My downstairs neighbor (in London) is a musical comedy actor and he posed me the following question today: could I find him a "story song" that he could perform at auditions? The idea is both to show off the fact that he can sing and give him a chance to do something dramatic. It occurred to him that folk would be a good genre to look in (duh). I told him he wants a nice traditional ballad full of gore and guts and ghosts.

He himself is Welsh, so he'd ideally like to find something he could do in a Welsh accent (I guess ethnic sells). And -- this is the real problem -- because auditions tend to be quite short, ideally he'd like a ballad that could be trimmed to two minutes or less.

Anyone got any ideas that don't include speed-singing?

wg