Welcome to the Best Of 2025 of Your Dark Companion — a beautifully chaotic time capsule of how this show somehow survived lightning strikes, live disasters, questionable fashion choices, deeply honest conversations, and more than a few moments where someone probably should’ve said, “hey, maybe don’t say that.”

This episode is part victory lap, part therapy session, part sports bar conversation that accidentally gets profound. You’ll hear the stories that stuck with us, the moments that made us stop mid-sentence, and the ones that made us laugh so hard we forgot we were recording. There’s baseball, radio, music, mental health, chemistry, legacy, and the very real realization that some of the best moments in life happen when everything goes sideways.

If you’ve been with us since the beginning, this one’s for you.

Thanks for riding with us through Year One.

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00:00:00 - Baseball, Big Mics & Immediate Lightning

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Recorded in March of 2025 at the EarthX Conference, this episode of Your Dark Companion features one of the most singular minds Mike Rhyner has ever sat across from.

Jeff “Skunk” Baxter is best known as a legendary guitarist for Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers—but that’s only the beginning. Over the course of an expansive, thoughtful conversation, Baxter walks through a life that connects jazz chords, rock tours, missile defense systems, classified Pentagon briefings, and the physics of sound.

From growing up in Mexico City and learning guitar at age nine, to shaping the sound of Steely Dan’s earliest albums, to helping the U.S. government rethink missile defense as a civilian advisor, Baxter explains how curiosity—not category—has driven everything he’s done.

This isn’t just a music interview. It’s a deep dive into creativity, problem-solving, discipline, and how the same brain can comfortably live in studios, on stages, and inside think tanks. A rare conversation with a truly uncommon thinker.

Special thanks to EarthX for hosting this conversation at their annual Congress of Conferences—a global gathering that brings together leaders in science, technology, policy, business, and culture to explore practical solutions to the world’s most pressing environmental and sustainability challenges.

Learn more about  ⁨@earthxorg⁩  their mission, and the Congress of Conferences at https://earthx.org

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IG: https://www.instagram.com/yourdarkcompanion/

The Old Grey Wolf: 

To reach out email us at: [email protected]

It’s the last live hang before the holidays, and Your Dark Companion does what it does best: wanders happily from topic to topic, trips over nostalgia, and somehow lands on donuts, Rubik’s Cubes, World Series box scores, and the existential sadness of aging rock stars.

Mike, Grego, Shoopy, and Kevin (Expo) settle in at Dudley’s for a loose, laugh-heavy, very OG holiday episode. Shoopy drops a major life update, Expo casually solves a Rubik’s Cube while talking football, and the crew takes a long scenic drive through Cowboys dysfunction, Rangers reality, NFL parity, ancient radio carts, Philly snowballs, and the unspoken rules of bands that should (or should not) still be touring.

It’s funny, rambling, sentimental, sarcastic, occasionally profound, and exactly what a pre-Christmas episode of YDC should be. No agenda. No rush. Just stories, opinions, memories, and a lot of candy.

Happy holidays from the boys. We’ll see you on the other side.

CHAPTERS

00:01:19 – Live from Dudley’s & The Last Live Show (For a Bit)

Mike Rhyner and Grubes welcome Cliff McClelland, the creator/producer/head mad scientist behind A Creature Was Stirring—a PG Christmas zombie-apocalypse movie for kids, filmed mostly in Garland (because of course it was). Cliff explains how COVID, teaching theater at Richardson High, and accidentally growing a “surprisingly legit Santa beard” led to one big question: What does Santa do when the world shuts down and kids can’t even visit the mall?

Answer: he gets on a ham radio, spreads hope, dodges zombies, and teams up with a polar bear named CeCe (no, you can’t call it Coca-Cola, lawyers exist). Along the way: slapstick “medication” side effects, three types of zombies (including a pacifist one named Ed), an AI sidekick that’s equal parts helpful and deeply uncomfortable, plus the real behind-the-scenes grind of getting a micro-budget indie film packaged and placed on streaming services.

