Who Wrote This
Not an economist. Not an academic. A photographer and filmmaker who got annoyed enough to run the numbers.
Photographer Makes Spreadsheet
I spent years behind a camera. Stills, motion, the same picture from a hundred angles until the right one showed up. I was the band Mechanical Bull — not in it, I was it — and we ended up in more movies than we ever meant to. Film sets, tour vans, small towns that were nothing like the ones on the posters. That's where this all started.
Later I ended up building systems, the way a lot of photographers do when they realize the work is half making the thing and half running the pipeline that ships it. And at some point I looked at the small towns I kept driving through and realized: the informal networks holding them together weren't just neighborly — they were an economy. A real one. Just undocumented, uncoordinated, and invisible to anyone with a spreadsheet.
So I built the spreadsheet.
Turns out, a community swapping skills generates real value. Market-rate, somebody-would-have-charged-you-for-this value. And none of it has to leave town.
That's when I wrote the book. Not because I wanted to be an author — because someone needed to write down the math before the people who know how to do this stuff all retire.
What I Actually Do
Big Muddy Touring
An entertainment, hospitality, and media ecosystem anchored in Natchez, Mississippi. A boutique inn, a touring circuit down the Mississippi, and a network of venues and artists that runs on the same principles as this book.
bigmuddytouring.comBig Muddy Magazine
Long-form stories about the Deep South. The people, the music, the food, the economics. The stuff that doesn't fit in a tweet thread.
bigmuddymagazine.comBig Muddy Radio
Internet radio from Natchez, Mississippi. Blues, roots, the American Parlor Songbook. The soundtrack to everything else we do.
bigmuddyradio.comOutsider Economics
This project. The book, the math, the community. Everything I learned about why small towns aren't actually broke — they're just badly coordinated.
The Weekly DispatchWhy Any of This Matters
I'm not trying to start a movement. Movements need leaders and leaders need followers and followers need permission. That's the old pattern.
This is a manual. You read it, you run the math on your town, and then you either do something or you don't. I'm not going to follow up. I'm not going to sell you a course. There's no mastermind group.
There's just the math, the frameworks, and the fact that twenty people in your zip code already have every skill your community needs. The only thing missing is the coordination.
So coordinate.
Get in Touch
I read everything. I can't promise I'll reply to everything, but I'll read it. Especially if you ran the numbers on your town and want to tell me what you found.