it. Luckily I don’t have to do much that I don’t like these days, I have never had a regular job, I never did. Pretty much all I have ever done has been guitar and voice.

SoundCheck :  Could you tell us a bit about The Crazy Truth along with insight about Leeko (Lee Kostrinsky-Bass/Back-up vocals) and Phil (Stewart-Drums/Back-up vocals)?

SC: Leeko was my guitar student back in New Jersey. When he was a kid, 13 or something, he saw me play somewhere in the town in New Jersey where I grew up and he came up to me, and a bunch of kids actually, and I wound up getting 4 students after the performance. They were like “wow” and I was just playing acoustic guitar. Most of these guys are now doctors and lawyers, but Lee stayed passionate about music. I didn’t see him for years. Then I ran into him in the streets of New York one day, I didn’t realize he was in Manhattan, and he told me he was playing bass these days, and it was at that time me and my brother had just stopped working together, and I went 'BINGO', the perfect timing to run into him. So we started hanging out and jamming. Where he comes from is a totally a different place then my brother musically. He comes from punk rock, Dead Kennedy’s, Sex Pistols, The Clash and reggae, and various indie rock stuff, so he was not into classic rock stuff like my brother and I were into, when we were 11. And regarding Phil…so Lee is part owner of a jazz club here in Manhattan, and he would run into Phil all the time at these jazz gigs. Phil is an amazing musician too. He sings, plays guitar, like those amazing rock songs from the 80’s. He constantly surprises me with knowing all this stuff, old soul music. He is from Canada and he is a bit younger than us. It’s very cool how he pulls out some obscure 60’s soul song and I go “really, you know that one too”. So it has been a great playing relationship, and there are always surprises that happen. Actually, since this album has been out, we have been writing a lot of stuff together. And the new stuff, musically outside of the straight rock and roll stuff. Kind of pressing on to more crazy rhythmic stuff, world beat stuff, some reggae and some Brazilian and African kind of groove, along with rock and roll.

 

SoundCheck :  You noted in MySpace you used minimal overdubs and displayed a more stripped down raw rock sound on your new album. Is there a reason why you went this route, or do you see the public starting to wane on overproduced music?

SC: I was starting to wane on overproduced music (laughing)! When I started this band, my goal was to have a real live band. Up to this point, a lot of the records I put out started out as recording the tracks live, but then, oh, what can we put over top of this, or this crazy sound or this keyboard part. There is none of that on this. I’d say out of the 11 tunes, all of them were recorded live and everything but two songs, even the guitar solo is the live solo I played on the basic track. And then there is like maybe one other guitar overdubs just to get a different sound every once in a while, a wah wah in one song, an acoustic guitar in another song, but pretty much it is live and what happened, because I  wanted to have a live band that could reproduce stuff. It was always a heartache trying to recreate something you did in the studio with all these overdubs and stuff and I wanted to get away from that. We were having so much fun playing with The Dolls, with just that seat of the pants, its exciting, on the edge, like on a wire without a net and whatever happens, happens. And the Dolls have shown me that audiences really love that too. We jam and it’s never the same way twice. I have enjoyed that aspect of playing with The Dolls and allowed myself to get a little more of that out of my own music. With what’s going on in the music business right now, if there even is a record business, with everyone downloading for free, nobody is really buying records, so the only thing you can really count on is that you are going to go play live and people are going to be able to experience you that way. I knew I’d better have a band that can really do it live, you know we don’t need 7 people on stage, two different guitar players, a keyboard player, a sampler, all that kind of crap. We can set-up anywhere and play, as long as there are a couple amps and microphones and a drum kit. We are adding a sax player right now, cause there is some sax on the album, baritone sax, this girl that has been playing with us, she is really great, she played with Lee “Scratch” Perry, the reggae artist, and she is really cool, and hope we can keep her in the band, but she plays with a bunch of different people in Manhattan. It’s clicking really good, we really enjoy playing with each other.

 

SoundCheck :  On the list of the credits on The Crazy Truth, you have some interesting musicians chipping into the album. Can you tell us about some of the others involved in the album and what to expect from the band in the future?

