Videos

TICKETS: $20/person

Welcome back to the Six Foot Love series at The Wild Detectives. A series of live outdoor performances with numbered seats and limited capacity. The Wild Detectives, Dallas Ambient Music Nights, and El Gran E Records present: Backyard DAMN.

A Dallas Ambient Music Nights will take place in our backyard, so the space will not just be filled with top-notch music that orbits around ambient ideas, but also with awesome video art that will ultimately transform our patio into an immersive environment.

Heavy Stars is coming from Austin, Adam Pacione is a local pioneer on this side of music, ATOP is the acronym of Akkad The Orphic Priest, the solo project of Cody McPhail, the true priest behind DAMN. On the visual aspect of the night, we’ll be flooded by the work of local artists Sean Miller, Brian Tomerlin, and Jim Branstetter.

Dallas Ambient Music Nights began in January 2015 as a showcase that combines experimental music and original video art in equal parts. It has since blossomed into a Dallas institution. DAMN celebrates mostly local music acts and local video artists. DAMN’s main focus is creating the most beautiful experience possible, an encompassing beautiful experience for the audience in attendance and for all of the artists involved.

HEAVY STARS

Heavy Stars is the moniker of Lacey Lewis, a musician and educator based in Austin, TX. She grew up in a music-oriented household with church choir, The Beach Boys and Mo-town on the car radio, and a piano in the house. She first started teaching herself piano and then took up clarinet in school band. Upon seeing her high school drumline, she knew she had to trade her clarinet for percussion. Fortunately, she was able to switch to percussion in 10th grade and then ended up majoring in it in college. She studied classical percussion at Ouachita Baptist University with a year abroad at the University of Cape Town in South Africa where she focused on jazz vibraphone and African music. However, throughout her college studies she always felt like a frustrated rockstar. After graduating with a degree in percussion performance, she moved to Austin to work for AmeriCorps and immerse herself in the Austin music scene. In Austin she played drums in a variety of bands, most recently The Sophie’s,  and developed herself as a music educator with a focus on music for special needs students. Her varying experiences led her to create Heavy Stars in which she employs synthesizer, samples, vibraphone, voice, and a loop station to create redemptive ambient, rhythmic songs and soundscapes. Death and rebirth are common themes in her work. She has released three albums: Portico first released independently then re-released with El Gran E and  Processions and Wreathes on Aural Canyon.

https://heavystars1.bandcamp.com/

ADAM PACIONE 

Composer and sound designer from Fort Worth, Texas. Pacione’s music contains elements of ambient textures, drones, field recordings, processed radio transmissions and modular synthesis. His works have been released by Elevator Bath, Infraction Records, Audretsch, Kesh, Bee Eater Recordings, Second Sun Recordings and Primary Records. Stand-out releases include Sisyphus, Any Way, Shape, or Form (Elevator Bath), From Stills to Motion (Infraction). He has previously worked with Simon Scott (Slowdive) and Machinefabriek (Rutger Zuydervelt).

https://adam-pacione.bandcamp.com/

ATOP

Akkad the Orphic Priest aka ATOP, from Dallas Texas, has been creating experimental electro-acoustic music for almost 30 years. Born Michael Cody McPhail, ATOP has always had an obsession with many styles of art. Through the influence of artists such as Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, and Nine Inch Nails, he began making electronic music on a Tascam 4 track in the year 1996. His love for sound and the emotions invoked by sound have only become stronger over the years. ATOP studied digital music production under Andrew Walters at Brookhaven College for 2 years. ATOP uses synthesizers, effects processors, drum machines, and field recordings to create his music. He has performed many times, mostly in Dallas and Austin but also in New Orleans, Los Angeles, Portland, and Denver. He has been in many musical projects including Eyes, Wings, and Many Other Things, Panther Robe, and Triangulum. He is also the creator and runner of Dallas Ambient Music Nights. ATOP has released music on Aural Canyon, Somewherecold, Zaké Drone and El Gran E Records.

https://akkadtheorphicpriest.bandcamp.com/album/the-four

TICKETS: $20/person

Don’t miss out and sign up to our newsletter

Bring your favorite records to The Wild Detectives on Thursday to share the music you love and find new amazing tunes. Nick Van House, DAnijandro, Raymond Butler and you will be spinning in our cozy salon hearing and talking music.

This event is BYOB, bring your own vinyl, and by doing so you can win any vinyl of your choice from our racks!

See you there!

Don’t miss out and sign up to our newsletter

We are inviting all poets, comics, musicians, writers, and artists to the Wild Detectives stage for an open mic night. Open to anyone with something to say about environmentalism, activism, climate, or a general love for Mother Earth!

The topic of climate change and activism can feel heavy and overwhelming, so we decided to infuse our third event of the 4 event series with a little bit of fun! Talented individuals will present material on the outdoor stage to share material related to climate change.

This will be a magical artistic evening that will leave you inspired and uplifted!

FREE RSVP

CLIMATE CHANGE SERIES

Don’t miss out and sign up to our newsletter

Don’t miss out and sign up to our newsletter

Your favorite badies at de facto books are launching a podcast and we are hosting a FREE LIVE recording at our favorite spot @thewilddetectives May 22nd at 2 PM!

2P’s in a Pod  with hosts de facto Jasmen @j.nicholee and Vanessa @vdiggitydawg

We will be bringing you inside de facto books as we delve into the literature, discussions, guests and performers from our community, as well as the de facto Brothers joining us from prison, as our special guests on each episode.

Don’t miss out and sign up to our newsletter

Welcome to the Oak Cliff Chess Club, a monthly gather for chess lovers of all levels to play, have fun and meet chess players in the neighborhood. Everyone is welcomed, it’s free and it’s a BYOB (bring your own board).

