D Magazine's EarBurner

Right here you've got another chat recorded on the shady side of White Rock Lake, at Goodfriend. The boys tackle the goofiness of what one local official said about transportation to World Cup matches in Arlington. E.g.: "[W]e wish to have an aggressive travel demand management program to encourage our residents to participate in FIFA." Also they talked about tattoos. 

We're doing a thing. Sometimes we'll have a guest on the pod, sure. But sometimes (if we stick with it), Tim and Zac will simply go to a bar near their houses (Goodfriend) and chop it up as a duo, like Simon and Garfunkel. The hatred for each other will still be there, but they'll make beautiful music together. In this episode, the boys talk about a recent giraffe death at the Dallas Zoo (and whet...

Casey is one of the most committed magazine writers working today. When he profiled Leon Bridges for  Texas Monthly , he rented a house and bought a crazy-expensive shirt to establish a connection with the recording artist. For his profile of Erykah Badu that ran in the January issue of D Magazine , he hired a team of researchers to help him understand the icon. More than a podcast about magazine...

Tim is a Lakewood dad with four kids and a wife who runs a restaurant ( Lounge Here ) to which he is sometimes summoned to do handyman work. He's also a rockstar, making his name first with Tripping Daisy and now serving as frontman for The Polyphonic Spree . The latter is dropping a new album, Salvage Enterprise , on November 17. We talked with Tim about how recording that album broke him out of...

Start here if you don't know who Joshua Ray Walker is. Short version: Rolling Stone said of Josh: "country's most fascinating young songwriter is a baby-faced, 6XL guitar hero with a Dwight Yoakam voice and songs about suicide and boat-show models." We began our conversation at the Old Monk with Josh telling the story about how he wound up in the hospital, for the first time in his life, with a ro...

David McCloskey used to work in the CIA. Now he's a novelist and does most of his writing in coffee shops on Greenville Avenue. Which ones? He wouldn't say. Even after Zac and Tim subjected him to extraordinary rendition, he wouldn't break. He also declined to read a sex scene from his new novel, Moscow X , so Tim did the honors, which was gross. For more about David and his wife, Abby, check out ...

This one is a bit of an experiment. When we learned that Catbird, a fancy "Best of Big D" award-winning joint in downtown Dallas'  Thompson hotel , was launching a 10-course tasting menu where each course was accompanied by a cocktail and that Catbird would let us preview the experience before the unwashed masses could get their unwashed mouths on it, we were like: "Yes." The idea was that four D...

OK, first Zac and Tim talked a bit about how to pronounce Lionel Messi's name and whether his recent performance in Frisco (which Zac witnessed in person) is one of the top five sports moments in the history of North Texas. THEN the lads turned their attention to the wonderful Elizabeth Wattley, president and CEO of Forest Forward , the group working to save the historic Forest Theater in South Da...

Michael Sorrell is the president of Paul Quinn, the oldest historically Black college west of the Mississippi. He died in 2008. True story. The man's heart stopped, and his girlfriend Natalie (now wife) performed CPR until medics could arrive and shock him back to life. So we talked about the fact that he's our first undead guest on EarBurner . And we talked about how the pandemic changed people a...

Nick is in the pantheon of Dallas chefs. His new(ish) joint, the Brass Ram, in the East Quarter of downtown Dallas, occupies a space that once housed the broadcast studio for KLIF, one of the most important stations in the history of American radio. The space, called the Triangle Point Building, also once housed the Dallas Observer . So we bellied up to the Brass Ram bar with Nick and two former ...

Barak Epstein from the historic Texas Theatre joins us to preview the 2023 edition of the Oak Cliff Film Festival, which runs June 22–25. Movies discussed (some with confusing sound from their trailers!): Going Varsity in Mariachi , The Lost World , Quantum Cowboys , Walker , Stand By for Failure , Don't Fall in Love With Yourself , The Adults , and Earth Mama . Also, we talk about Barak's resurge...

Once upon a time, Tim was a schoolmate at K.B. Polk Elementary with a guy named David Hale Smith. That fellow wound up becoming kind of a big-deal literary agent , even though DHS wouldn't tell us how much he earned last year. Be that as it may, DHS is part of a cabal responsible for the Dallas Noir Film Festival , which runs May 17–20 ("cabal" is a joke you'll get after listening to the podcast)....

Abraham Alexander is buds with Leon Bridges, a connection that helped him get into the studio to record his debut album, SEA/SONS , which dropped April 14. Zac profiled Abraham for the June issue of D Magazine . In this episode, Zac and Tim talk about the profile-writing process, why more than a few musicians have wanted to punch Zac, and how much (or little) recording artists make from Spotify. O...

