Singing Soprano

Michael Imperioli puts down his gun, picks up a guitar.

by Michael Alan Goldberg

The last time you saw Michael Imperioli, his Sopranos character Christopher Moltisanti was being suffocated to death by Tony Soprano in the fourth-to-last episode of the hit mob drama. On Wednesday night at Silk City, Imperioli will be in a slightly less perilous situation—fronting his new band La Dolce Vita for an audience he hopes to, well, slay.

The 41-year-old actor and musician sings and plays guitar in the New York City rock trio, which is rounded out by drummer Olmo Tighe and bassist Elijah Amitin. PW caught up with Imperioli over the phone from his Manhattan home earlier this week.

So how many shows have you guys done so far?

“Close to 20, I guess. We formed two years ago, and then we played our first show in June 2006, and that was kind of a one-off thing we did in Lisbon, Portugal. We really started playing in September 2006 in New York, and we’ve played once a month or so ever since.”

What was that first show in Lisbon like?

“It was really exciting and very nerve-wracking. It was probably a little bit premature, but we really just wanted to get onstage, and we had an opportunity to go there, so we took it. We’re actually going back in two weeks.”

The reception was good?

“It was great. There were like 450 people there—it was sold out—and they were very enthusiastic. And considering we were a very new band that hadn’t been playing together long—and never played live before—they were very warm and receptive.”

Had you floated any songs out online prior to that?

“No, we don’t have anything out yet. We didn’t record at all—we just started the last couple months working on a three-song EP.”

You always hear a lot of actors say they love doing theater over movies or television because of that instant feedback from the audience—is it something like that?

“It’s exciting, yeah—that connection and that energy that’s different every night. It’s also scary because there’s no second take. You’re gonna fuck up, and you have to recover in the moment and work through it.”

Do you go up there with the band feeling like you have something to prove? Or do you just go up and do your thing?

“It was a little scarier in the beginning. Because I hadn’t really had a lot of experience I really had to work myself up to … maybe I had something to prove. But now after doing it for a while, these couple years, it’s not this gigantic thing to prove. It’s just you’re gonna perform these songs with these other two guys and you’ve worked at it, and now it becomes a matter of executing it. It’s really a lot of fun, and our atmosphere is very collaborative. We’re all equal voices in the band.”

In terms of writing?

“In terms of everything. A lot of the initial songs, some of them were like 20 years old, stuff that I wrote. I was writing my own stuff back then, but never really recorded or performed some of them.”

How come?

“The first band kinda broke up, and then the second band I was mostly singing and writing lyrics, and it was right when I started working in film. I was almost thinking of concentrating on music. There was a point where I wasn’t really sure, and then I got a job that kinda took me away, and then I got another job. But I kept playing on my own, and I was always saying, ‘Oh, I’ll come back to being in a band.’ A lot of time went by and I said, ‘Well, if you’re gonna do it, why don’t you just do it?’ And then I found these two guys. If I didn’t find these two guys, I don’t think it would’ve happened.”

Did you feel like you had to have some distance from The Sopranos before you really pursued the band all-out?

“No, we were playing a lot during the last season of Sopranos. I always wound up doing other things between seasons. I was always doing plays and movies and directing plays and producing plays. It was a great experience doing The Sopranos on every level, probably the best I’ve ever had, but it was really nice to say, ‘Okay, it’s done, and now you can put it behind you.’ Because you’d be done, but know you had to come back—which was quite pleasant in my industry to have a job, a sure thing. Now it’s tougher financially, but it is kinda nice. I like moving on, I like new chapters. I don’t like looking back.”

Did you feel you’d gotten too comfortable in that role from doing the show for so long?

“Gandolfini, he was working all the time. Some of the shows I’d be really heavy and I’d work every day for a couple weeks, and then I’d be light in an episode and I’d have a lot of time off. So it was kinda the best of both worlds because I had a big part in the show, but it didn’t totally consume my life. In a lot of ways I feel like now I’m doing the same thing I did when I started out in this business, which is playing music, doing a movie here and there, working in theater. It’s kinda nice.”

