January 10, 2025

🚂 "DIG A LITTLE DEEPER IN THE ZINE" OUT NOW

Hello there!

This is a long email. New zine. New website. Financial update. Lots of new details and happenings. Please read it all :)

Fall ‘24 Zine Out Now!

“Dig A Little Deeper In the Zine,” the Fall ‘24 issue of Train Songz, is out now!

• Here’s the Instagram post. Like it. Drop a comment. Send it to a friend. Please the algorithm. It truly helps

Keep scrolling to buy…

This is a big one!

This zine feels like a turning point for us, and I’m very excited for you all to get it:

• It’s 44 pages (!!!) up from 20 in the last two…12 on the second…8 on the first

  • We interviewed Mountain Grass Unit

  • We wrote about Renewal, Highway Prayers & Helene, and of course the history of select songs from Fall ‘24 tour

  • We crunched some whacky train song (and other types of songs) data

  • And more!!! (Gotta save some surprises…)

SHIPPING: We expect to start shipping on January 24th for those who order in the next few days. Please allow 7–10 days for delivery after the ship date. (I will have shipping notifications this time around! I’m proud of that one!)

Two ways to buy

1. You can subscribe

• Click here!

• You’ll get all four issues this year without needing to sign up every time!

  • This is one of the biggest requests we got last year.

• Suggested price is $44 for the year ($11/zine), but it’s a sliding scale from $33 to $99 annually

• The subscription will recur year over year, but we will remind you a bunch of times and fully refund you if you forget to cancel. No one likes to be locked into something with a harsh cancellation policy!

• Your zine will ship first

• You will get a numbered zine

• Your upfront investment will allow for me and the rest of the zine-team to invest in the future

• Soon, but not yet, you’ll have a referral program to rack up rewards (like a free 2026 sub)

• Yes, you get two new stickers!

2. You can buy an individual issue

• Click here!

• You’ll get just this issue, and you can order the next one just the same if you’d like!

• Suggested price is $11, but it’s a sliding scale from $5 to $33

• The zine won’t be hand-numbered

• Yes, you get two new stickers!

P.S. Isn’t this new website is insane!? Thank you to Ethan Crabb for making it, and thank you to Train Songz’s Zach for referring us to him.

Free subscriptions / solo zines

As our costs rise (more on that in the financial update below) and our website gets shinier, we think it’s important to continue to give the zine to people who can’t afford it. That’s been an option since day one, and we don’t want to stray from that.

• You can request a free annual subscription

• You can request a free individual zine

• Both of these links are underneath the “buy” button on our new site

We ask that you please give if you can, as running this is no where close to free. We pay at least $3000 per issue for printing and another $2000 or more on shipping. We pay our staff $20/hr or their rate as an artist.

Which brings me to our…

Financial update

• Our goal in running a zine for the community is radical transparency, which is honestly a bit weirder for us as this thing gets bigger and the revenue number grows from the early days. But here we go:

  • We have made a profit of $5,125.49

  • We gave $4,033 back to the community

  • We have $1,092.49 left in the bank

To break things down a bit:

The zine

This includes business operations, printing, g̶̶̶o̶̶̶i̶̶̶n̶̶̶g̶̶̶ ̶̶̶t̶̶̶o̶̶̶ ̶̶̶s̶̶̶h̶̶̶o̶̶̶w̶̶̶s̶̶̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶u̶m̶m̶ ̶w̶e̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶n̶ research, necessary software subscriptions, postage, paying staff and artists, stickers, etc.

• Revenue: $50,767.66

• Spend: -$47,287.95

• Profit: $3,479.71

Merchandise

This includes buying the clothing, printing, paying Forest City Press to help fulfill orders, etc.

• Revenue: $30,049.28

• Spend: -$28,403.50

• Profit: $1,645.78

Giving back

Charitable causes we chose to support…

• Spend: $4,033

  • $1033 to Drew Dauphin’s family (Nola Victim)

  • $1000 to IMBA Trust Fund (Helene)

  • $1000 to Salamander Fund (Helene)

  • $1000 to Salvage Station (Helene)

Looking ahead

Now that we know how much running everything costs over the course of a year, I hope we can save a bit more money and invest in doing some really cool stuff. I’d love to throw actual events and shows one day. Stay tuned.