It’s equal parts holiday spirit, absurdity, and “how the sausage is made”—with just enough talk about pants, bodily functions, and robots to keep it on brand.

CHAPTERS

00:00:00 – Lightning Strike + The Mothership Powers Up

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Mike Rhyner and Grubes welcome Kirby Warnock—Texas music historian, documentary filmmaker, former Buddy Magazine guy, current West Texas ranch resident, and (because why not) candidate for Pecos County Judge, aka “the law west of the Pecos.”

From there, it turns into a love letter to the era when Dallas actually had a real music scene (yes, kids, before the algorithm), with deep dives into Kirby’s documentaries—especially Jimmy & Stevie Ray Vaughan: Brothers and Blues—plus stories about the Vaughn brothers being so talented it felt like watching someone play a guitar you don’t even recognize anymore.

There’s also a mini museum tour of legendary photos (Clapton, Buffett, Frampton, Joan Jett, Stevie at Lee Park), a reminder that Stoney Burns was… a lot, and a mid-show read that gently suggests you’re probably walking around in pain because time is undefeated.

History, music nerd joy, Dallas nostalgia, and Rhyner being Rhyner—this one’s a heater.

CHAPTERS

00:00:04 – Lightning Strike Opening: Nature Joins the Podcast

Mike, Grubes, and the Live at Five crew welcome back the grooviest cat in Dallas music history: Tim DeLaughter of Tripping Daisy and The Polyphonic Spree. They get into what it really takes to move an army of robed weirdos around the world, why a 28-person band actually “moves like a small band,” and how a nightmare power outage at David Bowie’s Meltdown Festival somehow turned into the Spree’s big bang moment.

Tim walks us through the jump from blue-sparkle Ludwig drum kits to frontman duty, writing Tripping Daisy songs live on stage because they only had eight in the bag, and how Polyphonic Spree began as a “later in life” idea he accidentally had to build in two weeks. There’s family skepticism, labels circling, UK tours, penguins in theaters, flying owls, and 300 pounds of confetti.

Plus: Mike’s mid-show sermon for CBD House of Healing, a plug for Giving Moss at the Barley House, and Tim’s legendary Holiday Extravaganza at the Majestic—complete with tap-dancing grandmas, ten-foot toy soldiers, and a zoo segment Johnny Carson would’ve killed for. It’s stories, spirit, and full-on Tim DeLaughter Time.

00:00:00 - Lightning Strikes & Live at Five Cold Open

Mike and Grubes welcome back Elizabeth Whatley and introduce Nigel X, the team breathing life back into South Dallas’ legendary Forest Theater. From a liquor store-turned-headquarters to an $80-million-plus renovation and a week-long grand opening in November 2026, this episode digs into what it really takes to save a historic Black arts institution—and why it matters for seven generations to come.

Elizabeth breaks down the wild capital stack (including fresh historic tax credits) and the fight to add that now-iconic rooftop, while Nigel talks about growing up in Port Arthur, finding his voice as an artist, and coming back from LA to help design a space that’s part theater, part campus, and part neighborhood living room—with a Starbucks license, a 1,000-seat flexible hall, a studio theater, an education hub, and year-round programming.

It’s history, community, spreadsheets, faith, art, and coffee—all wrapped in classic Reiner banter and a vision big enough to change how a city sees itself.