As a band you’re looking for breaks and audiences just like every other band out there. People might know you from The Sopranos , but that doesn’t mean they’re automatically gonna love the music.

“Totally. Our first show was rough. Our sound then in comparison to what it’s like now is a huge, gigantic difference. But it was kinda necessary to say, ‘Okay, let’s just do it, get up there and put it out there,’ and we wanted to do it outside of New York before we really started.”

Why?

“I dunno. I think maybe we were scared. We know so many people here, and it just felt a little more anonymous there. But we weren’t anonymous—people knew who we were. And it’s been on YouTube for two years, so it didn’t really matter.”

What are people saying when they come up to you after shows?

“I’ve had a lot of good response from musicians. They’ve been encouraging and accepting, which has been great.”

Because you haven’t put out any songs yet, people who’ve seen you play live are talking about artists they perceive as your influences—Patti Smith, the Pixies, Nirvana, stuff like that. Is that on the mark?

“The influences are on the mark, but whether we sound anything like them is a whole ’nother story.

It’s a definite New York vibe, and there’s a spirit—I’d say the spirit of those kind of musicians like Lou Reed or Television or Patti Smith, because I love those bands. But I’m also into the Pixies and Echo and the Bunnymen and the Smiths and Nirvana. And there’s a line through all those bands.”

They say music critics can be the nastiest of the critics, even more than theater or movie critics. Are you concerned about putting your songs out there to be judged?

“I’ve been beat up by lots of different kinds of critics and it’s gonna happen and I know that. But music is a very, very personal thing, maybe more personal than movies and theater. And then there’s the whole other element when you’re known in another discipline, especially something that’s visible publicly, and known as a character. There’s this little magazine in New York, it’s a free weekly, I won’t even mention the name, but it had listings and it said, ‘I don’t even know how I can make a joke of this—Christopher Moltisanti is in a band, and Luna Lounge booked them. Both parties should have more shame.’”

Whoa!

“[Laughs] Now this was without even knowing what we do! Christopher Moltisanti’s not in the band. He has no musical talent. He has horrible taste in music, and even I wouldn’t go see him in a band. Something like that, what can I do? Nothing you can do, it’s done already. But that was strange seeing that, and you know he’s probably not alone.”

So is there time in your schedule for the traditional get-in-the-van-and-tour-for-six-months thing?

“I don’t know if I’d wanna do that. I’m not that ambitious. That’s what you do when you’re really trying to become a band that’s gonna get a big deal and do all these things. But six months would be a lot for me. We’re gonna do an East Coast tour in April, like seven cities, opening for Patti Rothberg. One fortunate thing is that we can get bookings because of people knowing something about me and being curious. If we wanna do weekend shows and go up to the Northeast and do some shows, people are willing to take a chance on us.”

Are you a devourer of music, always looking out for new bands and stuff?

“Yeah. And I go to a lot of shows too. I was just in New Zealand doing a movie, and I was at music shows every night.”

Right on—some of my favorite bands are from New Zealand.

“Yeah, I love the Clean. The Chills. They had this great club that fit about 300 people. They had bands from North America like Explosions in the Sky and Broken Social Scene while I was there. It was pretty great.”

So any idea when your EP will come out?

“That should be done in a month or so. Then maybe we’ll put it up on MySpace or something.”

Are you looking forward to playing in Philadelphia?

“I’m looking forward to it. Besides Lisbon, the only time we’ve played outside of New York City was in Hoboken. But I’m really excited to play in some other places. New York is hard because they have so much there and everything plays there, and it’s hard to impress people, you know? I dunno if that’s the case in Philly. It’s a very hip town and there’s a lot of music there, but New York is the extreme of that. It’s like that for everything. We’ve had some great shows in New York, and I hope it’ll go well in Philly.”

La Dolce Vita