Hey!! It’s me, Magazine Boy. Quick!! The next zine survey is due tonight! Get in there! Click me! And while you do the survey, turn on some Irish music from our latest post on Smokestack.

Pls do the survey

If you’re still not convinced to do the survey, allow me prostrate myself before you and make one last appeal to reason… The zine improves with each person that opts to respond to the survey. I’m trying to aggregate some “wisdom of the crowd” magic, or the idea that our collective opinion can be more accurate than that of any one individual. Groovy, baby.

I’m asking stuff like best Billy show from last tour and favorite non-Billy song right now, so that we can share the results with everyone who gets the zine, thus heightening our communal consciousness and “putting each other on” to “delicious relistens” and “new tracks.”

Take a few minutes to do the survey, why don’t ya?

Kiss me thru the phone

We’re also looking for “overheard at a show” and “missed connections” for the next zine, which you can text me or leave a voicemail at the Anonymous Train Songz hotline: (405) 225-6629. Yes, that’s real. No, I’m not an Oklahoman. I chose the 405 area code because of “Train 45.” Close enough! My favorite responses will be published in issue 6.

Calling all zine sponsors

With the next issue less than a month away, I’m looking for a new group of small businesses and who would be interested in sponsoring the zine. It costs around $250 to be in the print, which can scale up or down depending on a few factors like placement in the print and amount of e-mail and social media tags.

Sponsor money helps us pay for:

• Printing extra zines to hand out at each Billy show

• Free zine subscriptions for those who apply

• Miscellaneous funds associated with operating Train Songz like accountant fees and software subscriptions

Without the support of our sponsors, the zine would not be profitable and we’d need to raise prices! So thank you once more last time to the previous issue’s sponsors: Grant Peterson, The Black Cat, The Grateful Fed, Dyer on the Mountain, Imprint Rolling, Aphrodesiac Jacket, Plucking Pendants, Rosy Garlands, Snappy's, Big Sky Anglers, Bloodbuzz Records, Lino Diaz De Vargas, Northbound Coffee Roasters, and Four Birds Nest.

Blogosphere

As I hinted at above, I started Smokestack, a weekly blog post that you can get delivered to your email inbox. Our second installment, published just minutes ago, was written our Irish correspondent, The Wee Seoltóir. To mark St. Paddy’s Day, I asked Seoltóir, Irish for “conductor,” to write about music from his native land that Billy fans would enjoy. He did not disappoint! This post is well written and contains music I wouldn’t have heard of otherwise, and it’s exactly what I hope Smokestack can be week after week: content too delicious for Instagram, but not quite the zine’s tempo. Those little pages fill up fast!

If you want to get these emails, you’re welcome to sign up here. If you don’t, you’re welcome to bookmark smokestack.trainsongz.net and visit us on the World Wide Web as you wish.

What you’re reading right now is my “Train Songz Zine Updates” email list, and I send essential zine-related happenings here. Smokestack, on the other hand, is more of a bonafide “new content vertical” for Train Songz. I’m not deprioritizing Instagram! I’m actually actively trying to get back on the meme-making horse…

However, there’s a real benefit as a “content creator” to get off the algorithm and into the inbox. But deep down this is a move that’s about keeping Train Songz fun for me, and weekly writing and link curation sounded like just that. I hope you come to look forward to this new way to start your week, as we continue to carve out my favorite part of the internet together.

Paint me like one of your databases

Calling all artists! Our friends over at BMFSDB are running a logo contest. The deadline is March 28. Pretty sweet opportunity to have your design immortalized!

Also—have you been on BMFSDB lately? Todd, Becky, and team are making some pretty incredible updates over there. Train Songz is proud to support this by-the-fans-for-the-fans setlist database by paying their web fees (around $115 per month or $1380 per year) with zine money.

What’s yr @?

Lastly, if you made it down here, I’m revving up my Close Friends list again on Instagram. If you’d like to be added to it and get access to “behind the scenes content” that I don’t want to put up on the main joint, please just reply to this email with your Instagram username and I’ll add you.

If you’re not sure if you’re on my Close Friends list already, then go watch my story right now, and if you see a green “Close Friends” story, you’re on the list.

BTW, if you’re still reading, I thought this was pretty funny: I was reading a social media manager newsletter (for my day job but also increasingly this hobby-job), and the whole thing was waxing poetic about the Away (yassified suitcases) social media team’s Close Friends strategy and how they used it to launch a product on a piece titled “Does Your Brand Need A Close Friends Strategy?

Folks, Train Songz has been on this beat, and Big Brand is finally catching on!!!! Over the first three issues of the zine, I had a question on the order Google Form (tbt) about your Instagram username. I manually added everyone who ordered a one to Close Friends, because I knew it would be handy to be able to just communicate with the zine audience, rather than the increasingly large chunk of fair-weather followers who I had not yet seduced enough with memes to order a physical zine.

BTW shoutout to Rachel Karten’s “Link In Bio!” If you work in and around social media, it’s a must-read industry rag that has informed a not-insignificant amount of train_songz Instagram decisions. (Rachel, if you’re reading this, call me…let’s do print.)

Anyway, this is mostly a note to myself to figure out how to integrate Instagram handles onto the new site, like I used to before I sold out and turned into a genuine e-commerce operation because I “needed to collect money up front” in order to “be able to afford to print zines and buy stamps and also pay the people helping me make this thing $20 an hour.”

Hope you’re hungry! Issue 6 is in the oven!

—The Conductor

P.S. Just do the damn survey.