[FM] Re: Barbara Phaneuf and the Ripton Community Coffee House

[Richard Ruane or Andrea Chesman]

Hello everyone,

I just want to thank Rachel Bissex for her glowing words about our coffeehouse
here in Ripton, Vermont, and second her sentiments about Barbara Phaneuf.
Barbara did a great show, and had a wonderful rapport with the audience.  At the
end of the night I had a continuous string of people coming up to me to tell me
how much they had enjoyed her.

In response to Jerry Bresee's first question, Barbara handles her own bookings
and can be reached via email at bphaneuf@earthlink.net.  In response to the
second question, I don't know if people would be more or less likely to spend
$8-12 if the concert started with an open mike.  One oddity of the Ripton
Community Coffee House is that we have a very low admission price  ($4 / $1.50
for kids and seniors).  I am not advocating this as a practice for other venues,
we arrived at our low price based on considerations different from most
presenters.

We started our once-a-month concert series five years ago as a way to provide an
opportunity for members of our small community to get together.  We based our
admission price on what we felt all the members of our community could afford
(it's an economically mixed community).  Starting out the evening with the open
mike is another aspect of involving more members of our community, and with the
low admission price it's not unusual for a number of people to come just to hear
friends play the open mike.  I think they would be unlikely to do that at $8-12.

Another thing we do as a way to reach out to our community is we use our
refreshment sales as fund raisers for local area non-profits.  The non-profits
do their own baking, which helps keep our volunteers from getting burned out and
also tends to bring in the friends and families of the non-profit organizations
(as well as netting a quick and easy $150 or so for the non-profits).  As part
of our night we have a long intermission between the open mike (25-30 minutes)
for socializing so that people get to visit.

We are now getting an audience of 120-160 for each concert, whether it's for a
known or an unknown act.  The audience doesn't fit the usual folk audience
demographic profile, but is enthusiastic and respectful to the performers.

I don't want to give the false impression, however, that we have a magic formula
that has created a strong folk audience out of nothing. We have been greatly
helped by having the Middlebury Festival on the Green just down the mountain
from us.  This yearly festival of evening concerts (as well as afternoon
children's shows) has been going on for over twenty years and has exposed the
people of our area to many excellent acoustic artists.  This has a gone a long
way to building an audience for this type of music.  In addition, Middlebury
also has the After Dark Music Series, under the leadership of Carol and Harvey
Green, which presents excellent folk acts and continues to nurture the folk
audience in our area.

Anyway, good luck to Jerry and thanks again to Rachel.

Richard Ruane
Executive Director
Ripton Community Coffee House