Hi PB

I am in touch with Phil on a regular basis regarding "The Drift" and he will certainly be one of the people we will be contacting as well as Ali O'Brien of Sounds of Folk on BBC GMR, Stan Ambrose of Folkscene on BBC Radio Merseyside and Genevieve Tudor of Sunday Folk on BBC Radio Shropshire. We will also be sending sample copies to other stations further afield - Radio Derby and Radio Cumbria in this country and also Malcolm Rigby and Ron Olesko in the states for their programmes.
Hopefully we'll have something this side of Christmas but as Chris is unavailable for a week or so it's going to get into November before the "tape" gets rolling.

One thing we've found when practicing these songs is how wordy many of them are when being sung. Whilst "Jone o' Grinfilt" and "The Calico Printer's Clerk" have been regularly performed over the years, I don't recall hearing many of the other songs. Harry Boardman did start doing The Telegraph Girls but he had the words in front of him when he sang it at his club in the Unicorn. "Victoria Bridge on a Saturday Night" is also one that needs plenty of lung capacity and concentration.

From what we've done so far, quite a few of the songs will be accompanied on the piano as we feel that the songs could well have been performed in a music hall environment which lends itself to piano. We're also arranging them for other instruments or unaccompanied singing where we feel this would be best.

Following our successful festival concerts/workshops over the summer with the Harry Boardman material, we hope to be doing something similar with the Manchester Ballads next year.

Cheers
Mark