The Dark Companion

Zoo Freaks, the Crew has got something on the turntable that belongs to this station as much as it belongs to anybody still walking around Dallas. Mike Rhyner, the Old Grey Wolf, calls the thing The Dark Companion, and if you came up on KZEW you already know why that name fits. He was one of us before he was anybody else's. Oak Cliff kid, Kimball High, class of 1968, drummer from the time he was fifteen, gigging around Abilene, Tyler, and Wichita Falls while his folks figured the rock and roll would wear off. It didn't. He has said his parents thought it was a folly that would pass, but he was making a little money at it, and they surely liked that idea.

By his late twenties the clubs were not getting him where he wanted to go, so he set the sticks down and went back to school for broadcasting at the University of Texas at Arlington. In 1979 he walked into The Zoo as an unpaid news intern. A grade-school teacher back in Oak Cliff had once written him up as a little on the bumpy side, but rather likable, and that is still the best short review of the man. He got promoted to assistant for program director Tom Owens, and he stayed with KZEW until 1986, when the sale was coming and he could see the end. One of the wilder pieces of Zoo lore is the letter that showed up in 1982 from John Hinckley Jr., the man who shot President Reagan, writing in as a fan of the station. Rhyner has told that story for years. The creepiness of it made the rounds all over town.

The Dark Companion is the name he hung on the show he built after the dial let him go. He walked away from The Ticket in January 2020, after founding that station in 1994 and holding down The Hardline from day one, first with Greg Williams and later with Corby Davidson. Texas Radio Hall of Fame, 2014. He tried the podcast once in 2021 mostly to occupy himself, then came back harder. In a 2024 sit-down he said if he was going to do it again he was going to have to put his back into it. He and his partner Becca Moore launched Stolen Water Media, brought in Michael Gruber, known as Grubes, and turned Your Dark Companion into a live Monday and Wednesday hang with whoever has a story worth hearing. He has said the lesson is you get what you give, and that Stolen Water and Your Dark Companion are a continuation of the same story. He still sits behind the kit in Petty Theft, the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers tribute band, and he has run Byrds and Dylan tribute outfits called the Nyrds and Buick 6. Same drummer who started at The Zoo.

You can find the Wolf and the show at the Stolen Water home base, stolenwatermedia.com, and the Dark Companion page lives at stolenwatermedia.com/shows/your-dark-companion. He is on X as @theoldgreywolf, and the show posts from @YDC_DFW. Instagram is @theoldgreywolf16 and @yourdarkcompanion. The Facebook home for the podcast is Your Dark Companion. Listeners who want in closer keep a seat on the Patreon for Your Dark Companion. That is the Old Grey Wolf, Zoo Freaks. One of ours, still spinning stories.