Steam Powered Giraffe

Steam Powered Giraffe is a musical project from San Diego, California. It was formed in 2008 by twin siblings David Michael Bennett and Isabella “Bunny” Bennett. Their current lineup (as of 2018) consists of the twins along with Bryan Barbarin, Michael Phillip Reed and audio engineer Steve Negrete. The band’s past and present members all have theatrical backgrounds, and the group takes on the guise of singing antique automatons and the fictional robotics company that made them.

The band employs a significant level of backstory with a story line heavily rooted in steampunk themed lore. The band play as robots created by an inventor named Peter A Walter, whose inventions are spurred by intellectual competition with another scientist named Thaddeus Becile. They are part of a futuristic and mysterious society known as the Cavalcadium.

The robot band members have their own complex characters. Isabella is Walters first humanoid robot built to experiment with Blue Matter and its capabilities. Dubbed “Rabbit”, she was created with a male skeletal configuration but was intended to be a female when complete and is therefore transgender (reflecting the real life story of Isabella Bennett who successfully transitioned in 2016). David performs as “The Spine”, who started as a locomotive based robot with a spine made of smokestacks. The Spine underwent significant expensive upgrades at the hands of the American Government to be used in armed conflicts, counter to his anti-war programming. Barbarin plays a hastily formed prototype robot known as “Zero” that was created specifically as a war machine. Zero’s character rose greatly and fell swiftly, following a “Behind the Music” style story arc by becoming infamous and adored by the public, betraying the band to pursue his own greatness and eventually becoming washed up and bankrupt.

Michael and Steve perform as humans.

Members known as Walter Workers are depicted in the lore as Blue Matter engineers that work for Walter maintaining the robots. Their purpose in the real world is to provide accompaniments during performances and session recordings. Chelsea and Camille Penyak are notable Walter Workers that perform ballet and comedy routines.

Past robot members include Sam Luke under the name “Hatchworth”, Jonathan Sprague under the name “the Jon” and founding member Erin Burke under the name “Upgrade”.