Good afternoon, everyone. It's 1:01pm in Brooklyn, the Bluegrass Borough, and I'm sitting down to write the first edition of the revamped Smokestack, which is to be Train Songz's monthly-ish Big Email, while listening to Townes Van Zandt's Live at the Old Quarter.

Before we get into it, some zine housekeeping: Current subscribers, make sure your address and subscription are up to date here — or just ask me. Not subscribed yet? You can fix that at the same link, or apply for a free copy — thanks to those who pay, we can give one away for every ten subscriptions sold.

IN THIS ISSUE: 50 songs from Josiah Nelson, a very good month at Train Songz HQ, Jarrod and Billy yearning for the sea, three new records we’re loving, and some shows worth burning Southwest points on — especially MGU Nashville on August 27, less than two weeks away, where we'll have a table and be debuting our next issue. Heck yeah!!!

GUEST PLAYLIST: JOSIAH NELSON

In each edition of Smokestack, we'll be paying someone we respect to take the time to make a playlist for you. To kick things off we asked longtime Friend of the Train and Mountain Grass Unit fiddler/vocalist Josiah Nelson. HERE IT IS. It's on YouTube, because that felt the most egalitarian and we haven't yet taken the time to port it to Spotify and Apple. If that's something you would value, let me know, but this is what we got for now.

In Josiah's words, the playlist—50 songs, about half train songs and half unrelated to locomotives in any way, shape, or form—is meant to be listened to in order. Skip the shuffle button, and listen to it as Josiah intended: he chose to open and close the playlist with two songs from the late great Ronnie Bowman, to honor a hero we lost earlier this year.

Have a question I can answer in the next issue? Want to work together? Have an idea of what we should cover? Email conductor@trainsongz.net or text TSZ Dispatch: 405-225-6629

WHY SMOKESTACK?

So, a digital missive. A blog. An email. Whatever it is. We obviously value print more than anything around here, but due to the time it takes and it not being our "real job" and all, four issues per year is about all we can stomach in our current state. I like quarterly; it feels special. If you got the zine once a month, they might start piling up—feeling like a chore to get through. We don't want that! I do think we could rock six in a year, but we'd have to step back from our jobs and either charge more money or, more preferably, raise more sponsor money to do that. Who knows! No plans to change how we do things for now.

Back to email. It does serve a purpose, and like the zine, I'm cognizant of it being too frequent and piling up. I respect Substackers who charge $80 per year and send 2–3 issues per week, that's a hell of a way to make a living. Could I do that for Train Songz if it meant not doing any other work? Absolutely! Do I think you all would pay for it? I'm not so sure. I don't even know if I have that much to say. But starting monthly, as a free high-quality newsletter that supports our print operation, feels like a good place for us to re-start our Smokestack efforts, which have been on-again-off-again on this here blog.

State of the Junction

We had a very good July 2026 in terms of new subscribers! Almost all of the new ones can be traced to releasing the Jarrod Walker issue (a big deal for us!!) and this video about how long Billy holds the "juuuuudge" in "Doin' My Time." Mr. Strings himself liked it, which goes into the age-old question of the Train Songz Experiment: Does observation impact reality? We attempted to wrangle the laws of physics to answer this question in our third issue... Anyway, July brought in 132 new subs. This whole year we've gotten a little over 300 new subscribers, so July was a huge month for us at damn near half of our growth for the year.

So we're sitting at 1,461 annual subscribers as of this email. We are cruising towards 1,500, exactly halfway to my completely arbitrary but deeply meaningful goal of 3,000. I would make this thing for 500 or 1,000 subscribers, don't get me wrong, but 3,000 would represent a real chance at looking at Train Songz like an actual niche media business, and I would absolutely love the chance for it to be something like that one day. One zine at a time, one subscriber at a time. Apparently I should be making more videos like that, but I'm also cognizant of not always being on the teat, if you know what I mean. Small doses.

