Welcome back to Shecky's Jam Bandz. I'm Shecky,
and I want to start today with a very specific
image. It's 2007, late night in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
A college freshman named John O 'Halloran is
sitting alone at his parents' dining room table
with a notebook writing songs. His younger brother,
Nick, a ninth grader who just returned home from,
and I quote directly, teenage shenanigans on
a neighborhood golf course, walks through the
door and sits down across from him. John looks
up from the notebook and says, what do you think
about chalk dinosaur? Nick, still in his golf
course clothes, thinks about it for a second
and says, yeah, that works. That's the entire
origin story of one of Pittsburgh's most prolific
most shape -shifting and most genuinely interesting
musical projects in the history of that city.
Two brothers, a dining room table, a notebook,
and a name that came from absolutely nowhere
and stuck permanently. Today, we're talking about
Chalk Dinosaur. By the way, I love the name of
that band. And this one is different from anything
we've covered on this podcast. Trust me, stay
with it. John O 'Halloran was born and raised
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. By the time he arrived
at college as a freshman in 2007, he was already
a composer, someone who heard music in his head
and needed to get it out. Not just songs, sounds,
textures, the kind of internal music world that
doesn't stop running even when life is happening
around it. He started releasing music under the
chalk dinosaur name in 2008. starting with a
self -titled debut album, and he didn't stop.
Over the next 17 years, Chalk Dinosaur released
28 albums and EPs, 28, spanning indie rock, surf
rock, psychedelic rock, electronic dance music,
funk, jam, and instrumental ambient music. Some
albums are all vocals, some are entirely instrumental,
some are solo recording projects. Some are full
collaborative recordings made with a live band.
Some sound like they're from the same universe
as Weezer and the Pixies. Others sound like a
film score that never had a film. For years,
John carried the chalk dinosaur name as a solo
creative outlet. A producer's project that lived
primarily in studios and on hard drives. Then
something shifted. younger brother Nick O 'Halloran,
the ninth grader from the golf course I mentioned
before, grew into one of the most versatile and
creative drummers in the Pittsburgh scene. And
at some point the brothers looked at each other
and said, let's do this together. With Nick on
drums and John on guitar, keyboard, synthesizer,
electronics, the Chalk Dinosaur live duo was
born. And then they brought in guitarist John
Henderson, bassist Michael Berger to form the
full chalk dinosaur ensemble, a four -piece that
takes electronic and psychedelic blueprints from
the studio work and delivers them with live sweat
and improvisation on festival stages across the
country. Nico Halloran has talked about the dual
nature of what they do with real precision. He
said, There are no genre boundaries. I love having
the level of creative freedom. My favorite part
is connecting with like -minded musicians and
meeting listeners who have been positively impacted
by the music. Alright, if you have to pick one
song for Chalk Dinosaur, it's Pillars of a Creation
from the 2025 album Electric Biscuit. What makes
Pillars of Creation the right entry point is
what it represents. It's the moment Chuck Dinosaur
fully became a collaboration between brothers.
Not just John's project with Nick playing drums,
but Nick contributing to the songwriting architecture
from the ground up. You can hear that due authorship
in the music itself. The song takes its name
from one of the most iconic NASA Hubble Space
Telescope images ever taken. Massive columns
of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, where new
stars are being born. And the music earns that
title. It starts with something that feels vast
and slightly unknowable, a synthesizer landscape
that sounds like looking at something larger
than you can fully process. Then Nick's drums
enter and the enormity gets a pulse. Then John's
guitar finds a melodic line through the architecture.
and the whole thing breathes. It's cinematic.
It's the word that keeps coming up in the reviews
of Chalk Dinosaur. And Pillars of Creation is
the best single example of that quality. It sounds
like the score of something that hasn't been
filmed yet, like the soundtrack to a story that
exists only in mind of whoever is listening.
That is the Chalk Dinosaur gift. The music creates
a space that your imagination fills. Start here
and go backward into the catalog in any direction.
You will find something you love regardless of
which door you open. Alright, let's talk about
an unforgettable night at the Electronic Forest
in 2018. This is the night that put Chalk Dinosaur
on a different kind of map and I want to give
you the context that makes it meaningful. Electric
Forest Music Festival in Rothbury, Michigan is
one of the most beloved and visually extraordinary
festivals in the country. A forest of art installations,
lights, and music where the line between the
concert and the experience completely disappears.
