Nothing new to report.

Lindsey

Hi Folks,

HSNOI is producing new shows in MA at Amherst Media, 246 College St, Amherst, MA 01002; We taped the first show on 3/16 with Alan Podber featuring Leadbelly covers as our guest, (https://bigroadbluesband.com/alan-podbers-web-page) and we're taping another episode this Wed. 3/30 with Bruce Molsky

https://www.brucemolsky.com

Thanks for your support!

Peace,

We gained 7 new memberships in March.

As of 3/27/22, we have 200 memberships consisting of 316 people.

Todd Dennison

Membership Chair

Newsletter Committee Report 2022-04

Things are proceeding as usual with the invaluable help of Kathi Caccavale, Pat Brangs, Liz Pagan, Bill Henderson, Gary Pratt, and Todd Dennison.

For the first time in many years, the newsletter did not have any April Fool jokes in its April issue. Sorry to those who were looking for them. There were just too many serious articles that we felt didn't need to be mixed up with some jokey commentary,

Don't worry, next year we are bound to have an article or two announcing that the Folk Project is becoming a subsidiary of Amazon.com or transforming itself into a blockchain investing operation.

Thanks,

George Otto

Folk Project Newsletter Editor

newsletter@folkproject.org

The Open Stage was a great success and a lot of fun.

Several people mentioned to me that it was wonderful, on a nice warm night, to see people getting out of cars in the parking lot and grabbing instruments and heading inside to play music. There was definitely an energy.

Once again we had several new performers for the win.

Over 70 people attended in-person or online.

Next month we plan to open up even more and offer a workshop on tuning.

Thank you to the incredible and flexible Open Stage team who dealt with a couple of challenges in streaming this month.

Todd Dennison

FPOS

Publicity Report for the April 5, 2022 Board Meeting

Sam Edelston, April 3, 2022

Publicity Committee Members

Alicia Weimer, George Otto, Howard Goldman, Jean Scully, Jim Gartner, Joanne Cronin, Joe Guzzo, Kathi Caccavale, Liz Pagan, Loretta Brooks, Mark Schaffer, Michael Mitsch, Mike Rauchwerk, Olga Alvarez, Pat Brangs, Paul Fisher, Rebecca Rydell, Susan Lembo

Web Team Members

John Lamb, Allan Kugel, Charles Lamb, Lori Falco, Rick Thomas (emeritus Member)

Reports

Chairperson’s Report – Sam Edelston

I’m looking forward to the return of in-person concerts that actually bring in revenue for The Folk Project. This brings back some opportunities for Publicity to do some publicizing.

In connection with the Troubadour’s reopening, I asked Morristown Green if they’d be interested in doing an article about it, and they wound up doing a nice, long lead story on it March 30. Than you to Bob McNally and Mike Agranoff for providing helpful background information. https://morristowngreen.com/2022/03/30/folk-project-resumes-live-concerts-with-tom-paxton-coming-to-morris-township-april-8/

Last month, I reported on a Zoom meeting with some members of the Publicity Team. In early March, I had a second such get-together, with Pat Brangs, George Otto, and Lori Weiss. Good conversation, a good bonding experience, and I filled a number of gaps in my own knowledge.

I plan to come down for some Troubadour shows to meet some of the volunteers who I haven’t had quality time with face-to-face – and, of course, to see some great shows.

Last month, I broached the possibility of creating some special merchandise inspired by the reopening. Other priorities were more pressing, so I ran out of time for it.

E-communications – Mark Schaffer

Mark reports that the Folk Project total stats for all communications in March are:

40,284 sends

13,813 opens (34.3% open rate)

611 clicks to links (4.4% of opens).

Facebook – Kathi Caccavale

Kathi has been busy, so Sam says:

4,247 people Like our page (up from 4,195 last month), and we have 5,285 Followers (up from 5,210 last month).

By a solid margin, the most Page Views came on 3/4 (Trout Fishing). The 3/11 Open Stage and 3/18 also got strong numbers.

View counts:

· Troubadour

o 3/25 Korby Lenker – 225 & 201 views (as I recall, the broadcast was interrupted, so there are two videos, with a good deal of overlap between them)

o 3/18 Vance Gilbert – 454 views

o 3/11 Open Stage – 302 views

o 3/4 Trout Fishing in America – 1.1K views

o 2/25 Rod Picott – 455 views

o 2/18 Ken Galipeau – 303 views

o 2/11 Open Stage – 316 views

o 2/4 Kipyn Martin – 517 views

· Streaming Tuesdays

o 3/29 Carole Wise – 499 views

o 3/22 Lilli Lewis – 198 views

o 3/15 Jud Caswell – 293 views

o 3/8 Cary Morin – 490 views

o 3/1 Trip McCool – 492 views

o 2/22 Alice Howe & Freebo – 545 views

o 2/15 Bob Beach – 458 views

o 2/8 Crys Matthews & Heather Mae – 430 views

o 2/1 Dan Navarro – 1.2K views

Folk Project group: 1,554 members, up 26 from 1,528 last month.