I hope these updates earn your trust and that we’re not abusing your money for personal gain. We’re trying to build something really cool that lasts a long time here, and we think transparency and re-investment is an important part of that process.

Sponsors

As I hope you can see from the update above, we could not afford to run this thing without the help of our sponsors! Sponsorships cost $250, and they are integral to affording the thousands of dollars of upfront costs associated with making the zine, before it hits your mailbox.

I’ll have more programming to get to know our sponsors in future emails and on social media, but for now, here’s a quick look! Please consider following them and maybe even doing business with them as a thank you from the Train Songz community!

• Bars/Restaurants

  • The Black Cat (Cohasset, MA)

  • Snappy’s (Washington, DC)

  • Grateful Fed (Baltimore, MD)

• Artists

  • Grant Peterson (animation)

  • Dyer on the Mountain (dyes)

  • Aphrodesiac Jacket (cartoons)

  • Weird Cabinet (animation, woodworking)

• Small businesses

  • Northbound Coffee Roasters (coffee)

  • Imprint Rolling (hi mom)

  • Plucking Pendants (handmade guitar-string jewelry)

  • Four Birds Nest (upcycled vintage)

  • Lino Diaz De Vargas (Realtor)

  • Rosy Garlands (really cool wearable crafts)

  • Bloodbuzz Records (online vinyl)

• Experiences

  • Big Sky Anglers (West Yellowstone, MT)

BMFSDB Partnership

The Billy Strings community relies on a setlist database. While Billybase is currently down “indefinitely due to lack of resources required for operation,” BMFSDB has come back online.

To help keep their lights on, Train Songz will be paying their web bills of about $80 per month, and using the power of our community to staff the site updating setlist live.

In return, BMFSDB will provide Train Songz with its setlist database, so our team doesn’t need to maintain one on our own! Win-win.

I encourage you to:

• Make an account

• Track the shows you’ve attended

• Volunteer to update setlist live this tour

Hand out the zine on lot

Are you interested in handing out the zine on lot this tour? Let me know what show(s) you’re going to, and I’ll be in touch. Selected volunteers will get a one-of-a-kind shirt for free, as a thank you.

• Volunteer to hand out the zine at shows this tour

Merchandise

The store will open in a few weeks…stay tuned!

Train Songz Presents…

Train Songz Presents… is a bluegrass radio show featuring a band’s live music. The only rule is that you need to begin and end with a train song.

This new episode features Montana’s North Fork Crossing!

• LISTEN HERE!

• Follow @northforkcrossing!

I love the music they sent in. It’s a great mix of three different live shows, full of originals and great choices of covers…from Dr. Ralph Stanley to the Beatles.

Contributors

I’d like to acknowledge and thank everyone involved with making this zine:

• Promontory Paul, Co-founder and Curator of Old Stuff

• Liza Chaplin, Art Director

• Brakeman, Copyeditor and Writer

• Nat G, Cover Artist

• Andrew Sax, Caboose Artist

• Weird Cabinet, Animations

• Dr. Nora Mitchell, Locomotive Engineer

• Austin Carreño, Locomotive Engineer

• Rin Caswell, Artist

• Morganne Allen, Artist

• TOON, Cartoonist

• Zach Alves, Astrological Scientist

• Jessica de Groot, Writer

• Tara B., Puzzle Czar

• Lexi Borb, Sr. Slow Train Surveyor

• Ryan McCahill, Playlist Curator

YouTube

We have a YouTube channel, with a whopping one original video (our tape from the Billy Strings x Chris Thile show at Lincoln Center last February).

We're also starting to build “companion playlists” with each zine drop, linking videos to songs and histories we’re talking about.

In the future, with increased funds, we hope to invest more in this channel and maybe make some original content!

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As always, thank you for your support of the zine. Without you, this whole thing wouldn’t exist. It made my 2024 a heck of a lot better, and I’m looking forward to obsessing over it in 2025, as well.

Love,

The Conductor