-Product Description Double BBC Folk Award nominees and heavy touring folk-duo MEGSON present THE LONGSHOT, produced by Debbie Hanna and much sought after producer Stu Hanna. Since releasing the critically acclaimed 'TAKE YOURSELF A WIFE' in 2008 (?This album places them in the major league? **** THE GUARDIAN), Megson have been touring hard and rightly received their second BBC Folk Award nomination as well as the award for Best Duo in the Spiral Earth Awards 2010. Alongside this they have picked up a string of enthusiastic live reviews including a recent 4* review in the Financial Times. If that was not enough, in 2009 Stu Hanna from the duo took time out to produce ?The Awkward Recruit? album for Mawkin Causley ?(***** UNCUT) and the award winning ?Arrogance Ignorance & Greed? album for Show Of Hands. ?The Longshot? is themed around work and many of the selected songs originate from the couple?s native North-East of England. They bring to each of them a unique singing and instrumental approach that is fresh and vibrant. Their music chronicles an industrial world much of which may be a fading memory in the UK but is a very present reality in China and India. Tracks; 1. Two Match Lads / 2. The Cabman/ 3. Working Life Out / 4. The Longshot / 5. The Old Miner / 6. The Handloom Weaver & The Factory Maid / 7. Time To Get Up / 8. The Last Man In The Factory/ 9. Working Town/ 10. William Brown / 11. California Also available TAKE YOURSELF A WIFE(EDJ015) SMOKE OF HOME(EDJ013) MEGSON EP(EDJ012) ON THE SIDE(EDJ011) Tour dates 27 Apr - Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath, Birmingham 28 Apr - The Old Ship Inn, Loudham, Notts. 29 Apr - The Harpur Suite, Bedford. 30 Apr - The Grub Cafe, East Grinstead 01 May - Washington Arts Centre, Co Durham 02 May - Bellingham Acoustic Festival, Northumberland 04 May - Dartford Folk Club 06 May - Green Note Cafe, Camden 14 May - CB2 Cafe, Cambridge 15 May - Mellor Brook Folk, Blackburn 12 Jun - Gate To Southwell Festival 20 Jun - The Big Session, Leicester 27 Jun - Leigh on Sea Festival 17 Jul - Brampton Live, Cumbria 25 Jul - Folk by The Oak, Hatfield 29 Aug - Minstrel Court Acoustic Festival, Cambs. 25 Sep - The Junction, Cambridge 03 Oct - Derby Folk Festival 05 Oct - Processed Pea, Derbyshire 06 Oct - Nailsea Folk Club 09 Oct - Ebbesbourne Wake Folk 12 Oct - The Stables, Milton Keynes 13 Oct - Greenwich Folk Mob, London 14 Oct - Trades Club, Hebden Bridge 15 Oct - Henshaw Arts & Crafts Centre, N Yorkshire 30 Oct - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury 31 Oct - Hitchin Folk Club, Herts. Review Six years on since Debbie and Stu Hanna, a married couple who perform as Megson, arrived on the folk revival scene, they continue to produce some of the genre's most captivating music. Theirs is a kind of well-steeped traditional folk, rich with accordion and shruti box, octave mandola, mandolin, guitar and piano, and the kind of clear, sharp English voices that somehow hit you amidships. But they bring with them, too, the thrill of the new; a vitality, a freshness and a rhythm that sometimes brings their music as near to pop as folk. Now four albums and one EP in, their last album, Take Yourself a Wife, breathed new life into old ballads about working-class life. This time around, they have themed The Longshot's 11 songs around the specific subject of work, and as with its predecessor, many of the tracks here are traditional, hailing from the Hannas' native North East: a dialect poem by Elizabeth Tweddell; a comic song about a Hackney carriage, written in the 19th century by George Ridley; songs about miners and match-sellers; a traditional ditty about the love affair between a Handloom Weaver and a Factory Maid. But it is the tracks written by the Hannas themselves that are the most affecting: Working Town documents the changes the pair have witnessed in Britain's industrial towns, particularly around Teesside, while the title-track is a tribute to the importance of football in industrial communities–it proves to be one o