SC: David Johansen is of course on it, that was really a blast. I heard harmonica in my head on this one song, and I thought that would be cool to get David Jo to play it, and he agreed to do it. The background singers, these two friends of mine, Nikki Richards and Catherine Russell, who sing with everyone from Madonna to Steely Dan and are just great soulful gospel singers. I used them on one tune just to counteract the macho thing that was going on in the track, I wanted some female energy. So this was a nice little addition. The horn players, again, sounded like a little flavor was needed for these tunes. The horn players section, Kiku Collins (trumpet) who plays with Beyonce, and Danny Ray (Tenor Sax) he’s played with so many people, with Sammy from The Dolls, his band, and Tom Timko (Baritone Sax), he’s played with a lot of people, Tower or Power and all these horn bands. I am not sure if the next album will have any of these same guests, if any guests, but hopefully we will carry on with this new sax player and that will be the band.

 

SoundCheck :  Does The Crazy Truth plan on having a tour schedule in the near future?

SC: As of right now, we are booking gigs. We don’t have anything to speak about right now. Its nuts trying to do a band in New York with three people that are all busy. This is kind of what we run into here, and I was determined not to have this band be a collection of high priced side men, which I have done in the past, where you get the best players in town, and you wind up going into your pocket and paying them to do the gig with you, well you don’t make any money, you actually lose money every gig. So, I was determined to try to have a band of people that really enjoy playing music with each other, you know that’s the goal. It’s not being looked at as just a gig, or to pay the rent.

 

SoundCheck :  Is there anything to your band name, The Crazy Truth?

SC: The band was named after a poem by poet Charles Bukowski. I was thumbing through a book of his poetry one day. I have a bunch of his books on my shelf. I just saw the name of the poem and went “wow”. Just kind of reminded me of what I am going through living in New York and reflected the lyrics to the songs, it just seemed like a fitting thing, and we were actually going through bunch, we had been looking for a band name for month’s and month’s and we couldn’t agree to anything. So, I text messaged the guys the name and got a thumbs up. I thought good that’s it, we finally agreed. It actually really fits the lyrics, about stuff you’d come up against in New York City or any big city, probably even small town. The man against himself, your own tendencies to obsess, being addictive, getting into things not good for you and coming out the other side. The main message of this album is not to celebrate these bad things, but how to get through them.

 

SoundCheck :  So starting up The Crazy Truth, do you plan on hanging with The New York Dolls for the long haul?

SC: Oh yea. Any day now we should be starting the writing process for a new Dolls album. We are talking about heading out at the end of this year going back to Europe for a bit. In the New Year it’s on to Asia, and Australia, New Zealand.

SoundCheck :  How do the crowds treat The Doll’s overseas?

SC: The crowds have been great everywhere we played. Some are better than others, but there hasn’t been one place we played that we thought “what a waste that was”. Even if the club is not 100% packed full or sold out, the people right at the front of the stage are totally into it, singing every song, old songs, new songs. It’s been really good.

 

SoundCheck :  You have worked with an impressive list of people in your career (Peter Wolf, Willy DeVille, Maceo Parker, Billey Squier, Suzi Quatro, Jill Jones, Paul Simon, Simon and Garfunkel to name just a few), is there any one particular artist you have had an affinity to work with, someone you just clicked with?

SC: I’d say most people I have worked with have been pretty easy. There have been a few that have been a little difficult, you know, not so much musical, more of a personality thing, some people personality are like they didn’t know how to ask for what they want. So you try to give them what they want, but you try to play a guessing game because they don’t talk and that is kind of frustrating, like in real life too, if you are in a relationship with someone and they don’t tell you what they want, its kind of tough, you can’t be a mind reader. I loved working with Peter Wolf, J Geils, he was one of my childhood heroes, Billy Squier, who I knew his records, but he wasn’t a huge influence on me, but playing his records, playing those songs he comes from the same place I come from, Zepplin and Stones, so that was really natural. He didn’t tell me what to play, we did a record and we toured, he was pretty much hands-off. Play what you want to play. Paul Simon, same thing. He pretty much let me do my thing. And I had heard Paul can be pretty tough. He was really cool with me. And even Johansen, when the Dolls were reunited, my first wonder was “what is the band going to wear in 2004”. I knew that the songs were easy enough for me to learn, but I was like “alright, what is David going to cram his feet into some pumps”. But he said (doing a great Johansen imitation) “Stevie, you wear what you want to wear…we are just going to dress rocks and roll” and he has never had a thing to say about what I played or what I have worn, just totally natural. I feel at home in a situation like that, not in a situation where people look at you like “what’s with this guys and his red pants and his hair sticking up”. Some people they hear with their eyes, they don’t even give you a chance to see what you got to offer musically, they just see you and go “he’s a freak”. He couldn’t even play a sensitive ballad, which is complete bullshit. I can play a ballad. I can play jazz. I can play rock and roll. I can make any noise.