NJ Uke Fest: 240 members; up 4 from last month.

Swingin’ Tern: 577 members; up 2 from last month.

Twitter, Instagram – Jean Scully

Sam says:

Every edition of the Music Alert eletter is now being automagically tweeted out on Twitter and posted on Instagram (as well as on Facebook).

YouTube – Joe Guzzo

Joe says:

YouTube Channel Report for the month ending March 31, 2022. Sam added the view counts as of 4/2.

· We have 289 subscribers as of the end of March. That’s a gain of 12 subscribers in the last month.

· This month, the channel got 299 views. This is 88% more than Jan 29 – Feb 28.

· Watch time was 20.0 hours. This is 60% more than Jan 29 – Feb 28.

· Our top video was To Be Twenty Again by Joe Guzzo (and I am one stunned person) has 100 views. The large increase in Views is mostly due to this video.

· In March, we had two programs with new interviews and music.

o 1/2 Circle Round the Sun has 26 views

o 1/16 HSNOI featuring Dave Murphy and others has 14 views

o 1/30 Victoria Vox has 48 views

o 2/13 HSNOI featuring Jim Photoglow has 8 views

o 2/27 Dana Cooper has 9 views

o 3/13 High Tea has 40 views

o 3/27 Claudia Nygaard has 28 views

· April will feature a new interview and music with Sam Edelston.

· I would like to have more interviews. I will be looking for additional guests as we get into the spring season.

Web – John Lamb

John says:

March has been a relatively light month for the web team.

· We created an entry for the upcoming home-based Getaway and assisted Special Concerts, Troubadour Online, Streaming Tuesdays, Inside the Song and Troubadour with creating or updating various events.

· We advised the treasurer on issuing ticket refunds via PayPal.

· We updated the Newsletter distribution page in preparation for the April edition of the newsletter.

· We investigated an issue to find out why an email was not delivered and found that it had been sent from the user's email server but the user had selected an option that changed their From/Reply To addresses to make it appear that the message had come from their folkproject.org account. There are a lot of systems that will bounce email when the domain of the From address does not match the domain of the sending email server. This is a hallmark of a spam message. Sending email under your FP address is not hard. The easiest way is to simply log in at gmail.com with your folkproject.org credentials and send it that way, but email programs like Outlook can also be set up to use the folkproject.org server when sending folkproject.org email.

I had hoped to get back to adding the remaining entries to the Performer Resource Directory and perhaps start some work on our event history pages in March, but other sites for which I am Webmaster required urgent attention. Perhaps I will have time for those items in April.

As always, many thanks to Allan, Charles, Liz and Lori. Please send questions, comments and suggestions to webmaster@folkproject.org.

John Lamb, Folk Project Webmaster

Merch – Paul Fisher (acting)

Nothing new.

The following is the Sound Reinforcement Committee report for April 2022

We had one event, the 3/11 Open Stage event, to support in March. The live sound support in the MUUF sanctuary went without incident. We supplied sanitary mic covers to all vocal mics as they changed users so all performers were using a “fresh” mic. We also supplied a mix for the video camera supporting the Facebook broadcast of the event. We investigated the reports from some viewers that there were some “crunchy” sounds associated with the audio portion of the broadcast. We decided to treat this by providing a compressed lower volume audio signal to the camera. This seemed to solve the problem.

We had a second event, the Open stage on April 1 to provide sound reinforcement for the room and the video broadcast. We able to provide sound in the room, but equipment failure prevented us from providing sound to the camera. While going through the set-up procedure we found that the MUUF camera was missing the audio module that accepts the mixer audio feed. Further, there was not video signal evident in the system. Given these two defects, we decided to discontinue use of the video camera, and Todd Dennison set up a broadcast on Facebook using a cellphone using the phone microphone for audio.

The technical renovations in the sanctuary have apparently gotten underway. Alex West reports the new video equipment has arrived and he is actively installing the cameras on the walls and running the wires. He indicated that their completion date target is Saturday, April 23. This eliminates any effort to rehabilitate the old camera. In order to continue broadcasting to Facebook I will be supplying my personal camera that should be a plug and play replacement for the defunct MUUF camera. I will be supplying this for our Folk Project shows and removing it at the end of the night.

We have a minimum of two dates to cover, April 15 and 22. If MUUF hits their installation goal, the new system should be available for April 29. After that time, we should be able to use the MUUF system to continue to broadcast to Facebook using a board mix and the newly installed cameras.

