From Unhoused to the Airwaves, RB Harris Has Paved His Own Journey at KUZU 92.9 FM

In a small North Texas studio, surrounded by records stacked like memory towers and the hum of radio gear, Richard Brian “RB” Harris finds his peace. He leans over a notepad, playlist-in-progress scrawled in meticulous script — a ritual that connects him to tradition, to self and to a north star that has seen him through seasons of hardship. 

“Radio was there for me before I even knew how to find myself,” Harris tells the Observer. “It’s always been somewhere I could get away, even just in my own mind.”

Harris didn’t stroll casually onto the airwaves. His story is marked by hidden valleys: dreams deferred, battles with himself, years lost and restored. 

“There was a time not so long ago when I was sleeping wherever I could,” he recalls. “Honestly, music was what kept me going.”

Through those dark, rootless stretches, his love for radio never waned; in fact, it only grew more vital and urgent. When Denton’s KUZU 92.9 FM was still a whispered project among a passionate few, Harris lingered on the edges, searching for an inroad. 

“I just knew if I could get a foot in the door, I’d make it count,” he says with a wry smile. It wasn’t until years later, when a call came and a demo was sent, that he finally wound up behind the board, heart pounding, ready to broadcast.

“I never came here with some grand message,” Harris says. “I just wanted to play music I love — stuff people weren’t hearing anywhere else.”

Restless with his own library, Harris scoured far beyond familiar genres and landed in the Levant, falling deep into the rich textures of pan-Arabic and pan-Persian music.

“I realized nobody around here was digging into this,” he says. “There’s so much happening over there — so many stories these artists are telling.”

Bringing those stories to North Texas has changed not only the station but also the community of listeners who tune in each week to his two-hour show, Mondays from 3-5 p.m. 

“When you hear someone from Lebanon or Egypt tell their story through music, it’s like a letter arriving from another world,” he says. “It matters.”

Indeed, listeners — both local and halfway across the globe — now reach for the artists Harris introduces, searching Bandcamp and streaming platforms for names they’d never heard before.

“It’s wild to get emails from people saying, ‘Hey, I never would’ve found this record without your show,'” he says.

And yet, RB’s show is about more than new sounds. It’s a home for the overlooked and the quietly extraordinary. 

“I’m not trying to preach at anybody. I just want to give people a chance to hear someone else’s reality,” he explains. “All I can do is play the music, give a bit of context and let the songs do the work.”

For Harris, the invisible thread of shared humanity weaves through every set list. His handwritten playlists reflect that process — sometimes neatly ordered, sometimes a collage of last-minute discoveries and sudden inspiration.

The journey to this moment is etched in every selection he makes. Harris, a veteran with a service-related disability, is candid about the daily challenges he faces. 

“I’m not always the most outgoing person,” he admits. “Social stuff is tough for me. Doing radio is my way to meet people and build something, but at my own speed.”

He speaks about being on the spectrum with honesty, describing radio as “a way to build my own lane… a place where I belonged.” In the darkest days, he says, crafting a playlist became an act of survival, with the headphones serving as his lifeline to the world.

RB pours hours into discovery, tracking down rare tracks and outreach, connecting not only with the music but with the musicians themselves, sometimes reaching out to artists in Morocco, Indonesia or South America. 

“It blows my mind that a musician in Tehran is willing to chat, send a song and share what they’re doing,” he says. “That’s what I love about radio — it breaks down those borders.”

Once, a band in Lebanon reached out after he played their song, stunned to hear themselves on a local Texas broadcast. “That’s when it hits home for me. Music really does travel farther than we think.”

On air, Harris strikes a delicate balance: he provides necessary context while always allowing space for the audience’s interpretation. 

“The best thing I can do is get out of the way,” Harris says. “Let the music speak for itself. Sometimes you just play something because it grabs your gut, and you trust your listeners enough to roll with you.” 

There is poetry in the way he describes this process. The show is a shared journey with shadows and light, heartbreak and hope.

“My playlists aren’t just a group of songs — I like to think each one is a window into what I’m feeling, or what’s happening in the world,” Harris says.

He remains intensely invested in the show’s evolution. In North Texas, KUZU FM may be a low-power station, but Harris’s voice — and the voices he lifts —resonate far beyond county lines. The road for RB Harris has been turbulent, but inside that little studio, in the company of static, stories and songs, he’s writing a new chapter by hand, by ear and by heart. And for those who tune in, the world grows just a bit wider, and much, much richer.

“If I can help someone get through the day or just wake up to a bigger world for two hours, then I’ve done something right,” he says.