Minstrel Booking

Pretty good month for the Minstrel in September. With a lineup like Tracy Grammer, Brother Sun, and Bill Staines, I guess that could be expected. Average paid attendance was 101.3 for the three shows with performers, 98.3 including the Open Stage. (122.3 and 98.3 respectively for total attendance.) We made a $466 profit for the month and $712 YTD including all insurance and other fees. Once again, September was a month when all shows ran in the black. Just as a reminder, if you are looking at the Chart.pdf graph and see the large decrease in profit between 2015 and 2016, remember that prior to 2016 the Minstrel did not include its share of insurance costs in its accounting.

We had a couple of interesting interactions with the Unitarian Fellowship in September. MUF planned an event in the Terrace Room on September 30 when we had our Open Stage scheduled to take place in that room. They graciously offered us the use of the meeting room instead with no additional rent charge. Also, the afternoon before the Bill Staines show, I got an email from the MUF Administrator that the town was doing work on the curbing in front of their property, and the parking lot was rendered inaccessible. I instituted a flurry of emails to the Volunteer Chair and the performers to prepare for the eventuallity of a cancellation. But subsequent inquiry revealed that the work on the street concluded at 4:30 in the afternoon, and whatever trenches they had dug would be filled in for the evening. And the show went on as scheduled with no disruption to the audience.

In order to make the Bookkeeper's job a little easier, we've made some changes to the Tally Sheet. John lamb, Deborah Graham, Barbara Moo, and I to figure out what changes should be made. We decided to eliminate a bunch of fields for income and expenses not related to the show itself, and for Special Concert ticket sales, which haven't been recorded or deposited by the Minstrel staff for a couple of years. Another feature we added was a means to reconcile small differences between what the Tally Sheet calculated to be the bank deposit, and the money actually counted for the deposit at the end of the night. It was not uncommon for small counting errors to occur, either in overage and shortfall. And heretofore, the Bookkeeper would need to go over the counts and try and find the error, sometimes spending a half hour or more in the search. We came to the decision that the Bookkeeper's time was more valuable than the need to make everything reconcile. So we added a feature that would allow errors of $30 or less to be recorded as miscellaneous income or expense. I will keep track of these errors, and see if they amount to anything significant over the course of the year. I want to offer my thanks to John for some significant programming work required to make those changes.

John also supplied free of charge from an anonymous source a subscription to Norton Security, which is now installed on the Minstrel computer to protect it from malware.

New bookings this past month:

· Dec. 2: Chorus Song Night has been booked with Dave Heistand, Ken & Pat Rolston, myself, and Karyn Oliver (From No Fuss & Feathers)

· April 28: Jeanne Burns & Andrew Hardin Americana. Jeanne from the Burns Sisters, and Andrew is Tom Russell's lead guitarist.

· May 19: Lords of Liechtenstein opening for the Loose Canons.

Highlights for October

· Christine Lavin on Oct. 21

Mike Agranoff