 

SoundCheck :  In the scheme of making your music, is their one part of the creative process you prefer to do over the others? Do you prefer producing, writing, singing, guitar or live performance?

SC: I love them all. Each has their own set of rewards, you know, writing can be the hardest because I am hard on myself with what I put out there. I will turn on the tape recorder and record any idea that comes to my mind. When it comes to what I am going to put out there for the public, I am pretty selective on what songs I finish or record, a lot of half baked songs that sit forever, maybe never, I have hundreds of cassette tapes piled up. And now with this digital realm, I have hundreds of digital songs too. But when I do release a song, it is like a child birth, these songs are your creations. So that is very rewarding. Also, getting up there on stage and playing or singing, it’s got its own reward, connecting with an audience. Making them feel part of what is going on. And I do like to produce as well. You need a little more time to really produce something, and I look forward to doing that with some bands. A lot of bands have approached me about production. They don’t have the time or money to really spend it properly, so I like to get in there and tear songs apart and say “this could be better” instead of like “yea…I will produce your band for a shoestring budget and just make it work”. If I put my name on something, I like it to be really good. You know represent me in some way, that I think this is my stamp on it, this is worthwhile to listen to.

 

SoundCheck :  If you had a chance to go back in time and see one of the amazing artists that are no longer with us, who would you pick and why?

SC: I could give you a list. Jimmy Hendrix, because especially if I was going back to that time when he was out, you know to put him on stage now it would still be great, but if you went back to 1967 when nobody was doing that, like seeing someone from another planet, like wow, this guy was just dropped down here from another galaxy to show us all how to really play guitar and dress. Performance wise, he was incredible. So he remains one of my all time favorites. John Coltrane, the jazz saxophone player, in the 50’s he pretty much reinvented how jazz was played,  because they all died way before I was born. Wes Montgomery was another one of them. He was an amazing guitar player. Each reinvented the way jazz musicians approached playing his instrument. Also a lot of blues guys. I never got to see Muddy Waters, I would have loved to see him for his contribution in how music is performed and felt. When I listened to their records, I can get a little bit of the feeling and watching videos on You-Tube, but it is not the same being there in the audience. I got to see my Blues heroes Albert King, Albert Collins, Buddy Guy, BB King, but some of the even earlier guys, Robert Johnson, of course, another huge influence. And Billie Holiday, you can’t forget Billie Holiday. She actually was my mom’s idol. I grew up listening to the Billie Holiday song book and pretty much learning to play music of hers.

 

SoundCheck :  For your “live-to-play” guitarists reading this, being a seasoned professional, do you find yourself allowing less time to practice now than earlier in your career, or do you follow a daily regiment to keep on top of your game?

SC: Well I haven’t in quite a few years, but lately I have become immersed in flamenco music. I befriended one of Spain’s top flamenco players on a tour with The Dolls through lower Spain, and me and this guitar player, Raimundo Amador, very famous world wide, he played with BB King and Bjork. He is kind of a go-to guy when people come to Spain and they want a flamenco player, they seek Raimundo, because he is very versatile in blues and rock, there are a lot of guys that play strict flamenco. But this guy also does electric and blues, jazzy, fusion, and so I hooked up with him and he is kind of mentoring me in how to play flamenco guitar, and I just got loaded down with flamenco music when I was in Spain, so I have a hundred flamenco albums now that I am listening to all the time, and the sound and the music is seeping into me slowly. It is making me write different, it is making me hear music differently and I welcome that. That’s kind of more of what the practicing that I do, like just trying to get different flavors in there, not necessarily trying to play fast or more complicated or anything. That’s kind of how I learn since I don’t really take lessons or study at this point in my life. Just try to soak up some knowledge with whoever I am working with, you know Paul Simon, and hanging out with his bands, these amazing African musicians, soaking up all the rhythmic and harmonic stuff that Africans do, they play so differently than white folks do over here, so that was a real education. I worked with Paul and sang on a show recently with all these Latin musicians and some salsa and this incredible band I got to work with. And I got to soak up some of that music, really into a lot of different stuff these days besides rock and roll.