Hope to see you there!

Don’t miss out and sign up to our newsletter

On Tuesday May 24th join Antong Lucky for a live Q&A with Good Morning Texas host Hannah Davis to discuss Lucky’s motivational memoir, “A Redemptive Path Forward.” Lucky’s debut book tells his personal story of a formerly incarcerated man who transformed from founder and leader of the Dallas Bloods to a practitioner of peace and nonviolence in the neighborhood he once helped to destroy.

This will be an interactive Q&A where attendees are encouraged to ask their own questions of the author. The book focuses on criminal justice reform, combating violence in impoverished communities, and making unlikely and at times controversial partnerships across political lines in order to create real change.

You can free RSVP for this event here

In addition to a stimulating conversation about Lucky’s life and work, Ruthie’s Food Truck will be on hand to serve delicious grilled cheese. Ruthie’s is a local business that employs young men and women who have gone through the juvenile justice system and who are now working towards empowered lives.

Ruthie’s will begin selling food at 6:30 p.m. and the Q&A will begin at 7:00 p.m. A book signing with Mr. Lucky will immediately follow.

This promises to be an inspirational night highlighting the ability every human has to transform and to help make the world a better place.

ANTONG LUCKY is an activist, advocate, and public speaker concentrating in the areas of mentoring Black men and boys, bridging the gap between community and police, and developing and launching violence reduction strategies, criminal justice reform, and reentry initiatives for formerly incarcerated people.

RSVP

Don’t miss out and sign up to our newsletter

Tokoloshe is a staged reading of a new play by Lindsay Hayward and part of the First Draft series of new works.

RSVP

Don’t miss out and sign up to our newsletter

Roger Reeves will be in conversation with Ben Fountain for the presentation of his new poetry collection Best Barbarian

The poems in Best Barbarian roam across the literary and social landscape, from Beowulf’s Grendel to the jazz musician Alice Coltrane, from reckoning with immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border to thinking through the fraught beauty of the moon on a summer night after the police have killed a Black man.

Daring and formally elegant, Best Barbarian asks the reader: “Who has not been an entryway shuddering in the wind / Of another’s want, a rose nailed to some dark longing and bled?” Reeves extends his inquiry into the work of writers who have come before, conversing with–and sometimes contradicting–Walt Whitman, James Baldwin, Sappho, Dante, and Aimé Césaire, among others. Expanding the tradition of poetry to reach from Gilgamesh and the Aeneid to Drake and Beyoncé, Reeves adds his voice to a long song that seeks to address itself “only to freedom.”

Best Barbarian asks the reader to stay close as it plunges into catastrophe and finds surprising moments of joy and intimacy. This fearless, musical, and oracular collection announces Roger Reeves as an essential voice in American poetry.

Join us for a very special night of poetry and literary conversation!

Don’t miss out and sign up to our newsletter

TICKETS: $10/person

Son cubano tradicional via Nuevo Mexico!

¡Hijo! is a banda from Albuquerque playing old-school Cuban Son from the 1940s-1960s. Featuring the Cuban Tres, Guitar, Percussion, and Harmonies, they pay tribute to the great pre-salsa duo and trio conjuntos of Cuba. (Los Compadres, Trio Matamoros, y Arsensio Rodriguez).

Don’t miss out and sign up to our newsletter

A virgin project conceived by producer Manuel Calderon (El Cosmophonico), along with multi instrumentalist and singer Adria Del Valle and renowned singer Paulina Reza in 2019 is known as Estereomance. A cultural hybrid of the border town El Paso, Texas and neighboring Cd. Juarez, Chihuahua, the budding group is the liberated voice of all the border emotions screaming to be heard.

West Texas Soul Pop intermixes with the artists’ combined introspection, delivering an unheard global identity and sound. A purposeful discovery, the fusion of their musical paths bore a melodious arsenal of lyrical weaponry. Estereomance’s artistic fearlessness invokes sensitivities of emotional fibers reachable only by creative forces grounded in a perfect formula of soul and instrumental mastery. The music subtly dances its way into the marrow of consciousness, sending a message from the deep-rooted origins of the west Texas border towns”.

TICKETS

Doors at 7pm // All Ages // $12 pre-sale and $20 at the door // FREE for kids under 10 years old

Don’t miss out and sign up to our newsletter

Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry series for the Wild Detectives! RSVP to meet us in the backyard at 7:30pm on Wednesday June 8 for live reading from one featured writer, with a brief open mic to follow. Don’t worry, podcast fans! We will record the live show and release it as a podcast episode for y’all. This month we are excited to feature poet Ayesha Asad!

Ayesha Asad is from Dallas, Texas. Her work has been included in the 2020 Best of the Net Anthology, and her writing appears or is forthcoming in PANK, diode poetry journal, DIAGRAM, Sundog Lit, Cosmonauts Avenue, Zone 3, The Boiler, and elsewhere. Her writing was longlisted for the 2022 Palette Poetry Previously Published Poem Prize and has been recognized by Best of the Net, Creative Writing Ink Journal, and the Robert Bone Memorial Creative Writing Prize. Currently, she is an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Dallas. In her free time, she likes to dream.

Inner Moonlight is presented by The Writer’s Garret on the second Wednesday of every month. Mark your calendar and we’ll see you there!

“Follow your inner moonlight, don’t hide the madness.”
—Allen Ginsberg, from On Being a Writer

RSVP

Don’t miss out and sign up to our newsletter

Mark your calendars, another Dallas Noir At The Bar is coming to The Wild Detectives on Thursday, June 30, featuring Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale, Kasey Lansdale, and friends, and with a spoken word/musical duet performance by local artists Trang Vũ & Patrick Pombuena.

See you at the bar!

Don’t miss out and sign up to our newsletter