Ponybird Returns to Nature

In the Crevasse, Munching the Sweet Leaf, and The Hawk’s Nest sound like they might be the titles of new songs by local folk singer-songwriter Jennifer Dauphinais, who performs under the moniker Ponybird.

They are, in fact, the titles of the first three episodes of another Dauphinais project, a YouTube series called ​“The Cursing Gardener” that follows Dauphinais in her trials and tribulations in connecting with the earth and attempting to cultivate and grow a garden.

“At first I thought I would do a kids show. Then I thought, ​‘let me do a skit show for adults,’” said Dauphinais. ​“They’re so exhausted and we could all use a laugh.”

The laughs are plenty, and yes, it is scattered with curse words as well (hence the name The Cursing Gardener), but it is also about a concerted effort to reconnect with nature.

“The Earth and wellness are big themes now, and I always wanted to have my own garden. The whole joke is that I’m really bad at it. We want to find our way to the victory garden, but the reality is it’s a patch of dirt I’ve never worked on.”

Her goal, besides to share a laugh with her friends, is ​“let’s figure out eco-literacy together.”

Dauphinais typically spends her spring gearing up for a summer full of festivals and other live shows. The Covid-19 outbreak altered those plans.

“Due to being an educator, I load up my summer with shows,” she said. ​“We rely on festival season. Those are typically all of your biggest shows.”
One of her first shows of the season was to be at acousticmusic.org in Guilford with friends and fellow musicians Lys Guillorn and Paul Belbusti (Mercy Choir) on May 21. That show was changed to a live stream event on May 28 via Zoom, another first for the long-time local performer.

“It’s a collective trauma,” she said of the pandemic. ​“I have a hard time getting productive…. My response is to feel it up, lick my wounds, and be thoughtful and retrospective. Right now there is so much out there. At first it was nice, but then it became saturated … a raging river of information. It became intimidating.”

“I teach online all day, so I had zero interest in performing online,” she added. ​“I don’t want to sit in front of a computer all day to exist.” She said Guillorn talked her into it.

While Dauphinais fully supports musicians who choose to perform online, she still feels trepidation about it on many levels, especially in reference to the politics of performing music. She asked herself: ​“Am I still a musician if I’m not on Zoom?” But also, she said, I’m lucky. I don’t rely on gigs for income, but I do want to leave the space to those folks who need to make their income.”

Dauphinais has always had concerns about how musicians were viewed based on their performance schedules, noting that before the pandemic, among some, if you were a ​“weekend warrior” then you were often considered ​“not legit…. There’s this idea that you’re not a real musician if you’re not gigging.” Meanwhile, ​“the amount of people that have been taken off the road because of this is devastating. It’s heart crushing to me. The last thing we need is people pointing fingers at who is legitimate and who isn’t.” She has never wanted to be a part of that — the questions of ​“who’s in and out, that fear of missing out. Why take what I love and put it on the line?”

“Some of my art is so close to death anyway, a reminder of the impermanence” she added. ​“That’s the Ponybird music vibe. So with this [The Cursing Gardener] my response is to do something funny…. I’m entertaining the troops, like Bob Hope. It makes me feel more alive.”

The series has built upon its more improvised beginnings, with new characters being added and even guests taking their turn, adding to the discourse (and the laughter) with their own gardening successes and failures.

Dauphinais is excited to see what others have to offer — both their attempts to connect with the earth and the humor they find in those attempts.

“It’s funny, but also it expresses a deep need and desire to figure out how to get back to the land,” she said. ​“The earth is making it less hospitable for us to be here. Gardening is tragic. Nature will win every time!”

“Lately I’ve used more knowledge that my grandparents gave me” she added. ​“This is what they were preparing for. We need to go back and remember, ​‘how did my grandmother grow such a large amount of food in those times and in such a tiny garden?’”

As she seeks to learn from the past, Dauphinais continues to consider the future. To that end, she recently decided to have each episode of the series highlight a community organization that focuses on youth education for the environment, gardening and eco-literacy, contributing to that organization with that episode and sharing the link so others can donate as well.

Dauphinais is also using another new-to-her form of artistic expression to relay some of her more recent thought processes: She has taken to recording her blog posts as spoken word pieces and posting them on Soundcloud.

“The spoken word is more biting, more critical,” in response to the pandemic, she said. ​“I couldn’t fit it into a song musically. I just wanted to say it…. This is new for me. It’s cleansing, extracting these observations in a lot more detail than a song. I’m trying different tools.”

But Dauphinais has not abandoned her music as Ponybird. With her last single released almost exactly one year ago, she also continues to work on a new single, the production of which got halted back in March.

“Right before the pandemic hit Eric Lichter and I were working on a song at Dirt Floor Productions for the first time since 2014,” said Dauphinais. ​“I wrote the song and Eric arranged it and played instruments, but I didn’t finish the vocals there.” She will be finishing those in her home studio — known as Pouse Studio — which her husband, musician Jay Bates, runs. Plans are to release the single, called ​“This Town,” in the summer.

“It’s a straight-up Ponybird tune, no surprises there,” she said with a laugh. ​“It’s about the sadness about your hometown. It’s written from the perspective of a relative who told me to get out of the town I grew up in. I don’t know how that’s going to translate in these times.”

“We were hoping for more exposure to the studio [this summer], bringing more musicians in and getting more of my songs done,” she added.
​“We were building community,” but those plans, along with the plans for more live shows, have been shelved for the time being.

While Dauphinais said that she has ​“definitely lost momentum with recording,” she also noted that ​“there’s not much you can attend to when your mind is asking, ​‘are we going to keep our jobs or get sick?’ I’m worrying about my family, my parents.” She has found some peace in the outdoors and these new ventures, reconnecting with the Earth and nature, and in the end participating in another creative process.

“We are taking the immediacy of the moment and making art,” she said. ​“The art goes on. I don’t care what you call it.”

For further information about the May 28 Ponybird/Lys Guillorn/Mercy Choir live stream show please see Ponybird’s Facebook page. To watch more episodes of The Cursing Gardener, please visit LitByNature Productions on YouTube.