SIGNAL BOOST, CONTINUED FROM PG. 24
THE LOCAL 913: CHALK DINOSAUR BY LIZ FELIX // LIZ@WYEP.ORG
Chalk Dinosaur has been making music in a variety of iterations and genres for the last decade. The band’s newest release, Sprout, features frontman John O’Halloran, his brother Nick O’Halloran, and Andrew Belcastro, who grew up together in the North Hills. Guitarist Jon Henderson was added to the lineup, creating an album of instrumentals that take inspiration from funk, jazz, jam rock, and hip hop. John O’Halloran says he “started to be drawn to instrumental music because the lack of words allows STAY UP-TOyou to create DATE WITH THIS your own WEEK’S LOCAL mental dialogue MUSIC NEWS and thoughts.” WITH CP MUSIC One of the WRITER JORDAN new tracks on Sprout that does SNOWDEN feature vocals is AND WYEP “Synchronicity,” EVENING MIX a song inspired HOST LIZ FELIX by a complicated Listen every hike through Wednesday Joshua Tree at 7 p.m. on National Park. 91.3FM WYEP “I noticed that a lot of the things are easier to climb up than they are to climb down so you can easily get stuck somewhere,” says O’Halloran. “You climb up something and it’s much harder and more dangerous to come down. That kind of seemed like a good metaphor for certain circumstances in life where you charge ahead toward something and then you have to get back down somehow.” See what other interesting metaphors come to mind as you lose yourself in Chalk Dinosaur’s new record. •
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CP PHOTO: ERIN ALLPORT
Left to right: Sierra Sellers, INEZ, Leila Rhodes, Simone Davis, and Clara Kent
identity as women of color, being treated as naive or inexperienced, all in addition to the general challenges of being a working artist trying to build a career. “Clara isn’t going to take credit for it, but we’re standing on her shoulders,” says INEZ. “A lot of the groundwork that she’s put down for the past three to five years, we’re starting to reap some of the benefits from. Not only that, when I first met her, it was all love. Her exact words to me were, ‘Everything that I’m doing, you’re going to do, and you’re going to go further than I am.’” On the Tuesday before the show at Mr. Smalls, Rhodes, INEZ, Kent, Sellers, and Davis gathered at Mixtape in Bloomfield to talk about their frustrations and share their experiences. For a few of the women, it was their first time meeting in person. But thanks to social media, they had been able to connect and support each other online. That sense of camaraderie and mutual support goes against the grain for
the way many Black women performers come up in the scene. When so many bills only have one woman on the show, it instills competition between performers, rather than solidarity to fight for a more equitable scene.
hundred male rappers talking about the same shit. And as soon as there are two female rappers talking about the same thing, it’s this or that.” In the last year, Kent has most often been the artist who gets that one Black
“I FEEL LIKE THIS IS A TIME WHERE A LOT OF FEMALE ARTISTS, BLACK FEMALE ARTISTS, FEMMES, ARE STARTING TO COME TOGETHER AND ARE SEEING THEIR WORTH AND STARTING TO PUT IT FORWARD.” “We all have to compete for one spot,” says Rhodes. “That’s the idea they give women in the industry. So, a lot of the times women have trouble sticking together because they’ve been taught to [be competitive]. There can be a
Pittsburgh female spot. “After a while that becomes numbing, and almost like I’m a token,” says Kent. “It’s like, ‘Oh, we’ll put Clara on it because she’s doing this and this and this.’ Instead of, ‘Her music, her message, and her sound are