Erica Daubert

Erica Daubert is a Philadelphia-area singer-songwriter, composer and multi-instrumentalist. Born and raised in South Jersey, she was heavily influenced by her grandfather, frontman and guitarist for The Four Kings. However, her journey began not in music, but in journalism and spoken word poetry working under the alias, Caleigh Rose. Her undertones of aggression and satirical sense of humor in combination with her brutally honest social commentary quickly got her noticed as a young writer and her work was published in various magazines and online journals, including Four Corners of the Universe and Quail Belle Magazine. She was receiving both a tremendous amount of attention and support as an up-and-coming writer, but she decided to take a step back and re-focus her creative energies into her true passion, singing and songwriting. In 2009, she formed Acrasia, a high-energy experimental punk band conceptually fueled by debauchery and anarchy.

She left Acrasia in 2010 when she relocated to Philadelphia. Feeling inspired by the overwhelmingly artistic energy of the city, she decided to take a hiatus from performing and teach herself to play piano and begin writing her own songs. During this time, she revisited her roots in spoken word poetry and met Bubbles, a Philadelphia-area lyrical poet and visual artist. The two of them instantly formed a close friendship and in 2011, co-founded The Ruby Rose Social Misfits Network, a series of invitation-only gatherings in which local musicians, poets and artists were invited to perform in an intimate setting with the opportunity to share the stories behind their work with the full attention of the audience. Once more feeling artistically inspired by her surroundings, she began to explore different mediums of visual art, and was hired to paint a mural in the green room of The Legendary Dobbs on South Street, along with designing album artwork for quite a few Philadelphia-based musicians and bands.

In 2012, she met Elana Rajah Lamour, a Philadelphia-area singer-songwriter and professional fire dancer. They formed a harmony driven two-piece band called The Sirens of Jolly Roger, with Daubert on piano and Lamour on guitar and ukulele. The project would be put on hold, however, when Lamour temporarily relocated to the West Coast. Daubert continued to play solo shows throughout Philadelphia until 2013, when she began writing songs with acclaimed Philadelphia-area guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, Rob Speese.

Daubert and Speese formed Zap Goes Pop!, a conceptual gypsy-fusion band. Their bold and exotic minor-keyed tonalities drive folk-inflected songs from aggressive fight anthems to melancholic dream sequences. As their sounds of yesteryear reverberate with echoes of the gypsy caravan, the carnival and the high seas, Daubert embraces her literary background in journalism and poetry to create evocative lyrics telling engaging stories, replete with humor, social consciousness and satire. Within their music, they have created and weaved together a conceptual post-apocalyptic dream world, in which there are often revolving themes of folklore, mythology and ancient monolithic societies.

Though Daubert and Speese are the creative core of Zap Goes Pop! and often perform as a two-piece acoustic act, they also have a rotating cast of backing musicians that they bring in for different live performances, making each show uniquely different and surprising fans with a constantly evolving sound. Not afraid to mix things up, ZGP! delights in changes of tempo, time signature and key, deftly keeping things lively and interesting. They've recently announced that their first EP, Kitchen Acoustics, will be released in the early Spring of 2016.

Daubert has built a name for herself as an innovative and polished vocalist, varying her style of singing between powerful rhythmic chanting, lyrical poetry and her trademark mischievous growl that incorporates dramatic theatrical elements with her playful and ironically innocent personality. She also plays a wide variety of instruments including piano, ukulele, pump organ, melodica, xylophone and percussion.

Aside from Zap Goes Pop!, she has composed and produced several conceptual tracks for Bubbles, her good friend and co-founder in The Ruby Rose Social Misfits Network. Daubert and Lamour also have plans to one day reunite and record an album as The Sirens of Jolly Roger, however no details have been released as to when. Most recently, she has been working with Alix Paul, a Philadelphia-area singer-songwriter and percussionist, in creating their own record label and performing arts network.

As of October 2015, Daubert announced that her first novel is underway, and there will be an animated claymation series to follow the story. She has also been working on a collection of paintings named The Rorschach Series, being heavily inspired by both psychology and Dr. Rorschach's ink blot drawings.

Daubert continually manages to surprise her audience by introducing new elements and influences into her music, art and writing. In an age where music has been heavily dominated by technology and electronica, her organic approach to evolving her craft as a conceptual stage performer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist has lead her to being described as one of Philadelphia's true renaissance women.