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What a crazy month! One sellout, another packed house, the highest attended Open Stage in 14 years (58), and the lowest-attended non-Open Stage in 7 years (32). One injured patron and one emergency evacuation. With a 206 paid attendance, for the Hugh Doherty / Loose Canons and 142 for Tom Chapin I would have expected the numbers to show a big bump over those of 12 months ago. But the 32 paid for the John Flynn / Reggie Harris split brought the average down considerably. And January 2013 was also a pretty good month, so the difference was not that significant. Still, a 110 average paid attendance for shows with a paid performer in January '14 is nothing to sneeze at, and we were $512 in the black for the month.
We had two incidents worth reporting in January.
There was an accident on January 10 where a speaker toppled from the stage before the start of the show, and struck a woman on the knee. She was taken to the Emergency Room at Morristown Memorial Hospital. Mark Schaffer accompanied her there. Preliminary reports were that there were no broken bones. President Lachowicz is handling communications with her. I will give further details after consultation with with Elizabeth either at the meeting or by an ammended report.
· Then on January 24, some of the staff and patrons reported a smell of gas in the room just after the intermission. I have a poor sense of smell, but when I went into the Meeting Room to start the 2nd half of the show, I caught a whiff of gas myself. The smell seemed to be intermittent; sometimes there, but mostly not. Earlier in the day, I had received an email from MUF that one of the two heating units that service the Meeting Room had failed, and only one would be in operation that night. (It was a rather cold night, but the room temperature was comfortable.) There was a member of the MUF Board in attendance that night, and I consulted with him. He called PSE&G and Monsen Engineering Company that services their building. A serviceman from both firms came to investigate. They found nothing specific on initial examination. But feeling a need for excess caution after the incident on January 10, I decided to play it safe and end the show early (Just after Jean Rohe did her first song of the 2nd set.) I asked people to evacuate the building, which they did with some disappointment, but no hard feelings that I could detect. We packed up the sound equipment, while the two technicians did a further investigation. They reported to me some preliminary guesses as to the cause, but couldn't say for certain until a more thorough examination, which took place the following day. I reported the incident to MUF authorities the next day. When I inquired later in the week, they told me that a valve was replaced, and the faulty heating unit had been repaired. They expected no issues that might affect the following Friday's show. And indeed, there were none. We will have Jean Rohe back sooner than her normal rotation to compensate for her interrupted set.
The powers that be at the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship were satisfied with our handling of both events.
I've done a lot of booking over the past month, with some pretty exciting shows lined up
· April 25, 2014: Robinson Treacher to open for Spuytin Duyvil: Songwriter with a distinctive soulful voice booked from the January Open Stage.
· May 30, 2014: Sydney Kayne to open for Rich Deans: A 14 year old girl with a lot of stage presence booked from the December Open Stage.
· June 20, 2014: Spook Handy to open for Liza and AJ: Performer in the style of Pete Seeger with much social content to his material
· June 27, 2014: Oakes & Smith to open for the Boxcar Lilies: Harmony oriented songwriter duo booked from the January Open Stage.
· September 26, 2014: Dave Nachmanoff to open for Cosy Sheridan: High powered songwriter and Al Stewart's guitarist booked on this date and then again for a feature on October 24.
· October 3, 2014: Sloan Wainwright: Singer songwriter with a very distinctive voice.
· October 17, 2014: Woody Mann: World-class fingerstyle guitarist at the Chet Atkins / Pat Donohue level.
· October 24, 2014: The above-mentioned Dave Nachmanoff as a feature.
· November 7, 2014: Sally Rogers & Claudia Schmidt: Two seminal songwriters-singers from the '80s through the present now performing as a duo.
· December 26, 2014: Christine Lavin and Don White: For our usually big show between Christmas and New Year, this split bill of two very funny performers.
· January 9, 2015: The April Verch Band: Long-time Minstrel favorite Canadian fiddler-singer-stepdancer.
· February 6, 2015: Bill Staines: Venerable Minstrel favorite.
I am pretty much fully booked through 2014, with only three August dates and a couple of openers to fill
February's schedule is strong, with favorites Mangsen & Gillette and Beppe Gambetta on tap.
Mike Agranoff
Program Chair
The Minstrel Acoustic Concert Series
Morristown, NJ 07960, USA
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