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photo by Christopher Wilson
Last year the Railroad Revival Tour put Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and Old Crow Medicine Show on a train last year for a series of gigs in some offbeat places that happened to be on major train routes. The RRT is being revived this year with Willie Nelson, Band of Horses, Jamey Johnson and John C. Reilly on board. And this time the train will stop in Old Town Spring, which is closer than last year's route, which hit Marfa, Austin and New Orleans among its six stops.
While Nelson was recently here for the Free Press Summer Fest. Band of Horses' only visit over the past few years was an opening date for the Black Keys in The Woodlands. Johnson cycled through these few parts not too terribly long ago. Reilly, who has recorded some 7" singles for Jack White's Third Man Label, isn't really known as a touring act, so the RRT should be an interesting opportunity to see him perform outside the local cineplex.
Tickets for the October 24 show range from $55 general admission to $245 for the incentive-laden packages. More information at www.railroadrevival.com
Interesting to have a "railroad revival" bringing a much simpler time to the forefront, with acts such as these that often sing about the simple life, yet charge $55 and up for a ticket??? Go figure.
Wednesday night show in Spring? No thank you. Really cool concept though.
Used to buy tickets for concerts all the time for $5 to $10. That was in the late 70's early 80's. So is it greed they will run you $60 or that the value of the dollar has fallen that much?
The way I understand it, to keep the cost of the albums basically the same, the jack up the ticket prices for concerts. Thus, all concerts are way more and we have been buying songs for essentially the same cost for years. Also, back in the day most people didn't go to shows, they just jammed to the albums and hit like one show a year. now people go to like 50 shows a year so demand has increased drastically, thus ticket prices go up.
Sorry but no. Back in the day we went to all the concerts and saw the same performers whenever they came to town. Why not,a good seat was $15-25 dollars. Now they want you to pay $50.00 and up. Forget it. Watching a band like Foreigner with no original members is not worth paying $80.00 bucks for.
Part of that is because of the way that the money is divided. For recordings, the majority of the profit goes to the label with the recording artist and writers getting relatively little. The artists make their money on concerts which gets split with concert promoters. And just for grins, the residuals from airplay is where the writers of the music get their money.
As for the cost of concerts, I don't know if you can just compare the prices of the concerts from the 70s and factoring it just for inflation. It would seem to me that there may be many more extraneous costs that we have now that we might not have had back then. I suspect security costs, insurance cost (remember the Great White concert fire?) and other permitting issues depending on the venue have driven some of the baseline cost up at rate that exceeds the simple inflation rate. Just a thought and I could be wrong.
Using inflation as described by the US-gov't-published Consumer Price Index, $10 in 1978 would be worth approximately $35 in 2012.
That leaves $25 (41% of the overall ticket or a price increase of 71%) as not explainable purely to the cost of money.
That said, it'll sell out. And I'll be there.
Too bad OCMS isn't on the tour this time.
Isn't his touring partner weed?
How fast is the train moving?
Ummm.. $55 for 4 performers in a concert is really not that bad. Paying $55 for ONE performer seems like a bigger deal. I've seen plenty of great performers and great shows at Fitzgerald's and Warehouse Live and House of Blues for $20-30.. Yes, concerts can get pricey at certain venues, but I agree with the poster who factored in extraneous costs, such as security and insurance as markup costs.
I also call BS on people who have plenty of money to blow - and THEY do blow it on stuff I'd consider useless - and complain about ticket prices. It ultimately comes down to what you enjoy and how you choose to spend your money. I don't mind contributing to the income of artists whose music I enjoy. I don't mind dropping close to $200 for a 3-day pass to ACL Fest. I refuse to drop $200 on a purse or pair of shoes, yet I have plenty of friends who do and think that I'M the one who's nuts. This concert series is a pretty cool idea.. I hope they keep it going.