The audience that attends Electric Forest is
one of the most musically adventurous, most open
-eared festival crowds anywhere. They don't just
want to hear music. They want to be transformed
by it. When Chalk Dinosaur earned their slot
at the Electric Forest Weekend 2 in 2018, they
came in with what the Asbury Jams interview later
described as a performance approach built around
what the jam world calls type 2 improvisation.
For listeners that aren't familiar with what
the term type 1 improvisation is, It's when a
band extends a song but stays melodically rooted
in that song. Type 2 is when the jam leaves the
song entirely, goes somewhere else completely
free, a full departure into open musical territory
where anything can happen. The Chalked On A Star
Ensemble Electric Forest set was built around
that promise. The set was described by those
who saw it as a continuous evolving sonic journey
songs that didn't end so much as transform, with
key and tempo modulation used to shift between
pieces without ever breaking the flow. One song
became another, became another, stitched together
by the kind of real -time musical communication
that requires total trust between every musician
on the stage. Nick has spoken about the live
show's inherent unpredictability with a candor
I appreciate. That is what Chalk Dinosaur does
when everything aligns. The cinematic quality
of the compositions, the electronic depth of
the textures, the live improvisation of the ensemble,
and the two brothers are at the center of it.
John having written the soundtrack to the whole
thing in his head, Nick having approved it on
a golf course night in ninth grade, finding each
other on stage in exactly the music that they
were always meant to make together. Alright,
let's talk about some things that make Chalk
Dinosaur genuinely unlike anyone else. Well,
they had 28 albums. Let's count that again. 28.
Since 2008, ranging from indie rock to surf rock
to psychedelic rock, electronic dance music to
funk to instrumental ambient music, some entirely
instrumental, some entirely vocal, The diversity
of the catalogue is not a stylist accident. It's
a deliberate refusal to be defined by genre.
John O 'Halloran describes the project as a shape
-shifting musical entity. That is earned, not
aspirational. Second fact. Nick wrote his first
songs in his apartment and sent them over to
John via email. For the Electronic Biscuit album,
Nick's songwriting contributions including Pillars
of Creation, started as apartment demos sent
to John digitally. No rehearsal room, no face
-to -face session, just a drummer composing chord
progressions on his own, recording them on his
computer and sending them across Pittsburgh to
his brother. The modern jam band creative process
fully realized. Last thing you should know about
Chalk Dinosaur, the live show description in
their bio is poetry. Chalk Dinosaur's own website
describes their live show as high energy and
emotional diversity. That is four words, high
energy, emotional diversity. I want to put that
on a t -shirt. It says everything and nothing
simultaneously, which is exactly right for a
band that can be one person electronic set or
a four -piece psychedelic jam band depending
on which night you catch them. Okay. Here's what
I want to leave you with about Chalk Dinosaur.
John O 'Halloran sat at a dining room table in
2007 with a notebook full of songs that had nowhere
to go yet. He wrote down a name. His young brother,
fresh from a night on the golf course, sat across
from him and said yes. And in the 17 years since
that moment, they have released 28 albums, played
Electronic Forest, and the Peach Music Festival,
opened for George Clinton, built a live electronic
duo act and a full improvising ensemble, wrote
their best songs in apartments and sent them
to each other over email, and has been described
in every combination of the genre words the music
press has available. They're not trying to be
one thing. They never were. The name Chalk Dinosaur,
impermanent and enormous, playful and prehistoric
was always a signal that this project would be
whatever the music wanted to be on any given
day. And that creative freedom over 17 years
has produced a body of work that almost no other
band in this world can match in sheer range.
Start with Pillars of Creation, find Electric
Biscuit, their most recent and most collaborative
album, then pick any direction in the catalog.
electronic, psychedelic, ambient, funk, you follow
it. You will follow something that moves you,
I guarantee it. And if Chalk Dinosaur is playing
anywhere near you, as a duo, as an ensemble,
in any configuration, just go. You will not know
exactly what you're getting into. That's the
point. That has always been the point. That's
Chalk Dinosaur, and that's Shecky's Jam Bands.
Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next
time.