Would you spend $500,000 on a bed? The Swedish company Hästens thinks some of you in town will. They just opened a new store in Dallas. Tim and Zac talk about that and about why Tim sleeps on his couch. BUT WAIT. You're more interested in the Stars' chances in the playoffs?  StrongSide editor Mike "The Looch" Piellucci joins us at 17:00 to talk hockey and get you ready for what might (maybe) be a...

Y'all, get ready. Tim and Zac are about to become proper influencers. For the first time, they are reviewing a product, a Western pearl-snap shirt made by a Dallas outfit called Snaps Clothing . They talk about the 1978 movie that allegedly launched the Western snap shirt, why Zac's parents made fun of him for wearing snap shirts as a kid, and what the hell the deal is with the magazine Huntin' Fo...

EarBurner is still trying to find its sea legs, even after 157 episodes. In this one, Tim and Zac make a long-distance call to Kirby Warnock, out in Big Bend, to talk about his new documentary on Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan. It screens March 23 at the Texas Theatre. Jimmie will be there. Get your tickets now. THEN the lads talk amongst themselves about the Dallas Morning News reporter who was fi...

This episode is an experiment we're calling an EarBurner Quickie. No guest. It's just Tim and Zac in the podcast kitchen, cooking up a special dish together. For an amuse-bouche, they discuss monster pickup trucks that don't belong in the Whole Foods parking lot. Then the main course: why the mayor of Dallas approaches Twitter like a fifth-round draft pick with a chip on his shoulder. He picks fig...

Jay started Cane Rosso with his first restaurant in Deep Ellum 12 years ago. Now the dude employs 520 people in his pizza empire. He's got a salty mouth. He loves dogs. And his two daughters force him to spend a lot of time in airports. Fun connection: the EarBurner guest from the previous episode, Frank Campagna, has done some mural work for Jay. It's almost like we planned it. In terms of show n...

If you've lived in Dallas for any length of time, chances are you've encoutered Frank's art. He estimates that he has done more than 1,000 murals in Deep Ellum (many of them to promote performances at the old Gypsy Tea Room). On February 11, he'll have his annual "For the Love of Kettle" show at his Deep Ellum gallery, Kettle Art , with works from dozens of artists, each of which is 9 by 12 inches...

GNO is a poet who not long ago put out a collection titled " 101 Break Up Poems ." In this EarBurner , he explains why he nicknamed himself GNO (pronounced "Gino"), what happened when he told his mom Prince wasn't a girl, and how poetry can save young people's lives. Oh, also, he tells the story about how he wound up doing a McDonald's commercial for the Filet-O-Fish. (If you're reading these word...

Rev. Peter Johnson came to Dallas in 1969 on a mission: to secure distribution for a documentary about Martin Luther King Jr., the proceeds from which would provide for his widow and family. Of the 800 cities around the world where organizers hoped to show the movie, Dallas was the only place that said no—initially. We started our conversation with Peter explaining why he took the assignment so pe...

Victor's bio sounds like a fabrication: he has summitted the seven tallest mountains on earth, and he built his own submersible to dive solo to the bottom of all five oceans. Oh, and he has traveled to space. We talk about why James Cameron has a beef with him, how bumping into the Titanic got him dragged into federal court, and what we possibly need with a genetically reincarnated wooly mammoth t...

Mark "Hawkeye" Louis has done the morning show on 96.3 KSCS for more than 30 years. He is radio royalty in North Texas. He's also a runner who has been involved with the BMW Dallas Marathon (this year on December 11) for more than a decade, which is how we got to talking about his nipples and the best way to protect them on long runs. We also talked about jeans, stand-up comedy, why radio stations...

Ken is the guitarist for the Old 97's, which is about to celebrate its 30th year together. The man himself is about to turn 60. We talk about his plans for outliving his bandmates, why he owns more than 400 board games, why high school kids don't cruise anymore, and whether Peter Billingsley is actually a gun nut. Oh, and one more thing: we talk about how the band came to star in The Guardians of...

Mark is the architecture critic for the Dallas Morning News and a two-time EarBurner guest. We invited him on to talk about a new plan for Dealey Plaza that he has concocted with some of his smart friends. Mark says the space has become tawdry, and we need to prioritize people over their cars. We also talk about whether Dallas is still a "can do" city, why the Mavericks should rethink their brandi...