John Mahon

Board,

SPECIAL EVENTS - Mark Schaffer

The Paxton/DonJuans concert is this Friday, 4/8.

Jean Scully and I are in full prep mode this week.

Despite extremely slow sales, the concert should break even

thanks to the generous donation by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.

Reminder: This tour and their donation is part of their COVID recovery effort.

Prep for the May Getaway and August’s NJ Uke Fest are underway.

The Getaway Home Edition sold out in four days and a wait list was started

If the Board loosens COVID guidelines, we’ll raise attendance from 50 to 60.

EVENT HOSTING - Jay Wilensky

Evenings of Music are starting again.

If anyone would like to host, email Jay.Wilensky@FolkProject.org

The first open date for hosting is July.

The Monday Zoom song circle will celebrate its second year of uninterrupted meetings on April 4 (Big thanks to John Hone for ably pinch-hitting). Attendance averages between 25 and 30 participants ans supporters, from across the country and Canada. We still have a featured guest most weeks: In March we hosted Cliff Eberhardt, rising star Lisa Jeanette, Pat Wictor and Peppino D'Agostino, and a guest is lined up for each session in April and two in May. I'm happy to say that we're doing some cross-pollenating, with Joe Jencks and Claudia Schmidt set to feature on the week of their Project performances.

I'm also happy to report that Evenings of Music will begin again on May 14, with Diane Polledri generously serving as host. I'm looking to fill other dates (other than August and September) - please volunteer and beat the bushes for more.

Additionally, and with the invaluable help of Paul Fisher, EH has planned an afternoon of music in Lewis Morris Park for Saturday, April 9.

Board members,

March Highlights (thankfully not March Madness!):

With the closure of Troubadour in mid-December, the Streaming Committee pivoted to handle the booking of performers for Troubadour for January through March.

Streaming Tuesdays concerts continue weekly at 7pm ET. These concerts are free with all donations going directly to the performer.

With the resumption of in-person Troubadour concerts in April, the concerts will also continue to be streamed weekly on Fridays at 7:30pm ET. There is a $4.99 ticket price for online Troubadour concerts (which goes to Troubadour). All donations go directly to the featured performer(s).

As of March 8, audience members can also send Facebook Stars during all Folk Project Facebook streaming shows. Facebook Stars are worth one cent each. So far we have accrued $42.30. Proceeds from Facebook Stars will be used for Streaming expenses (equipment, software, etc.)

Gary

Streaming Chair

Swingin' Tern report -- March 2022

As you know, Swingin' Tern has not yet reopened, and we have been

searching for a new venue. Thanks to Doug Heacock, we have a promising

possibility in Chatham.

Yesterday we achieved a reasonable overall oral agreement with the

prospective venue, and we expect to have a formal written agreement with

all the necessary details finished soon -- this week or next. If all goes

well, we will then move to our new space and plan for our next dance,

which could be in May. We will not advertise this to our broad volunteer

list and dancers until everything is final.

We will keep the board informed.

Leigh Walker

Swingin' Tern

Hello Everyone,

Not much to report on financial transactions. We have given a few Paxton refunds. Looking forward to things opening up more.

The Vanguard transfer of management is going slowly. Unfortunately they instituted new forms while we were submitting our paperwork. No problem with the information. We just have to resubmit all the forms again. Oh joy.

I have started to get ready for filling out our federal 990ez forms.

Peggy Karr

Treasurer

Most of this past month, I’ve been basically getting ready for the April reopening. After consultation with Jean, we decided to have food service out on the terrace outside the Terrace Room whenever weather permitted. I did some consultation with Sam Edelston about publicizing the reopening, which resulted in the recent article in Morristown Green (about which I’m sure Sam will have more details, I’m sure) and other outlets. Other’n that, the only thing that’s occupied me was filling in some of the holes in our schedule. We’re now booked solid through August 5^th, and with further booking out to October 21^st.

New Bookings since last month:

1. May 6: Mark Bickford: Multi-genre and multi instrumentalist, opening for Claudia Schmidt

2. June 3: Reeds, Rhythm, & All That Brass: 17-piece big band, fronted by vocalist Jay Wilensky, with Grover Kemble opening

3. June 17: FP member (and Carla Ulbrich’s husband) Joe Giacoio, innovative guitarist opening for Sam Edelston

4. August 5: Grover Kemble Jazz guitarist and songwriter with songwriter Arielle Silver opening

5. October 21: Gadan A really really hot Celtic band from Italy. (Check out their video). Interestingly, only 2 weeks after Italian flatpicking wizard Beppe Gambetta.

Respectfully submitted:

Mike Agranoff

Program Chair

The Troubadour Acoustic Concert Series

Morristown, NJ. USA

www.Troubadour.FolkProject.org