Minstrel

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

Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2019 11:37 AM

To: Mike.Agranoff@FolkProject.org; 'Folk Project' <fullboard@folkproject.org>

Subject: Whups! Forgot to attach the graphs.

Please note new for this year, I’ve superimposed the paid attendance on the P&L graph so you can see how closely our profit depends upon our attendance.

Mike Agranoff

Program Chair

The Minstrel Acoustic Concert Series

Morristown, NJ. USA

www.Minstrel.FolkProject.org

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

Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2019 11:05 AM

To: 'Folk Project' <fullboard@folkproject.org>

Subject: Minstrel Booking Report, January 2019

Well, now that’s more like it! It was not unexpected, but nonetheless very gratifying to see 2019 at the Minstrel start off with a bang! Two of our three shows were near or over capacity. Average paid attendance for the month was 126.7 (155.3 total attendance), for a profit of $586. The Susan Werner show sold out. And a big surprise was the Joan and Joni show whose paid attendance was nearly double that I had expected. A lot of that was due to a party of 17 from Vicki Lederman’s hiking club, and a lot of media publicity for that show. Many thanks to the Publicity Committee.

Advance Ticket Sales

With our first month of advance sales under our belt, I think things seem to be working very smoothly in that department. All of our procedures seem to be functioning well, both ahead of the show as well as at the show. The forms we have created for the Door volunteer to handle people who have purchased in advance work well. For the 3 shows this year, we sold 110, 9, and 30 advance tickets respectively. The only downsides I’ve seen so far are

1. Mixed signals about turning people away when we’ve reached our attendance limit. For the next show likely to sell out (March 22, Tom Chapin) we plan to set up an overflow room where people can watch on Concert Window. That should, if not solve that issue, at least forestall it until we reach the capacity of our overflow room. We ran a test of the technical procedures during the January 18 show to check out the equipment and look for any possible glitches.

2. Constant Contact shows misleading message after we shut down sales at midnight Thursday, saying “Registration is closed”. I got a number of emails and calls Friday morning from people who understandably thought that meant that the show was sold out. Gary has plans to create a landing page on CC that he will put up at midnight Friday that will deliver a clearer message.

Concert Window

Concert Window continues to be plagued with glitches. On January 18, the show disappeared from our schedule of broadcasts on CW’s site. I had to re-enter the show in their schedule 10 minutes before showtime. Consequently only 4 people signed in to watch it. And for some reason, none of them was able to get a signal. We had to refund everyone’s money. I’ve made inquiries to CW, but gotten no response yet.

Piano Tuning

We had to pay $160 for the tuning of MUF’s piano in advance of he Susan Werner show. MUF felt it was too soon after their last the instrument was tuned to warrant another such procedure. That moved me to ask David Thomson, the piano tech I personally use, if he would be willing to do that for us in the future as a free service to the Project. He agreed in exchange for some free ads in our Newsletter

Parking Lot

The spectre of MUF’s parking lot rennovation has once again raised its ugly head. MUF is going to vote at the beginning of February, and it looks like the parking lot will likely be unusable for a period of 6 to 12 weeks during the summer. I investigated alternative sites for the Minstrel. The Presbyterian Church of Chatham Township (site of the now defunct Sanctuay Concerts), which had offered us a possible home several years ago, is no longer available. The Ukrainian-American Cultural Center, where we hold our Ukefest was unworkably expensive at around $800/night. So I thought to inquire of the Morris Museum if they would be amenable to our using their lot. Happily, they turned out to be quite receptive to the idea. We have arrived at a verbal agreement that would permit us to use their lot at a cost of $100/ show, with one caveat. If they wound up booking an event on a Friday night where the anticipated number of vehicles from the two combined events would exceed the capacity of their lot, we would cancel our show on that night. I readily agreed to that provision for a number of reasons:

1. The capacity of their lot is over 200 cars.

2. Our capacity in MUF’s auditorium is 200 people. I estimate that would translate to maybe 140 cars at most. We would park our staff and performers in MUF’s lower lot (~15 cars). There will be a temporary gravel lot available during the contruction period that will hold 15 cars. There would be room along Normandy Heights Road for maybe 25 cars. So that would mean with an absolute sellout crowd, we would need to park a maximum of 85 cars in the Museum lot. Most of our shows only draw around 100 people, translating to 70 cars. Which would require space for only 15 cars in the Museum lot.

3. Historically, the Musuem very rarely books an event on a Friday night. (As it turns out they just booked an event on Friday, July 26, the night of the Minstrel’s Birthday Show. But they anticpate only 100 cars at their event. So we know we’re safe for that night.)

So I would safely say that the liklihood our needing to cancel a show would be approaching zero. I have a contract from the Museum that we’ve agreed not to sign until we get some better idea from MUF when they expect the construction to begin and end. And even when we do, the dates on the contract will be flexible, depending upon the actual time that the MUF lot will be unavailable. So all in all this is a much better solution than needing to pack up and move our whole operation for the summer.

I will make a motion at the meeting that the Project accept this plan, and that the Project cover the parking lot rental cost from general funds as an emergency grant to the Minstrel.

MUF

We received a complaint from MUF of an incident that happened after the Holiday Benefit Show on December 21. There is a group that uses the Terrace Room early Saturday mornings, and they reported that they found food on the floor when they arrived the day after that show. We had used the Terrace Room for our refreshments that night. Their custodian does not normally arrive before the Saturday group, so they asked us to routinely sweep the floor in the Terrace room after each usage. On further conversation with MUF’s pro tem administrator, I learned that this was a relatively common complaint from the Saturday night group, but usually not after FP events. So I came to an agreement with MUF that we would sweep the Terrace Room after each time we used it if required, and they would waive the custodial fee ($6.00/room) for the Terrace Room in our rental. Head Staffs have been notified to check the condition of the Terrace Room at the end of the night, and see that a sweep is made at the end if necessary.

New bookings since last month

March 15:........ Tal Naccarato to open for The Murphy Beds. Fingerstyle guitarist

March 22:........ Dan Pelletier to open for Tom Chapin. Keyboard playing singer songwriter

May 31:........... Hillary-Marie's Sole Music Collective to open for Silk City. An interesting duo of a singer-songwrite who plays ukulele accompanied by a woman who does foot and body percussion (ie tap dancing) and backup vocals.

June 21:.......... The Sandie Reilly Band to open for David Roth. Featuring our own “Horses” chair.

Sept. 27:.......... Patrick Ball World renowned Celtic harper, presenting a one-man play on the Irish poet William Butler Yeats

Nov 1:............. Zoe Mulford The headline set she was awarded by the audience who saw her opening set for Susan Werner on January 4

Nov. 15............ JP Cormier An Agranoff Imperative virtuoso guitarist / fiddler / mandolinist / banjo player and entertainer extrordinare.

Highlights for February

Feb 15.............. Quentin Callewaert That extraordinary kid fingerstyle guitarist that opened for Toby Walker last year. He’s up at feature act level now, and shooting for the moon. Catch him before we can’t afford him.

Feb. 22............. Todd Dennison Project member and board member who has supported so many musicians on our stage. Let’s all go out there and support him for a show of his own.

Respectfully submitted

Mike Agranoff

Program Chair

The Minstrel Acoustic Concert Series

Morristown, NJ. USA

www.Minstrel.FolkProject.org