 

SoundCheck :  What drives your creativity in your song writing in lyrics and composition?

SC: There are times when I feel like writing is really difficult, some days. The way I write is really the old “write what you know”. I tend not to write too much stuff that is not directly affecting me as a person. I am always very conscious of my own behaviors and motives and stuff so it is hard once you really know yourself, I think I know myself pretty well, you catch yourself doing things or getting in situations, you know you say what is at the core of that, why did I do that, why do I feel this, so I tend to write from a personal experience. I don’t necessarily look at what’s going on with the elections right now and go “oh the world” and write a song about it. There is one song on the album called  Junk Planet, that’s sort of on that level, but generally I am not like a political social commentator kind of writer, although I do write what I see out there that has touched me in some way. Yea, I used to write mostly break-up songs, but now I am happy and married and I was like “uh-oh, what am I going to write about now” (laughing)? It’s like move on to other subject matter.

 

SoundCheck :  Do you have any tips for today’s musicians in the world of a million bands? As in the path you took, how do you make yourself stand-out among others?

SC: I am still trying to work that out! You are never really where you want to be, even though how far along you are. Maybe Bob Dylan is or Bruce Springsteen, or somebody, but probably not because that’s the whole thing about being an artist, you are always striving towards the next thing. You become complacent with where you are at and your songs are going to be boring, you are going to be bored. So for me, when I moved to New York, it was like just trying to do what is most natural. I did some other kinds of gigs that were not really what I am best at, but I can do them to get by and kind of the only person that knew it was not my strength was probably me, because musically I did fine on the gigs. But I knew in my heart, I am playing behind some singer/songwriter that is not really that good. But literally when I first moved to New York, I would do things because that is what I needed to do to pay the rent. So I stopped doing stuff like that and concentrated at what I am really passionate about or what is really fun for me, I think that is the key. Doing what you love, not if you are in some small town, and you are really into heavy metal and all that is there are singer/songwriters, you’d better move. That’s my advice. Do what you are passionate about, what comes naturally. And speaking of Charles Bukowski, where we named the band from, I love what it says on his grave. On his gravestone it says “Don’t Try”. Just two words “Don’t Try”. That’s his quote. Don’t try, just be, that’s what I try and do is just to “be”.

 

SoundCheck :  Considering the huge economic nightmare our country is embroiled in, how do you think this will affect the music business? Do you think people will search harder for forms of escapism or do you think they will pull back their money on discretionary spending such as music purchases and live performance?

SC: Well, unfortunately for the record business, people are getting music without paying for it anyway. The good news for the musician is they can’t replace you playing live, so, you go out there and no one can, say you want to see The Rolling Stones, you are not going to see them any other way unless you go pay for a ticket. So that is the way a lot of musicians are making their living these days just off of live performance. But now of course record companies are hip to this so they are doing these 360 deals where they are like all in, now they get a piece of your publishing, your merchandising, live performances, it’s really crazy.

 

SoundCheck :  I have never heard of a 360 deal.

SC: I have been hearing this term for the past year. I mean they are certainly doing it with these young bands that come up and don’t know anything. The reason record companies go for exciting young artists, besides they obviously sit around and researching the demographics, and they feel like the kids are going to sell to kids, which they think are the largest of the record buying public. These kids are naïve. They will have managers and lawyers advising them, but ultimately, a kid can say “no, I want to do this, I am going to sign it” and they get roped into it, giving a percentage of their concert sales, T-shirt monies back to the record company. Well I am out there looking for a company to release this Crazy Truth album, I am not going to be looking at one of those companies, for sure. We are looking for an independent label that is into music and doesn’t care about crap like that. I have been there and done that with the major label, big money deals, you get all you can up front because you are not going to see anything else.

 

SoundCheck :  Have you or your friends changed marketing tactics due to the digital age and all the things that are going on right now including MySpace and YouTube and file sharing?