0:00 – Ticket Lightning & Howdy, Buckaroos

2:10 – Meet the Forest Theater (and Sunny South Dallas)

3:45 – Elizabeth’s Update: Big Moves & Bigger Plans

5:55 – Enter Nigel X: From Port Arthur to the Forest

8:00 – Port Arthur, Segregated Schools & Finding an Artistic Voice

15:15 – Why Nigel? Why Now? The National Search

16:45 – $19.2 Million in Historic Tax Credits & The Hard Part of “Doing the Thing”

20:00 – Changing the View from the Window: Community Impact in Real Time

23:50 – Why Elizabeth Said Yes (and Couldn’t Say No)

28:15 – Mid-Show Reads: Giving Mas & CBD House of Healing

32:20 – Building for Seven Generations: Vision, Responsibility & The New Model

41:20 – Collaboration, Leadership & Growing the Team

44:50 – Coffee, Culture & Owning the Starbucks License

47:10 – The Rooftop, the View & the Last $10 Million

52:00 – Intimate Shows, Cinema & A Year-Round Campus

53:40 – Grand Opening Dreams & An Invite to the Rooftop

54:30 – Share the Show & Take the Pants Off

Mike welcomes two new residents of the Sunset Lounge universe: Signal 51 Chronicles hosts Jake White and John Henry, a former Fort Worth narcotics sergeant and a twice-laid-off Star-Telegram journalist who somehow turned bar stories into a true crime podcast. They break down what “Signal 51” actually means, why Fort Worth PD radio codes make for good show titles, and how a cop and a writer went from hanging out at the Mule Pub to dissecting some of Texas’ wildest cases.

The crew dives into the true crime boom, from internet sleuths and white-collar scams to old-school Jacksboro Highway gangsters, the Glass Key murders, Baylor basketball scandal, the Cullen Davis saga, and yes, that little Dallas incident on November 22, 1963. Along the way you get cop-shop politics, undercover beard days, gun show freakshows, and why the days of the lifelong homicide detective might be dying out.

If you like your true crime with local grit, barroom origin stories, and Mike needling everyone in the room, this one’s your on-ramp to Signal 51 Chronicles. Listen, share, and maybe don’t slap anyone you “thought was your girlfriend.”

Mike and Grubes kick off December with a lightning strike, a World Series flashback, and the age-old question: are we even gonna make it to (and through) Christmas? Then they welcome a very different kind of guest into the YDC mothership: Ed O’Keefe, CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation.

Ed takes the guys from Grand Forks to the Badlands, explaining why Teddy Roosevelt’s story is so insane it would get rejected as fiction: a sickly bookworm who becomes a cowboy, Rough Rider, president, and the original “media-savvy” politician. They dig into the brutal day his wife and mother died in the same house, how the North Dakota Badlands literally saved his life, and why his ranch became the “cradle of conservation.”

Along the way, Ed talks about inventing modern social video at NowThis, working with Anthony Bourdain, and how TR used newspapers the way modern politicians use social media. They get into Rough Riders lore, Teddy’s ties to Texas, trust-busting showdowns with J.P. Morgan, cocaine as a legit medical treatment back then (to the delight of Grubes), and why the new presidential library will feature an AI Teddy, a horse hitch, a living roof, and virtual campfires in the Badlands.

If you like presidents with actual side quests, history that weirdly mirrors right now, or the idea of riding a horse to a presidential library, this one’s your episode.

Chapters

00:00 - Lightning Strike & Cold Open Chaos

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Your Dark Companion, Mike Rhyner sits down with an all-star culinary and sports lineup: Texas Rangers insider Evan Grant, Dallas restaurant oracle Sarah Blaskovich, and Chef Eric from Dudley’s, who showed up armed with enough food to start a small cult — and possibly overthrow a Chili’s.

Things escalate quickly.

We’ve got Evan trying his first deviled egg EVER (history is made), Mike refusing every egg in existence (including the ones in the room), Sarah dropping restaurant knowledge like it’s classified intelligence, and Chef Eric casually explaining why cows are now eating olives as part of a wellness journey.

Oh — and there’s baseball. Somewhere. Between jalapeño poppers, onion ring ethics, and a heated debate about whether a tomato belongs on a burger (Evan says never, Sarah is personally offended).

It’s loud, it’s passionate, it’s deliciously unhinged…

Pull up a plate.

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