PONYBIRD BIO
"Jennifer Dauphinais is a songwriter’s songwriter. She takes her time with her compositions, seeing them through the stages of life, the way a parent watches a child grow. Heavy-handed when necessary, helpless at other times, in love from start to finish. "
- Chip McCabe, Lonesome Noise
Ponybird is the moniker for the alt-folk singer-songwriter Jennifer Dauphinais, who also produces electronic psych music as the project called WEAREBISON. Dauphinais plays regionally as both an acoustic singer-songwriter and experimental electronic artist, drawing from a fifteen-year catalog of original work. As Ponybird, Dauphinais has shared the stage with Vetiver, Richard Buckner, Cary Morin, Jeffrey Gaines, Daphne Parker Powell, Sarah Lee Guthrie, Blood Warrior, Amy LaVere & Will Sexton, Alexander Turnquist, Arborea, Violent Mae, and Kerri Powers. They have been a featured performer at many area venues and festivals including the Katherine Hepburn Theater, Haddam Neck Fair, Daffodil Festival, Podunk Blue Grass Festival, Apple Harvest Festival, Olde Church Series, and Pratt Street Music Series.
Dauphinais has also traveled regionally as a drummer and vocalist for songwriters Brian Ember, Stephen Peter Rodgers, & Jillian Matundan. In 2023, Dauphinais partnered with Grace Yukich to create musical arrangements for NYC-based performance company, New Light Theater Project. They were the drummer and vocalist with Christina Abbott in their duo the Karner Blues, with Travis Moody and Kriss Santala in their blues-rock trio, Belle Starr, with Martin Earley (MCEAR) and her father Robert (Things Behind the Sun) in a reunion of their early 80s punk trio, Editors, and alongside members of Blue Rose Liar (Todd Rodgers, Mike Farrelly, and Gerry Stopper) in the band Spider & Fly. As a local music promoter, they hosted the local music radio show, That Hour Long Music Show Hour, and wrote for the New Haven Advocate among other local labels and blogs.
As a two part EP collection, The Deep Meats EP series diverges from the well-known alternative folk style of prior recordings, and enters new sounds to their evolving songwriting style through influences of psych pop, post punk, and dark wave. All songs are Written, Performed, Produced & Recorded by female producer Jennifer Dauphinais, and Mixed by Ponybird at Granite Coast Studio, Guilford, CT. Deep Meats I was listed among the Top Five Albums to check out in 2022 by Connecticut Magazine, while Brian Slattery of the Independent said, “Throughout, Dauphinais has never sounded more assured, relaxed, and focused at the same time”.
In addition, Dauphinais' songs have earned several local and regional accolades including a spot in the Western New England Song Book curated by New Music Alliance, Top Ten Songs & Albums of the Year in the New Haven Independent and Hartford Courant for the WEAREBISON debut EP in 2021, Ponybird's Feel in 2021 and Deep Meats I in 2022, alongside several guest spots and interviews with regional television, news, and radio shows.Dauphinais is a regular contributor to public scholarship lectures and podcasts including, VersoFest '24: Connecticut, WPLR, and the Birth of Buckingham/Nicks Era Fleetwood Mac", and the podcast ¿What Are Taylor Swift Studies Anyways? hosted by Professor Ari Perez to critically analyze Tay, and associated female artists, through a Musical Studies lens.
Dauphinais is currently a teacher educator in the greater NYC area and taught previously in New Haven Public Schools. She works with other songwriters in a cooperative writers group, and mentors youth circles and individual lessons for emerging songwriters. Dauphinais had a previous career in journalism and marketing, frequently working as a freelance writer and photographer for local papers, bands, businesses, and radio in the New Haven area. She completed a Doctorate in Curriculum and Teaching, with an emphasis on critical theory, child development, and Social Emotional Learning at Columbia University in 2021.
DISCOGRAPHY: Climb Yourself Up (2008) and Full Cold Moon (2009) were both home-recorded, while Modest Quarters was recorded at Dirt Floor Studios with Eric Lichter and James Maple in 2014, featuring a staple of Dirt Floor artists. In 2015, Dauphinais won a CT song-writing competition that enabled her to record the single, “I Am With You” at On Deck Studio along with supporting artists, Krizta Moon, and Jay Roberts, and engineer Tracy Walton. WEAREBISON's self-titled debut EP, 2021 was produced at Deadly West Studio. While the Self-Produced EPs Deep Meats I (2022)and Deep Meats II (2023) were recorded and produced by Dauphinais at their own production hub, Granite Coast Studio, CT.
Ponybird is on Bandcamp, Youtube, and all major distribution sites. Follow on Instagram (@ponybirdmusic)
WEAREBISON BIO
WEAREBISON is the rhythmic-driven, electronic project of producer Jenn Dauphinais & guest collaborators. Dauphinais plays regionally as both an acoustic singer-songwriter and experimental electronic artist. Their music is prismatic, electronic, and provocative, incorporating elements of hip-hop, psych rock, & goth. As WEARBISON, Dauphinais incants lyrical hooks and mezmerizing beats through the use of synthesizers, vocal samples, and psychedelic guitar drawing from the influences of Kate Bush, HTRK, Bauhaus, Pink Floyd, and Sky Ferreira. Their first EP (self-titled) featured the band performing as a duo in 2021, earning them a Top Ten spot for Local Albums of the Year in 2021. BISON's follow up works, Deep Meats I & II, were written, performed, and recorded by Dauphinais as a solo effort using limited resources and parameters, to create their lo-fi, bit crushed, glitched out, mid-life self-story as it appeared in the Pandemic Era 2020-2023. Deep Meats I was named as a Top Local Music Release in Connecticut Magazine in 2022.
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As a a full length record, The Deep Meats I & II LP expands upon the self-titled debut EP featuring songs which explore the dynamics of contentious relationships, surviving familial patterns, coping with trauma and loss, and facing one self in the mirror with fierce self-love for better or worse through influences of psych pop, post punk, and dark wave. All songs are Written, Performed, Produced & Recorded by female producer Jennifer Dauphinais, and Mixed by Ponybird at Granite Coast Studio, Guilford, CT.
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WEAREBISON is on Bandcamp, Youtube, and all major distrobution sites. Follow on Instagram (@wearebison)
