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Casey Gerald grew up in South Oak Cliff, went to SOC, then to Yale, and earned his MBA from the Harvard Business School. This is the top-line from a full life, which he detailed in his 2018 memoir, There Will Be No Miracles Here. The book made it onto end-of-year lists curated by everyone from NPR and the New York Times to PBS Newshour and the American Library Association. Here’s how the Times summed it all up.

He met us at the Old Monk last week because his name is on the cover of our January issue. Casey wrote the cover story about Erykah Badu, and that’s all I really should share, to avoid spoiling the story for you. It won’t be online until later this month, and you really should read it in print. (Subscribe here!) I don’t even want to spoil this podcast, except to say that it is one of the most interesting we’ve ever recorded. That being said, you’ll need some reference points, and I have a lot of links to stuff we talked about. Those and the podcast you’ll find below. You can also use your favorite podcatcher to subscribe to EarBurner.

The Polyphonic Spree hasn’t put out a new album of original music in 10 years. That changes on Friday, when the most populated rock band in Dallas—22 musicians, with another 20 backup vocalists sometimes in the studio—releases Salvage Enterprise, an album that took years for to pour out of frontman Tim DeLaughter.  

The Dallas indie rock stalwart sat down at the Old Monk this week to talk about the new album and his unique way of bringing it to listeners away from TikTok snippets. The record has been done for two years, but DeLaughter has been trying to figure out how to play it for a “captive audience.”

His plan started last summer with a Sprinter van and rented speakers. He drove to Joshua Tree, California, to a festival with art installations and about 3,000 attendees. He arranged the speakers in a circle and put out blankets and pressed play on the 43-minute album. The next day, he got in his van and drove four hours west to Ojai, California, and did it all over again.

Next year will see the Spree broadcasting the album in planetariums, starting at the University of North Texas in Denton. But the first proper show happens on Wednesday, November 22 at the Granada Theater. (The band’s annual Holiday Extravaganza returns to the Majestic Theater on December 15 and 16.)

Salvage Enterprise took a lot of time and work—and patience. DeLaughter says he was in a depressive state leading into COVID, and the music just wasn’t coming. “I could not write a song to save my life,” he says. When he makes music, “I dip my toe in it, and it’s either there or it isn’t.”

And then it was. Listen to the full podcast below.

We began our conversation at the Old Monk with Josh telling the story about how he wound up in the hospital with a roommate named Dick who was a mob enforcer. That’s the backstory to his new live album, I Opened for the Killers and All I Got Was Appendicitis. We also talk about F1 and helicopters. And the best Tex-Mex in Dallas. And tattoos. And his favorite East Dallas dive bars.

Josh is playing the historic Longhorn Ballroom on November 22 with Vandoliers and special guest Jaret Ray Reddick. The gig is called Friendsgiving. Food is involved. You should definitely buy tickets.

Use your favorite podcatcher to listen to this episode of EarBurner, or just click the player below.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote the following about David McCloskey’s new book, Moscow X, which dropped last week: “It’s a taut thriller [and a] terrific read, cementing McCloskey in my mind as the best spy fiction writer since LeCarré.”

I totally disagree. And I’m not just saying that because we learned in this podcast that McCloskey is not a D Magazine subscriber—despite the fact that Holland Murphy profiled him and his wife, Abby, last year for the magazine. We called the McCloskeys the most interesting couple in Lakewood. And he still doesn’t subscribe! His book sucks.

I’m kidding. I’m nearly finished reading it. Moscow X actually kept me up past my bedtime last night. It’s a good book. But I didn’t pay for my copy. Ha! Take that, McCloskey!

Here’s the podcast that Zac and I did with him. It’s better than his book. You can use this player or listen on your phone with whatever podcatcher you fancy.

Elizabeth Wattley wants to raise $75,215,000.

The number reflects the ZIP code in which the Forest Theater resides, which Wattley hopes to transform into a community hub. She’s the CEO of Forest Forward, the nonprofit that owns the 74-year-old theater, and has big ideas for the building that once hosted B.B. King, Ike and Tina Turner, and Prince.

The plans include a 1,000-seat performance hall, a 13,000 square foot arts education hub in partnership with the neighboring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Arts Academy, a café, podcasting studio, and a rooftop lounge. This was, for many years, the cultural heart of South Dallas, and Wattley is hoping her group can deliver on its legacy.

She’s no stranger to big, risky concepts. She was a big reason why Paul Quinn College pulled up its football field and started growing produce, which is also why she has okra growing in her backyard. She talks about the history of the Forest in South Dallas, how it started as a segregated theater in a neighborhood that hadn’t yet been split in two by US-175. After the highway came and segregationist policies and violence triggered White flight, the theater changed its rules.

“Once they opened the theater to the Black community, that’s when the theater started thriving,” she said.

But 75215 has challenges that she believes the nonprofit can be a part of solving. According to research done by Parkland Hospital, this South Dallas ZIP code has the lowest life expectancy in the city of Dallas. Property values are rising, threatening to push out longtime residents who can no longer afford their taxes. (Only two other ZIP codes in Texas saw larger property value jumps from 2016 to 2023.) It’s why Forest Forward is exploring an affordable housing component.

