As many of you know, we hold a drawing at every show from our Paypal ticket purchasers for free passes to our upcoming shows. We're pleased to announce that we're expanding this drawing to include ALL advance ticket purchasers, including those who send in payments via mail, and those who buy tickets at our product table for upcoming shows. Also, for the first name we draw each night, we'll be giving away two passes, instead of the usual one. There's also a new way on the website to claim your pass, via the email we send you after the show, and we actually will now keep track of who has claimed a pass and who has not.

Finally, we are now able to accept credit cards for advance ticket purchases and souvenirs at our product table during our shows. This will give you another opportunity to purchase advance tickets with the convenience of a credit card. Now that we no longer tack on additional handling charges for credit card sales, there are fewer reasons NOT to buy tickets in advance.

Well, another year has gone by, and there have been so many highlights throughout the year that it’s challenging to summarize. Despite the difficult times, or perhaps because of it, many of you are still coming out on Friday nights to support live music, and for that we are grateful, as are the performers we engage and charities that we support. Our average attendance is up 9% over last year, and revenues have gone up as well, which means that we’ll again have a nice bucket of money to disperse to our various charities after the first of the year (we’ll give you those details in the next quarterly schedule). Artistically, we are proud as always to have brought you full range, from the big names to the brand-new (31 of our 86 artists were making their Calvin’s debuts). It’s been a good year, thanks to your support.

As 2012 rolls around, we’re already into our 30th year of business, and you can look forward to another great year of artists and a few surprises along the way. We’re already planning our big 30th anniversary celebration for the month of November, and we can’t wait to tell you about that.

Meanwhile, we’ve got a full slate of 13 shows planned for this first quarter, including the Calvin’s debuts of such great artists as Mary Gauthier, Willy Porter, Joe Crookston, Honey Dewdrops, and Ruby Jane, as well as return visits from Red Molly, BettySoo, Emily Elbert, 3 Penny Acre, and Stacy Earle & Mark Stuart – just to name a few. We hope you’ll join us!