It's heartening for me that our big-subscriber-growth month was July, the first real month I had to think about Train Songz in a substantive way this year because of a more-than-demanding work situation I got myself into. We're on the other side, and I'm feeling good about having more normal Conductor Hours going forward, like here I am writing this at 1:42 on a Monday. That's pretty good.

Some things I'll be using this extra time for, other than making the zine as good as it can be:

• Scheming up more "big swings" like how we're debuting a zine at MGU's show
• Posting more memes again, even if they flop!!!
• Revamping our website to look like Train Songz 1999
• Reaching out to potential new sponsors — zine's gotta eat!
• Writing this here publication
• Building relationships with artists / labels / festivals / photographers / you ❣️
• Figuring out what the path to 3,000 subscribers could look like
• Tightening up the operation behind the scenes, everything from catching up on emails and DMs to organizing folders and finances. Everything you love eventually becomes a spreadsheet!!!

Check this out

Jarrod and Billy both did a photoshoot on the same boat. Are these two stringéd savants teasing a nautical collab, or do they just yearn for the sea?

I weighed in on one of the defining issues of our time: Is that a standalone "Train 45" after "On The Line" or not? I'm glad my response brought me back to these 2019 Billy Strings OurVinyl sessions YouTube videos.

Ever wonder how water towers work? Sick video from Popular Engineering. Speaking of, I saw Sierra Ferrell play at the Santa Barbara Bowl while I was on vacation, a beautiful outdoor venue with an ocean view I highly recommend anyone check out, and Kenny from Water Tower, who wrote for issue 9 about his love for Foghorn Stringband, sat in for a tune. Speaking of what we're speaking of, Billy Strings played SB Bowl in April 2022, I'm sure some of you hippies were there. I'm jealous!

I'm still chuckling at this meme from the bluegrass subreddit. Tip of the cap.

Billy earned himself a New York Times feature on the PR parade up to So Much For Goodbyes, out August 28.

What we're listening to

Lindsay Lou's Bluegrass Women is incredible. It's got that same acoustic timelessness we loved from Sam Grisman Project's self-titled record from last year, where you know you're going to be enjoying it in 40 years just the same. Lindsay is also releasing a video series on the record; that first video features "I Only Exist" and "All I Ever Loved Was You," both written by women, as were all songs on the record.

Bronwyn, one of the contributors to Bluegrass Women and a firecracker on the fiddle in her own right, released Rattlin' Bones, her first record under her first-name-only moniker. It's deeply personal but still rooted in that hard, old-school Bill Monroe bluegrass thing, with enough of Bronwyn's own personality in it that it never feels stuck in the tar of tradition.

We're also loving Wasting My Whole Life Away by Hard Drive—Sonya Badigian, Nokosee Fields, Tatiana Hargreaves, and Aaron Tacke. You'll have to wait for the print issue to read more about that one from Brakeman. Give it a listen to prepare yourself!

Shows I'd go to if I had unlimited Southwest points

• Billy Failing is playing a run of Colorado shows this week, including Aspen, Grand Junction, and Colorado Springs.
• Mountain Grass Unit is likely playing near you at some point, with dates stretching from Nashville and New Orleans to Austin, Missoula, Vancouver, Seattle, and San Francisco — definitely come to their show at Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville on August 27 if you want to be the first to get our next issue!
• Earl Scruggs Music Festival is Sept. 4–6 in North Carolina and has a ridiculous lineup: Del McCoury Band, Béla Fleck, MGU, Lindsay Lou, East Nash Grass, Jerry Douglas and plenty more.
• Bronwyn is taking Rattlin' Bones up and down the East Coast in September, including Charlottesville, Wayne, Northampton, Vermont, Albany, Amagansett, Boone, and Atlanta.
• Sam Grisman Project is on the road all of October, and at the rate they go I'm sure there are more dates coming! Keep your eye out

That's all we got for now. Did you enjoy this? Respond, let me know, and if any of you ask any questions I'd be happy to answer 'em in the next issue.

–The Conductor