Minstrel Booking

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

Date: Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 8:57 PM

Subject: Minstrel Booking Report, May 2017

To: FPboard <fullboard@folkproject.org>

April was not a particularly good month for the Minstrel. It's the age-old problem of trying to get the general public to come out to see an act that is really good, but not well known. Jeanne Burns & Andrew Hardin on April 28 only drew 43 paid. And the split bill on April 21 with Jay Mankita and FP member Andrew Dunn, while attracting a number of Andy's fans, only drew 41 paid toal. Both those shows incurred siginificant financial losses. (See attached Minstrel P&L chart.) Overall, we averaged only 56.5 paid attendees for April, and lost $163 on the month. Over the past 12 months, we've averaged 91.1 paid for regular shows, and 72.1 including Open Stages. The Open Stages, when held in the Terrace Room have generally been profitable, but incur fairly significant losses when we move them to the air-conditioned Meeting Room in the summer. Year To Date, we average 77.9 paid and $345 profit. (Not so good.) Over the past 365 days, we average 99.1 paid, and $1,464 in the black.

I got some bad news that Frank Vignola, a perennial favorite for us had injured his right shoulder, arm, clavicle, and some ribs in an ATV accident. He will not be able to do his scheduled June 2 show. So I booked his side man, Vinny Ragniolo as his replacement for what will be Vinny's very first solo concert. Vinny is no slouch on guitar either, and he will be bringing up various guests over the course of the evening. Looks to be an exciting show. Looks like we'll have Frank and Vinny back for a show together on November 24, Thanksgiving Friday, but that's not confirmed yet.

I've been putting in a lot of effort this past month in getting the Concert Window video program off the ground for its May debut.

• CW Administrator Evelyn McNally has uploaded all of our scheduled dates onto the CW website, and sent out information and instruction emails to all the upcoming performers.

• CW Champion Bill Hall has created a number of detailed instruction procedures. One was the procedure that Evelyn used to upload the concerts. Another is a detailed procedure for the viewer on how to stream the concerts, which has been added to the Folk Project's website.

• Bill also spent several during the April 21st show featuring Jay Mankita and Andrew Dunn hours with MUF's video expert Alex West ironing out the procedures of setting up the and launching webcast in order to document the procedure for our Sound crew, who will be handling the broadcast. We're going to try to schedule a demonstration/training session with as many Sound volunteers as we can gather in order to show them the procedure. (Which is quite simple.)

• Webmaster John Lamb has been very helpful in creating the Concert Window instruction page on our website, and putting various pointers to that page in strategic places on the site. Yet to be accomplished is the task of identifying which of the shows on our calendar will be webcast by placing CW launch icons on those shows' listings. John has also revised the Tally Sheet to handle the income generated by CW, and disburse to the performers their share. He did a great job on handling the tricky financial calculations, and reducing them to the addition of a single additional field to be filled out by the Bookkeeper.

• Chris Riemer and Lori Falco have been very helpful in figuring out how to handle the funds that come in from CW.

I have been in the unaccustomed role of Administrator, or Project Manager on this. I'm not entirely comfortable in that role, but I've found it an interesting challenge, and I think I've handled it reasonably well. I think we'll be ready to launch with a minimum of glitches this upcoming show with Jack Williams on May 5.

New bookings since last month:

• June 2: The aforementioned Vinny Raniolo subbing for the injured Frank Vignola

• August 4: FP member Carolyn Messina opening for the Inspire Project

• August 18: Robinson & [Jean] Rohe FP alumna singer songwriter and her partner.

• November 17: FP member Katherine Rondeau opening for Joe Jencks

• December 29: Bob Malone, high energy barrelhouse piano player and songwriter. Will also be featured at Fall Getaway

Highlight in May:

May 5: Jack Williams Great songwriter/guitarist

Respectfully submitted:

Mike Agranoff

Program Chair

The Minstrel Acoustic Concert Series

Morristown, NJ. USA

www.Minstrel.FolkProject.org