But South Dallas, as she says, is a “strong, prideful, historic, rich neighborhood.” And Forest Forward is halfway to its fundraising goal.

“Give us a chance. Let us activate some things and see what happens,” she said.

Listen to the episode below.

Paul Quinn is the oldest historically Black university west of the Mississippi. Michael Sorrell stepped in to run the place in 2007, when the institution was in sad shape. He got things turned around, and Zac wrote about all that in a profile of Sorrell for D CEO in 2021. In this episode of EarBurner, we talked some about how Paul Quinn has continued to thrive despite Sorrell’s job having been made more difficult by the attitudinal changes created by the pandemic. Oh, and we talked about the time Sorrell died and was brought back to life, making him the first undead guest ever to join us on the podcast.

But the main reason we invited him to the Old Monk was to talk about basketball. As you might have heard, the downtown Dallas T. Boone Pickens YMCA is about to be sold and torn down. After having a presence in downtown since 1885, the Coppell-based YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas is planning to abandon the city’s core, which is more than a shame. Sorrell played basketball in college and says he wouldn’t today be the president of Paul Quinn if it weren’t for the pickup games he played at the Y. It’s a special place where people of different races and socioeconomic standings come together as they too seldom do in this city. Toward the end of the episode, Sorrell posed a great question: how can Dallas be a great city if it doesn’t have a downtown Y?

Use the player below to listen to one of my favorite episodes yet of EarBurner. Or use whichever podcatcher puts the bounce in your ball. If you need to fast forward to the conversation about the Y, it starts at the 29:06 mark. And remember: print makes the podcast possible. Consider subscribing to D Magazine.

The last time I hung out with Nick Badovinus was at the photo shoot for this 2018 D Magazine cover, with Nick slurping noodles at Ten Ramen. So it was good to visit him at his new(ish) downtown restaurant, Brass Ram. We talked with him about how he names his restaurants (Desert Racer, Town Hearth, Neighborhood Services) and why his watch doesn’t tell the right time. But we also talked a lot of media history, because the Ram sits in a building called the Triangle Point that once housed the historic radio station KLIF and, later, the Dallas Observer. We discussed how Gordon McLendon trained a parrot to say the station’s call letters, and special guest Eric Celeste joined us to come clean—finally—about the coup he orchestrated to overthrow a former Observer editor.

Use your favorite podcatcher or the player below.

The 12th installment of the Oak Cliff Film Festival is nigh upon us. In what has become an annual tradition, the Texas Theatre’s Barak Epstein joined me and Zac at the Old Monk to talk about the lineup of documentaries and dramas and live performances. Austin Zook has more about the festival for your eyes right here, but if you want a taste with your ears, listen to this episode of EarBurner on your favorite podcatcher, or use the player below.

We’re going to take a second to get to the point of this podcast. First, we had to talk about Candy Evans and her third failed effort to get elected to the Dallas City Council. Then we had to talk about why she blocked me on Twitter. That’s your amuse bouche.

Then we go hard on a cool film festival upcoming at the Violet Crown (formerly Magnolia). Literary agent to the stars David Hale Smith joins us to talk about, in no particular order: how much he earns every year, how a class project in DISD’s K.B. Polk Elementary led him to his career, when he stopped taking drugs, hamburgers, and, finally, the film festival he helped launch, along with Steve Stodghill and Paul Coggins. The Dallas Noir Fest runs May 17–19 at the Violet Crown (formerly the Magnolia). It opens with the great Hell or High Water.

Use your favorite podcatcher, or listen with this:

A decade ago, Abraham Alexander was just learning how to play the guitar. When his buddy Leon Bridges asked him to sing on an album, Alexander had only enough chops to hum. That was it. Now, with SEA/SONS, his debut, the Arlington native (by way of Athens, Greece) shows how far he’s come—with a little help from Gary Clark Jr. and Mavis Staples.

On this episode of EarBurner, Zac and I talk about why several musicians have wanted to punch him, how my search history on Spotify came to include Fall Out Boy, and we give you a bit of a preview of Zac’s upcoming profile of Alexander in the magazine. Plus we spin a few Alexander tracks and deliver trenchant criticism thereon. Sample from me: “Oh, yeah, I’m digging this.”

Use the player below, or download this greatness using whichever podcatcher floats your boat.

Hästens is a Swedish company that makes the world’s most luxurious beds. They just opened a new shop in the Knox-Henderson area.

The Stars are a hockey team that moved to Dallas from Minnesota in 1993. They are headed into the playoffs next week.

What do these two things have in common? They are both discussed at length in this episode of EarBurner. Why do I often sleep on my couch? What sort of pajamas does Zac wear? How is it possible to trademark blue gingham? And will Pete DeBoer’s Stars, the best squad we’ve seen in years, skate the Cup? With help from StrongSide’s Mike “The Looch” Piellucci, all questions are answered.

The player below or any old podcatcher will do. If you’re more interested in skating than you are sleeping, the hockey talk starts at about 17:00.