Reality on the Rails Hi, all! Things are proceeding apace for the April West of the West trip. We have a great lineup of musicians; we have the great fleet of LA Rail cars reserved; we finally know where Amtrak is letting us park enroute (San Antonio, Chicago, Denver - strange as it seems, they would not confirm anything other than Chicago until last week). And yet this may be our last Roots on the Rails long-distance train trip. Almost certainly for this year, possibly for the next couple of years or forever. Why? Because we are 90 days out and we are still somewhere around $27,000 shy of breaking even. That is before I would make a dime or Dave Alvin would make a dime (I split any profit on the trips 50/50 with the partner artist). I thought for sure that this trip was a slam-dunk. Two new routes we’ve never traveled before -- one going to Austin, the Live Music Capital of the World! The other being the route of the California Zephyr, widely considered the most scenic route on the Amtrak system - through the very heart of the Rockies! People had been asking about that route as long as we’ve been doing trips. And with Dave Alvin hosting, with his hand-picked lineup of performer friends, I thought it was perfect. Well, apparently I figured a little bit wrong. In 2013 - for Dave’s Seattle trip - we had 2 slots remaining 90 days before departure. In 2014, for the LA-ABQ-CHI-Glacier-PDX-LA trip, 90 days out, we had 13 slots remaining. In 2015, we have 20 slots remaining (10 each way). How come? Well, the price is a lot more this year -- using the lower berth price, with no discounts, here’s a comparison: 2013: 3289 (2 hotel nights, 4 nights on train) 2014: eastbound 3289 (1 hotel night, 3 nights on board), westbound 3689 (2 hotel nights, 5 nights on board), full circle 6498 (2 hotel nights, 8 nights on board) 2015: eastbound 3789 (1 hotel night, 4 nights on board), westbound 4089 (3 hotel nights, 4 nights on board), full circle 7488 (3 hotel nights, 8 nights on board). So, roughly, before discounts, the price went up $500 either direction, or $1000 per person for the full circle. Why’d the price go up so much? We got hit with a $30,000 price increase from LA Rail, who were merely passing on the increased Amtrak charter-car haulage rates. (Train cost: 2013: 80,427 - but only about 2k miles, 2014: 175,500, 2015: 205,000). Basically, between 14 and 15, that’s a haulage hike of $375.00 per patron per segment. The other $125 is smooshy - there was actually only a $400 increase on the westbound price, but $1k increase on the full circle; Amtrak kicks us off the cars for the overnight in Oakland so we have to budget hotel and maybe a bus there, and I wanted to increase the amount, and thus the value, of the earlybird discounts (doubled this year to $200); we increased the performer set-aside spaces by one (thus removing a revenue space); in essence, our potential profit went DOWN slightly this year. Dave and I discussed it and decided it was the right thing to do. He loves doing the trips and I am doing well enough in my art career that I can afford to take a little less. I am also very much aware of the fact that a community has been created - that these trips mean a lot to people; more than just traveling around the country, listening to great music; a bunch of really good people have gotten to know one another and make a real -almost familial- connection. And I’m also aware that these trips are a BIG financial stretch for many of our passengers. So we try to keep the trips as affordable as we can while still making it worth our while to put on. I estimate I spend a minimum of 15 hours a week, year-round, on Roots on the Rails. Granted, a lot of it it spent staring at floorplans (which I love to do), but a lot of it is boring minutia, getting scolded by agents, tracing incorrect hotel charges, doing endless bookkeeping, etc. Sure, I can almost certainly break even on this trip. We’ll probably organically sell another couple of slots. I can send Sarah out to wheedle and cajole some fence-sitters. We can backchannel some folks and cut some last-minute deals. And I can probably emerge in the black, and able to toss Dave at least _some_ dollars for 10 days of his time, and I’ll be able to pay my crew, and I’ll get a lovely train ride out of it. But it’s 15 hours every week that I’m spending not painting. It’s a steadily-creeping-up list of unavoidable expenses every month (mailing list, website, book keeper, accountant, toll-free phone line, additional cellphone line, credit card processing, etc. etc. etc.). It is -how they say- an endeavor not without agita. I’m happy to keep putting trips together - if they sell quickly. The Transcontinental sold out in a week or so, but after the fact LA Rail realized they’d undercharged us by a... lot, and we know that, should we do that trip again, we’d be paying 20 or 30k more than we did in ’14. So we may just have bumped up against the limits of what we do. People say to advertise more. But that expense would have to get tacked onto the trip cost (each trip currently has a maximum of 1k set aside for advertising), so the price would go up even more - and probably a bunch of the people we’d get wouldn’t really be into the music as much. People say to get more new artists. But this roster is curated by the host musician, so, had I been inclined to challenge the choices (which I wasn’t) that’d mean I’d have had to butt heads with the guy whose musical vision this trip is. And most of the artists we work with are good friends, and I don’t want to put them out to pasture if I can help it. The other problem with new artists is we don’t know if their audience is interested in the particular product we create - and I have no interest in creating a different product in order to cater to a bunch of people I don’t know. In the last year, we created two new events with almost-all-new-to-our-crowd-artists; one edged into the black, and the other we had to cancel due to slow sales. People say to get more famous artists. But more famous artists are going to want a LOT more money, and that means REALLY expensive trips, and that means dealing with a lot of entitled people and a lot of my friends no longer being able to come on the trips. I’m not bummed out and I’m not angry - I’m just assessing where we are and what is the best use of my time, and -at this point in my life- I don’t want to spend my days dreaming up ways to try to convince people to do things they’re disinclined to do. So I guess I’m just saying that if you want to go on a true long-distance, multi-day train trip, with sleepers and dome car and performance car, I’d suggest climbing on board this one. Of course, if this note causes a bunch of folks who were thinking that maybe they’d sit this one out to choose to jump aboard, that’ll encourage me to plan another one for 2016, so I’ll end up being the Boy Who Cried Wolf.... But there are worse things to be. Hope you’ll join us. - Charlie PS: Tell you what, I’ll try to boost this process along by throwing in another damn discount if you sign up now - THE EXISTENTIALIST DISCOUNT - $100 off listed prices either direction; $200 off the full circle. I’ll put it in effect until 1/25, 6pm EST and we’ll see where we are then. PPS: And if you’re wondering what we still have available, it’s a pair of 2-person bedrooms, a couple of roomettes and a smattering of berth spaces.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 21:36:28 +0000
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