Minstrel Booking

From: The Minstrel <mike.agranoff@folkproject.org>

Date: Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 1:37 PM

Subject: FW: Minstrel booking report, June 2017 -- Updated

To: FPboard <fullboard@folkproject.org>

There have been some additional items that have come up since I sent my report in on May 22. I have add those additional items to my original text in this teal-colored font. For those of you who do not receive email in formatted text, I'm attaching a PDF of the text to this message in the file Temp.PDF

Mike Agranoff

Program Chair

The Minstrel Acoustic Concert Series

Morristown, NJ. USA

www.Minstrel.FolkProject.org

From: The Minstrel [mailto:mike.agranoff@folkproject.org]

Sent: Monday, May 22, 2017 5:50 PM

To: 'FPboard' <fullboard@folkproject.org>

Subject: Minstrel booking report, June 2017

We had our last show of the month last Friday, so I thought I would get my booking report out of the way early. If there are any updates between now and the meeting, I'll either send a followup or report them in person at the meeting.

May was an OK month for the Minstrel, which was not as good as I was hoping. We averaged 81 paid attendees for the two regular shows, and 61.3 factoring in the Open Stage. Neither Jack Williams nor the Loose Canons drew as well as I had expected. Financially, we made a $299 profit for the month. Year to date, we are only $117 in the black. This year we seem to be following a course of running modestly in the black for most shows, and then occasionally taking a bath on a severely underattended show that wipes out most of our gains. Open Stages have been running at a tiny but consistent profit (See the attached show-by-show P&L report.), but that will change during the Summer when we move into the big room for the air conditioning, adding $90 to our rent.

The Concert Window launch went mostly smoothly. For the two shows that were broadcast, a total of 18 viewers bought tickets and 7 subscribers watched. (A subscriber is one who pays an $8.00 monthly fee to watch any show broadcast on CW (ours or anyone else's). And we get $0.013 per minute for each subscriber who watches our shows.) We earned a total of $48 in CW fees for the two shows, half of which we turned over to the performers. (Actually the Loose Canons donated their share back to us.) A relatively modest start, but I expect this to grow as more people try watching and find out about us. There was some difficulty in locating where on the CW website we could find our earnings, but I think we've finally cleared that up. Bill Henderson has volunteered to man the camera during the shows, which is a big help. It's not a difficult job, but it is useful to have someone adjust the pan and zoom as the stage situation changes.

Another new feature of the Concert Window program is that I have learned that we can supply our performers with a copy of the video. It can be recorded directly from the camera on an SD card. Since the cost of those cards is not trivial ($17 to $28), I've asked the performers to supply their own cards on which we will record the video.

Speaking of Bill Henderson, he generally is in early and sets up the room, including hanging our banner up behind the stage. Of late, though, he's been hanging it off to the side of the stage rather than in the center. I asked him about that, and he said a member of the Fellowship had complained that we should not obscure the hangings that MUF puts up. I wondered if the complainant had any authority to dictate that, so I called up the MUF office and asked. The Administrator said that there was no official restriction, and we would be allowed to put up our banner in front of the MUF hangings in future.

The show scheduled for July 7 with Broadside Electric and Fiona Tyndall is starting to turn into a technical nightmare. Broadside is a fairly large and complicated setup, so I booked Fiona, whom I had seen in the past as a solo vocalist with an accompanist, to be a simple opener technically. However, Fiona has added three additional musicians to her act, which starts to run into the limits of the available channels of our sound board. To further complicate matters, a number of our better sound volunteers are unavailable for that night. We will probably be able to handle the situation by using the MUF digital sound board's ability to record and store all the settings from one act, and then recall them again when needed. However, it's going to require a very early sound check on that night to properly prepare for both acts.

I happened to go to Swingin' Tern on May 20th, and several people there made favorable comments on the show with the Loose Canons at the Minstrel the previous night. I'm gratified to see that a significant number of SnT dancers also attend Minstrel. I would love to see more "bi-folkal" Minstrel attendees also come to the dance more often as well.

New Bookings this month

• August 18: Robinson & (Jean)Rohe. Singer-songwriter duo featuring Jean Rohe, Folk Project alumna from the age of 8 years old.

• September 29: Vance Gilbert following his out-of-the-park performance at Spring Getaway

• January 5: Split bill with Pat Wictor (lately of Brother Sun) & Reggie Harris (of Kim & Reggie Harris)

Highlights for June

• June 2: Vinny Raniolo: Frank Vignola's partner doing his first solo gig after Frank got injured. He'll probably have a few guest stars with him.

• June 30: Happy Traum: Iconic fingerstyle guitarist from the 60s and 70s, who will also be presenting a multi-media show "Coming of Age in the Folk Revival" with stories of the Greenwich Village folk scene and its many colorful personalities.

Respectfully submitted:

Mike Agranoff

Program Chair

The Minstrel Acoustic Concert Series

Morristown, NJ. USA