Ordinary Elephant (Crystal and Pete Damore) Interview By: Rob Smittix

Interview: Ordinary Elephant
By: Rob Smittix

Ordinary Elephant with Carolyn Shapiro at The Linda – WAMC’s Performing Arts Studio Sunday April 7th -7pm

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RRX: All right. So I got you both of you on the line, both Crystal and Pete. This is cool. How’s today treating you?

PD: Oh, it’s a beautiful day out here in Louisiana and we’re getting ready for tour.

RRX: Alright, so you’re home. Are you from Louisiana?

CD: Yeah, that’s where we live now. I, I grew up not far from here and then left and found Pete and then we lived on the road full time for a while and then we settled back here right before the pandemic.

RRX: Got you. Never been but I was supposed to go to Mardi Gras and do my radio show right from the French quarter back in 2002. But they canceled all the flights because people were afraid to fly. I guess there was some kind of threat or something. So I’ve still never been.

CD: Yeah, I’ve never been to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. That’s a whole thing.

RRX: That’s what it looks like.

CD: Yeah, it’s another world out there.

RRX: So I’ve been checking out your music and really enjoying it. How does where you are from impact the style of the folk music that you’re doing?

CD: I don’t know, I’m not sure how much it does. It’s hard to know. I don’t feel like you directly hear it. There’s a lot of Cajun and Zydeco music around here and that certainly does not make its way into our stuff, obviously.
We lived on the road full time for five years. And so we are kind of from everywhere and nowhere. I guess it feels like we’ve pulled from multiple places, you know? It doesn’t feel like it’s one spot that has influenced it.

PD: And when Crystal was growing up here, she didn’t play music at all.

CD: Yeah, I wasn’t in the music scene when I lived here previously.

RRX: So there’s this phenomenon that I’m perplexed by but it seems to work for certain people. There’s a local but traveling band called Sirsy and they’re a Married Couple. I also just spoke to a band the other day The Chatham Rabbits. I don’t know if, you know, them.

CD: Yeah, not personally. But we love their stuff.

RRX: Yeah, I figured, you’ve got the same kind of groove action going on but they’re also married and if I’m not mistaken, Crystal and Pete are married too.

CD: Yes, we are.

PD: Yeah.

RRX: I’ve been in a band for about 20 years and that’s kind of like a marriage in itself. But we live between two 6 Flags theme parks that are within an hour or so away and I can’t ride in the car with my family longer than that before I go nuts. How do you do it?
(Both Laugh)

CD: We like each other a whole lot. I don’t know, I guess once we got together we have never been apart. It wasn’t as if we still do our own separate things a lot. We just kinda felt like… okay this is our person and we do most things together. And then obviously living on the road full time for five years…

PD: Hard to get away.

CD: Yeah, there’s no getting away.

RRX: I mean, it’s such a special bond that you have. My wife doesn’t have a lick of musical talent at all. I guess not for everyone. But I admire it. I wish that we could have something like that. I mean, that’s something really special.

CD: We feel so lucky, you know?

RRX: Pete, what do you have to say about that?

PD: Oh, it’s wonderful. I couldn’t be happier or feel more lucky to be able to play music with Crystal. She’s my person and so I just feel so grateful.

RRX: Absolutely. It’s really cool. And you’re coming to The Linda, which is a really cool venue in Albany. I love that place actually, one of my favorite places locally that I’ve ever played before. Definitely, definitely a cool spot. Have you been there before?

CD: We haven’t no.

RRX: So, what’s really cool is that this place at one point a long, long time ago was an old bank and now the green room is actually in the vault.
So you got this big vault door, make sure, uh, you know, you use that, like

CD: So we could get locked in there?

RRX: I imagine it’s possible. But yeah, it’s a really cool set up there, you’ll really enjoy it. I see that you’re playing with Carolyn Shapiro, who has accolades here in the folk music scene. She’s awesome! This is gonna be a great show. I’m very much looking forward to it. What else do you have going on?

PD: We’ve got this new record coming out. A guy named Dirk Powell who’s this legendary old time musician and songwriter… he’s from Appalachian Mountains but married a girl from Louisiana. He came down here and learned accordion and all kinds of stuff. Super talented, amazing musician. He produced the record, so working with him was really special. We went into the whole recording process assuming that he would lend some instrumentation just because he’s a world class musician. But after we laid down our tracks and had the songs recorded, he was like… I think they’re done. I could certainly play stuff on it but it wouldn’t add anything that’s not already there. And so that was kind of a… you know?

CD: Frightening.

PD: Yeah, frightening at first for sure because it’s really exposed but after a few days of sitting with that and knowing who Dirk is and what he brings to the table with his experience, we trust him with everything.

CD: And to have someone who can do all the things he could do, like his ability to add what he could add to sit back and say, no, I don’t think I need to. Just having no ego like that and just really listening to what the songs were wanting, we trusted that a whole lot.
He made such a good point that we never had really thought about that we could never hear the songs the way he can hear the songs. We’re so inside of them and know them to such a different degree than an outside listener.

RRX: You’re right about that. I pretty much just heard the exact same idea. I was talking to Colin Hay (Men at Work) the other day. He told me the same thing. He said, these songs are inside of me and everyone else hears them differently than I do. Do you ever sit back and pretend that it’s not you and try to listen with a different ear? Like envisioning what someone might think hearing your music for the first time?

PD: I mean, you can try.

CD: When we recorded most of it in the fall of 22 and then the rest in the beginning of 23. We had a chance to kind of not hear it for a bit and then come back to it. That was the closest I think that we were able to do that. But still… you know? You’re in a band, you’re so self critical and hearing all the things like, oh… I can do that better now.

RRX: For sure.

CD: Stop doing that and just let it be the time capsule that it is.

RRX: You’re always your own worst critic. So when is the new album coming out? Do we have a date?

PD: Yeah, we do. It’s coming out May 3rd. We will have copies of it and vinyl when we’re up there. So that’ll be the place to get it at a live show until May 3rd. It’s a self titled album, Ordinary Elephant.

RRX: That’s excellent. Was there anything that you wanted to tell people about what to expect at the show or anything that?

CD: Yeah, I mean, we love being able to travel and bring ourselves to other people to help bring other people together. To have an experience and a musical conversation to just be in a moment together. We love doing that and hope that people will join us.

RRX: Yeah. Sounds great to me.

CD: The only other thing… poetry is something else that I do, I write and so we have a poetry book that we’ve had for a bit and we have a new that we just got printed. It’s kind of a stand alone but it’s set up to be a companion to the album. Like each song has a section and it has pieces that kind of live within the orbit of that song. We’ll have those with us too. We’ll be sharing some of that at the show as well.

RRX: That’s awesome. I used to do poetry myself but then when I became more of a songwriter, I found it really tough to write poetry because anytime I started out I just thought this should be a song instead. But I do find that now when I do write poems, my poems never rhyme. Are you a rhymer?

CD: Very rarely. I’ll have some internal rhymes every now and then but definitely…

PD: Not as much as the songs.

CD: Yeah, not like songs for sure.

RRX: It was a pleasure and honestly, one of the more fun interviews I did this week, a lot of people just go straight into interview mode and I get it but like I’m like come on, let’s have a conversation. So I appreciate it. Thank you!