An explanation of Starship Casual subscription tiers

Starship Casual engineering corps here. We wrote this page to explain the three ways of embarking on the ship:

1. FREE. Access to free posts, including weekly audio check-ins from Jeff; Dear Jeffy Q&As; and GEAR TALKIN’™️, I Love, and This Week In Wilco segments. Yay!

2. PAID. Access to free posts plus songs—in the first few years of Starship Casual alone, Jeff has posted almost 100 songs—covers, acoustic versions of Wilco songs, and works in progress, which give a glimpse into Jeff’s songwriting process.

3. CAPTAINS CLUB. Everything in a Paid subscription PLUS a cute physical membership card, and a surprise, limited edition physical gift (“prize”) at least once per membership year. Past Captains Club prizes have been an embroidered hat, a CD of Starship Casual songs, an autographed Jeff Tweedy lyric book, a mug, and a patch.

Now accepting sign-ups for the 2023-2024 Orbit.

Facts about Captains Club

New Captains Club memberships are now available year-round

In the past, we only opened the door to Captains Club once a year, around the anniversary of Starship Casual in late July. We did that in order to make the logistics of mailing physical prizes easier, but we changed our process and now we accept new Captains Club memberships anytime during the year.

The Starship Casual prize calendar begins each July 26

We used to be loosey-goosey about the boundary of the prize calendar. As of 2023, it begins on July 26. The prize you receive is determined by the anniversary year of Starship Casual in which you sign up or renew, and each anniversary year begins on July 26. For example, sign up before July 26, 2023, and you receive the 2022-2023 prize. Sign up on or after July 26, 2023, and you receive the 2023-2024 prize.

You receive a new prize every year that your membership is active

Yay!

If you’re already a Paid subscriber, you only pay the difference to upgrade to Captains Club

Upgrade while signed in to the same Substack account as your Paid subscription and you will not be double charged or over-charged.

Captains Club prizes are a surprise; they’re mailed sometime during your membership year

We’re never sure exactly when that will be! But you can rest assured that you’ll receive it.

We’ll ask for your mailing address and give you a chance to update it before mailing

That way, if you move to a different address between sign-up and mailing, you’ll be able to provide us with an updated address.

Captains Club used to be called Founding Members

…but we retired that name and reserved it only for the first class of Captains Club members. There won’t be any new Founding Members. If you signed up then, you’re one of the only Founding Members!

Captains Club helps pay for Starship Casual’s professional editing, graphic design, and archival research

See Jeff’s About page for a longer note on the paywall and why it exists. Long story short: You wouldn’t believe the cost of dry-cleaning spacesuits.

Hopefully this information is useful. Thank you, sincerely, from the entire Starship Casual crew, for being here and keeping things going. Carry on.