Minstrel Report
Good news and bad news this month. Mostly good. It was a low activity month; only 3 shows due to our being pre-empted by the Special Concert March 5. One was Open Stage. Of the other two, Red Molly sold out, but Craig Bickhardt's attendance of 53 paid was disapppointing, and we had to kick in $44 to make his guarantee. I had hoped his previous exposure opening for Aztec Two Step would have contributed to a higher attendance for his headliner appearance. But only about a half dozen hands responded to my inquiry from the stage as emcee when I asked how many first saw him at the A2S show. On the other hand, Craig was so pleased that he kicked back $40 to the Folk Project as a donation. We transformed that into a 2 year membership for him. (Maybe he'll come back to be part of the Birthday show?) That actually says a lot. One of the reasons for our success in attracting acts well above our ability to pay their normal scale is the experience they have performing for us. It says a lot of our audience, our staff, and our organization that adds non-monitory value to what the performer receives from us.
Our average attendance for regular shows for March was 129, or 100 if you include Open Stage. Over the past 12 months it was 95.3. We made $415 net profit for the month and $1816 Y.T.D.
As will be reported under New Business, the dreaded ASCAP has finally caught up with the Minstrel. As it turns out, that's nowhere near as bad news as I had feared. (Background: ASCAP, the American Society for Composers and Producers, is a "Performance Rights Organization", or PRO. Their purpose is to collect royalties from institutions that present music in public situations, and distribute those royalties to the copyright holders of that music. Legally it is the responsibility of the venue to pay the royalties, not the performer.). There had been apocryphal stories of venues being charged enormous fees, sued for back payments, being closed down, etc. The Minstrel had been flying under their radar all these years, and simply avoiding them. As it turns out, the fees are most reasonable. They charge 0.8% of our admissions revenue. Calculated for year 2009, that would have come to around $189.00. (There's a $219 per year minimum, but additional royalties from Special Concerts should bring us above that.) We can live with that. There is some paperwork involved with quarterly reports needing to be generated, but I have worked out a script in my database to generate those reports automatically, so the clerical burden is minimal. ASCAP also will accept setlists of music played when available. That would be beneficial to performers who perform their own ASCAP-registered music, because it will entitle them to royalty payments from ASCAP. I will begin to give performers the option of supplying me such setlists to forward to ASCAP with our quarterly reports.
For the first time in many years, the Birthday Show will NOT conflict with the Falcon Ridge Festival. It is scheduled for July 30.
New bookings made in March:
May 21: Phil Shapiro & Carrie Shore, who were so well received at the Chorus Song Night. Opening for them will be Dave Sherman & John Siehl (with whom Dave used to perform when he first got involved in the Folk Project 15 years ago.)
June 18: Bob Franke
June 25: Woods Tea Company
July 2: Mustard's Retreat
Upcoming shows to note:
Good stuff for the whole month of April:
Apr. 16: Jaerv. Young band from Sweden
April 23: Buskin & Batteau: High energy songriter duo. Both used to be in Nancy Griffith's backup band, and David Buskin was one of the members of Modern Man. Opening for them will be Blue Moose & the Unbuttoned Zippers, who will be doing a headline set and a Swinging Tern appearance in May (and will be featured at Fall Festival.)
April 30: Christine DeLeon, who is planning a cast-of-thousands extravaganza.
Mike Agranoff
Program Chairman
The Minstrel
Morristown, NJ 07960, USA