Embedded Files
A very light month at the Minstrel. Only one "regular" show (with paid performers), and that show featured a member-performer somewhat peripheral to the general active membership. One show was pre-empted by a Special Concert, and another by the Old Timers' Night. So the average attendance for the month was only 43 for regular shows and 47 for all shows. (The first time I can remember where the regular show average was less than the overall average.) We still managed to come out $62 in the black for the month, and figures for the past year are pretty much on par with those for the previous 12 months.
The excitement happened for the first September show on the heels of Hurricaine Irene. Nobody anticipated that the power would still be out at MUF a week after the storm, and we had to cancel the show with Dugan's Hooligans. To compound the problem, I had to evacuate my house, and my power was also down until the day after the cancelled show. Since the Minstrel-Gram list resides on my computer, I couldn't even send out cancellation notices. As a last gasp effort, Thursday night I hauled my desktop over to Mark Schaffer's where I was staying until my power went up, to try to send it out. And my computer chose that moment to experience a motherboard failure and would not boot. (The phrase "perfect storm" springs to my lips, but I will manfully refrain from uttering it. I am currently limping along on half my memory cards until the computer gets fixed.) Through various efforts of many people with many mailing lists, the word evidently got out. I went down to MUF to personally tell people the situation, rather than have them just encounter a dark empty building. There were surprisingly few disappointed arivees. The Dugans put on an impromptu house concert in their own home in Madison, and are rescheduled at the Minstrel for December 30.
New bookings since last month:
--Sept 23: Kirsten Lamb to open for the Ilusha Tsinadze band.
--Oct. 21: Liv & Jordy, a pair of high school girls to open for Mangsen & Gillette. Really charming pair doing old-timey songs and Carter Family stuff and the like. Protoges of Grover Kemble.
--Nov 27: The Young Project (working title) Mark Schaffer's annual presentation of FP members in some category or other. This one is performing FP members under 30.
--February 3: Al Parrish, the bass player from Tanglefoot to do a solo feature set. And a real character named Michael Prysock to open for him.
(Think Ramblin' Jack Elliot meets Will Rogers)
--THURSDAY, May 3: We will also have a special presentation on, the night
before the Phil Ochs Song Night. We will be screening the documentary "Phil
Ochs: There But For Fortune", hosted by Phil's sister Sonny Ochs with a Q&A session afterwards. Sonny is a delightful character herself, packed with fascinating stories of the era. So this will be a really special occasion.
Highlights for September.
Ilusha Tsinadze's band on September 23 will be something worth catching.
They do music from his native Republic of Georgia, which is at once strange and yet familiar. A bunch of us went to their debut performance at Joe's Pub in NYC last summer, and they blew us and the rest of the packed house away.
Mike Agranoff
Mike Agranoff
Program Chairman
The Minstrel
Morristown, NJ USA
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