Comedian prefers to go with the flow

By John Benson

Mike Dambra says doing a straight act isn’t his thing; he’d rather ‘play off the top of my head.’

Youngstown isn’t a weird place.

However, if you ask Rochester, N.Y.-based comedian Mike Dambra to talk about the Northeast Ohio city, that’s exactly what comes to mind.

“It’s weird because I have quite a following there, and that’s a weird thing,” Dambra laughed. “But I have followings in the weirdest places. I have a following at home, Kansas City, and western Canada is freaky. Like I go to Calgary and Edmonton twice a year and they stand in line for three hours to get in.”

Actually, Canada’s love affair with Dambra can be traced back to his beginning in comedy roughly 22 years ago. After winning an Upstate New York Comedy Club’s competition to open for a then-unknown Norm Macdonald, Dambra impressed the soon to be “Saturday Night Live” cast member so much he took him on the road. Less than six months after first getting into comedy, Dambra was opening for Macdonald in, you guessed it, western Canada.

Though Dambra said he doesn’t expect standing-room-only crowds for his upcoming return to Youngstown tonight through Saturday at The Funny Farm, the funnyman is happy to be out performing a few months after being involved in a severe car accident in Minnesota that left him with two broken ribs, a broken hand, bruised sternum and two teeth through his tongue.

“I was supposed to take two weeks off, but instead I took five days off,” Dambra said. “And at that point, I had done five straight years on the road. Every week I was somewhere doing comedy. The Lou Gehrig of comedy, but I don’t know if I’ll make it another five years at that pace.”

Comedywise, making it with the audience is something Dambra said is his strength when performing in clubs.

“I do a lot of crowd work because I get very bored with a straight act,” Dambra said. “I pick a special guy and a special girl out of the audience, and they’re basically my buddies for the whole show. A lot of people say I’m in your face, but for being in your face, people also say I’m pretty friendly. I don’t know where it falls. I guess it just falls in having fun.”

He added, “I can’t do a straight act. I just can’t recite. I have to be able to play off the top of my head. I started acting, singing and dancing when I was a kid. And I never stuck to the script, so acting wasn’t cut out for me, and then I started comedy.”

Actually, Dambra was an accomplished off-Broadway actor-dancer for years, having worked with actors such as Dick Van Dyke and Gilda Radner before turning to a life of comedy. Today, Dambra is most widely known for his politically incorrect material. Specifically it’s Dambra’s character Pickle, which he based around a special education kid from his neighborhood, that draws the most attention.

“I talk about things you’re not supposed to talk about,” Dambra laughed. “Things that you’re not supposed to say, that’s one of my big things. What you’re not supposed to say and why you’re not supposed to say it and how bizarre it is.”

Dambra admits breaking the rules is pretty much what landed him in the world of stand-up comedy.

“I’ve never had a day job for more than a month,” Dambra said. “I’m not real good with authority, I guess.”