SC: I am still figuring this out. This will be my first album put out in five years, so, my last album with my brother, The Contes, came out in 2003 and back then, we still sold our CD’s online, and I-Tune, Napster and all those sites, Amazon, where you can get physical CD’s from. If I do a physical CD, this time, in which I am assuming our label, if I sigh with one, will want me to do, or sell them at shows, or stores, online. I still like the album cover, you know, something you can look at. When my band Company of Wolves came out in 1990 and we were signed to Mercury records, I had grown up with vinyl albums, then all of a sudden our record didn’t even come out on vinyl, it was really a CD deal, and the album cover just shrank down from being big enough to put on your wall down to you need a magnifying glass to read the credits. As small as CD’s are, at least there is a chance for creativity in packaging, you know you want to know what the band looks like or you know, read who wrote the songs, whatever, I guess there are other ways of doing that digital, I guess you can Google a site somewhere and find out who wrote songs and lyrics, whatever. But I still like physical CD’s. I am going to do both, have physical CD’s available and are considering doing this download card , you can upload your music to a site with a code, you sell these cards, the size of a credit card, at shows for like $10.00 and people go to that site, put in the code and they get to download songs to their hard drive, just like I-Tunes. It’s like the one new technology I know about.

 

SoundCheck :  Obama or McCain and why or Ron Paul write in?

SC: Ron Paul! (laughing). Unfortunately if you vote for anyone other than Obama, it’s like giving a vote to McCain. So unfortunately, there should be a lot of independent parties, and there are, but whoever has the most money, that’s who you see on TV. They raise millions and billions for there campaigns, Republican’s and Democrat’s, it’s kind of down to those parties unfortunately. Well, you know, I would have liked to, in the past voted for Ralph Nader, and I believed in some other independents, but I can’t afford to throw my vote away on them, and I know that is an apathetic way, and if everyone thought that way, of course they’d never win. If they could win, we should be able to get an independent in the Whitehouse, but I don’t have that kind of faith in the American people that they are going to see beyond what they see on TV, so therefore, my vote will go for Obama. It’s just too scary thinking of Sarah Palin as President, when McCain croaks in office (laughing) sorry, I don’t mean to be dark, but that’s what you hear everybody say. And I guess I am against ageism because I see it in the entertainment business, the record business, the movie business, you know, a lot easier for young people to sign up, be in their movies, their labels, whatever. They think old people don’t sell. But we are not talking about just selling, we are talking about running the country here, and we got  somebody  running for office that has been in Alaska the last two years and really doesn’t have the kind of experience if, God forbid, if something should happen to John McCain and she become president. I don’t think so.

 

SoundCheck :  Please share your wildest rock star story with us, something that will make you laugh every time you tell it, scratch your head or blush no matter how many times you tell it.

SC: Hmmm. Too many (laughing). I’d really have to think about that and email it to you. I’d be here scratching my head in silence for five minutes. Certainly some wild and crazy rock and roll stories that might incriminate some other people, and I don’t want to bring them into it (laughing). Certainly, my favorite, because of how it is affecting my life right now, is my wife, because I am not the guy I used to be. When I was out on the road with Company of Wolves, it was heavy party times, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Then, I met a woman who was beautiful inside and out and who really made me want to spend my life with her.  That’s worth all those other times that I had. I don’t miss those days at all, and, I will tell you when I met her I was playing with Willy DeVille, from Mink Deville, and we were in Europe and her mother was a big fan of Willy, and she just happened to come to the show that night with her mom. She wasn’t going to, she just broke up with her boyfriend and happened to be home that night and her mother dragged her out to the show and there we met. She lived over in Holland, I lived in New York, I am a musician, and she’s a chemistry teacher. I mean it couldn’t have looked worse on paper for us (laughing). I swore I was never going to date someone who lived in Brooklyn or New Jersey. I wanted to date someone in Manhattan. Here I was carrying on this long distance love affair with someone across the ocean. It just all worked out. She came over here and stayed with me for a while and the next thing you know her visa is running out. I’m thinking I don’t want to lose this woman. It’s a beautiful story. She is my life.

 

SoundCheck :  Just like the gentleman you are, you end the interview in classy fashion. Steve, we thank you so much for taking time out of your hectic schedule and sharing your life and viewpoints with the readers of SoundCheck-Magazine! Great luck with The New York Dolls and The Crazy Truth and I hope to catch you coming through the Midwest USA soon!

 

As mentioned, you can catch Steve Conte playing with The New York Dolls (www.nydolls.org) or The Crazy Truth (www.myspace.com/stevecontecrazytruth) in a city near you.

 

Please get out and support your local and touring musicians!

Images : Deborah Olin, Izzy, Chris Rockson