Q&A: Steve Conte

(Credit: Peter Ackerman)

Steve Conte is keeping himself pretty busy these days.

Along with keeping a steady gig as the lead guitarist of glam and punk icons the New York Dolls since the band's reunion in 2004, the Matawan native also is hitting the club circuit with his newest project, a down-and-dirty power trio billed as Steve Conte and the Crazy Truth.

Conte, who will be playing the Brighton Bar in Long Branch on Friday (Nov. 28) with the Crazy Truth, recently spoke with Metromix Jersey Shore about his transition from pop-rock to the tough-and-tumble world of punk.

Tell me about the decision to put this band together, the Crazy Truth, and go to a stripped-down, power trio sound.
Well, I'd been having so much fun out on the road with the Dolls over the past couple of years, and the last time I went out with my own band, with my own music, was with my brother (John Conte) back in like the early part of the 2000s.

We made a really beautiful record (2003's "Bleed Together") that had some keyboards on it, and we had some samplers and we had some loops and drum machines, a lot of background vocals. It was like a lot of production, and when you go to play that live, if you don't have all those people or all those sounds with you, it doesn't really sound like the record. And it's always a little disappointing for the people that are making the music if you're at all concerned with it sounding like the record, which a lot of people are. ... That's the long way of saying my reason for making this band was after just getting out there with the Dolls ... it was like, "Ah, this is so easy, it's so simple."

I used to have capos and retuning my guitar to different tunings, (and) I wanted to have really simple music you could just go, plug into somebody's else's amp, use their guitar and you could still play your songs, you don't have to have some kind of special little setup with special effects and tunings. So we can walk into any place, any time, and play a gig, and we don't need anything fancy, and that's exactly the kind of band and music that I wanted to be making because I just got a taste for how much fun and how easy it could be.

We make things complicated for ourselves in the age of technology, going with that all the time. I mean, we still use digital recording, but it's done like old-school -- we use the digital recording as a tape machine.

What was influencing you as a songwriter this time around? You can really hear how the hard times we're living in are in songs like "Texas Tea" and "Busload of Hope."
There's always been some kind of conflict in my writing, whether it's just ordinary breakups, conflict with relationships or whatever; I used to write a lot about that. Now, I'm pretty happy in my regular life, so I don't have those kind of dramatic relationship things to write about, so I kind of had to dig into deeper stuff, and stuff that I see going on around me -- people that I'm in contact with or things about myself also. ... Basically, it's about struggle.

And, you know, I don't glorify any kind of misbehavior or misuse of anything. If I do talk about anything, it's more like, "Hey, this is what happened and there's a way to come out of it." I'm not one of those guys who sings about romancing their old drug habits or whatever. So, I think it's good to see the hopeful side of things, and hopefully I showed some of that.

How does it feel from touring the world with the Dolls to going back and hitting the clubs again with the Crazy Truth and really getting the intimate experience?
Oh, I love it. I mean, first of all, it's not all that different (than) when we're out with the Dolls. Of course, if we were playing with Morrissey in front of 80,000 people in Manchester (England), that's a different story, but that's not the kind of gig that we usually do. I mean, the Dolls play everything from a couple thousand seat theater to a couple hundred bodies smashed into a small club if it's the right time and place and town; we do all kinds of gigs.

I always like when the Dolls go back and play the clubs. I mean, I like a bigger stage and a better sound system, but it's really intimate to be right there with the people right up against the stage. When you do these big concerts, they put these barriers up and the people have to stand six feet off the stage. I like to have somebody right there watching my toe tap, sitting their beers right there on the stage and putting their cigarettes out on my boot -- well, you can't do that here anymore, but in Italy you still can smoke -- but there's something beautiful about having the close quarters and people can really experience it.

With things like the new New York Dolls photo book by Bob Gruen and the band's appearance on "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson," it seems like there's attention shifting back towards the band. Why do you think that is?
I don't know. I mean, the Craig Ferguson thing happened because it was punk week. ... He called and of course we said yes. Other than that, I don't know that there's any kind of special (thing) where the stars are aligning or anything like that.

I mean, I think it's rock 'n' roll -- it always was, it always will be and the Dolls have been part of the consciousness of the rock 'n' roll world for 35 years and it's not going away. Maybe it ebbs and flows and people get interested and they get uninterested. ... There's so much stuff vying for your attention that I wouldn't be surprised if some people just get their attention pulled away from music in general, not just the Dolls, not to mention this economy and worrying about your bills and trying to pay your bills and save your money and all that.

So, I'm hoping that with all this technology and crap that people are just going to continue to come back and look for what's real, and that's what I think has been the enduring thing about the Dolls, like with my band. I mean, we can't set up anywhere because we have a certain show and whatever and two guitars and a lead singer, but pretty much we don't need anything really fancy; a couple guitar amps, drums, a couple of microphones and we're good to go, and I think that that honestly and rock 'n' roll is not really going to go away, anytime soon.