“There is someone out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words.” — Sean Thomas Dougherty
Something is always in the air. You just have to know how to listen for it.
Playin’ in a Traveling Band is a music publication built on the belief that music is never just music. It’s economics and politics and grief and joy and the specific electricity that only happens when a room full of strangers collectively loses itself in a sound. It’s a twelve year old girl in a metal shirt standing in the front row watching a woman on stage and filing something away she’ll carry for the rest of her life. It’s a cassette tape that arrives in the mail from Seattle with two words on it: LISTEN TO THIS.
Mr. B is a writer, a photographer, and a former combat photographer with more than twenty years of documenting the world in places most people only read about. He came out the other side with a complicated relationship to beauty, a deep suspicion of anything that isn’t real, and a pair of ears finely tuned to the difference between the genuine article and everything else.
This publication is his attempt to find and document the genuine article wherever it lives.
What you’ll find here:
Spin That Again — Deep dives into the albums that rewired how we hear the world. The known records reconsidered, the canonical examined from the inside out.
Turn Me On — The discovery series. Bands and records you haven’t heard yet but need to. The underground circuit, the DIY economy, the artists logging miles the old fashioned way.
Mixtape Madness — Curated playlists built on the 90-minute mixtape ruleset. Two sides, no repeats, every track earns its place.
Thoughts in the Key of B — Where the music meets the life. Essays that use sound as a way into something larger — cultural, personal, political, historical. The conversation that starts in the car on the way to the show and doesn’t end until long after you get home.
New pieces publish on Wednesdays. Everything is free. Subscribe and the next one finds you.
“Journalism is just a gun. It’s only got one bullet in it, but if you aim right, that’s all you need.” — Spider Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan
