It was at an Americana music festival that Crystal Damore met Dirk Powell, the acclaimed music producer known for working with Joan Baez and Levon Helm. Damore’s duo, Ordinary Elephant, in which she performs with her husband Pete Damore, had just played on stage.
Featuring clawhammer banjo, vocal harmonies and an overarching Depression-era aesthetic, Damore’s band comes to Eugene Sept. 3 at The Hybrid, the perfect listening venue for the group’s quiet, storytelling style.
Crystal tells Eugene Weekly that she saw Powell at that music festival from the corner of her eye.
“I heard him say, ‘Hey, that was a beautiful set,’” she recalls. At that point, she was certain he must be talking to someone else. But she saw him again later that night, and Powell affirmed he meant Ordinary Elephant.
“He was talking to me!” Crystal thought.
After that chance encounter, Powell produced Ordinary Elephant’s new album at Powell’s Louisiana home studio, not far from where the Damores live.
With sparse arrangements showcasing Pete and Crystal’s intimate vocal harmonies with guitar, mandolin and banjo, recalling Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, or a stripped-down Nickel Creek, Crystal’s lyrics are personal and storytelling-focused, but not always autobiographical.
“Crystal usually has the melody and the chords,” Pete explains, which he sometimes re-harmonizes or rearranges. The focus of Ordinary Elephant songs, however, is always the lyrics, and “what’s going to support them,” Pete adds.
Crystal says she’s been writing poetry longer than she’s been composing music, and at the show in Eugene, she’ll also read from her books of poetry as well as tell stories adding context to the songs.
Pete picked up clawhammer banjo after he heard the Welch song “Hard Times.” When he added the instrument to Crystal’s music, “Something clicked,” he says.
Ordinary Elephant has been featured in showcases at AMERICANAFEST and the Folk Alliance International Official Showcase. In 2018 the band took home Artist of the Year at the International Folk Music Awards. Before Crystal and Pete pursued music full time, they traveled together in RVs, one called Millie. These days, they’ve settled down in Louisiana, where Crystal’s from.
The duo’s new release is self-titled, suggesting it’s a debut, but it’s the band’s third album. Pete says the decision to use the band name as the album title felt right because the record felt like a new beginning.
“The way it’s recorded,” she adds, is a close approximation of the duo performing on stage. “Playing and singing right next to each other,” she says.
“We changed in a way, becoming more true to who we are,” Crystal adds, and the music reflects that. “No other album felt like that,” Crystal says.
Looking back, Pete and Crystal say that as a producer, Powell helped them know when the music was done, to keep things simple, and to refrain from overcomplicating the arrangements and songwriting, which meant a lot coming from someone with Powell’s impressive résumé, Crystal says, adding, “To have someone like that sit back and say, ‘That sounds great, I think we captured what needs to be captured in the song.’ It felt good.”