There was a thread running through all these local artists and writers. When we came on to the folk scene there was Brian Dewhurst, Preston as he became, was making records with various groups he sang with. He recorded with The Wayfarers for Alan Green’s Folk Heritage label. Alan had until then always recorded traditional material but when he said he was looking for newer stuff Brian recommended The Houghton Weavers. Alan had a studio in Wales and recorded people like Alan Bell and some country music, and he had hardly any money left when he recorded us. Thankfully he always said doing so was the best financial move he ever made. When we came to do our tv series it was from that album that the producer heard The Minstrel and Windmill and realised we sang Lancashire songs and that was the direction the show should take. Alan was delighted people were recording his songs and in fact we learned The Minstrel from The Taverners. The producer commissioned Alan to write a song for each of our seven half hour programmes, so Alan loved that, even though he usually liked to "sing a song out of his system for six months or so" before handing it to another artist. The show gave publicity to Alan, and Howard Broadbent and The Taverners and The Houghton Weavers, but more importantly it gave publicity to Lancashire folk songs. And, hopefully, from that beginning, songs like Windmill and The Wyre Waterside found a home and will still be sung in hundred years time.

McKee points out that such songs travel not only a long way through time, but also cover vast geographical distances too. She recalls travelling in America with her husband and a night spent at a lodge on Skyline Drive in Virginia. The "cabaret" was a group singing English folk songs, and McKee recalls how proud she was to sing along with songs like Dirty Old Town out in rural America.

That it is North West folk music doesn’t mean it is insular. The stories about the tin baths and childhood days are universal. Whether I sing the songs on cruise liners or in Aberdeen or in Bristol the songs always communicate. We have spoken of the quality of songs like The Blackpool Belle and I have to say that the track was recorded on one of the three EMI albums recorded by The Houghton Weavers. EMI have world-wide distribution, and we had written feedback on The Blackpool Belle from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, all around the world. There was one group of ex-Pats who would book their local village hall each time a new Houghton Weavers album was released in their country, and they would all congregate in that hall to listen to the album! Imagine 300 people in a foreign country, all sitting down to listen to a recording of us singing about Blackpool or Staleybridge.

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