In Time & Tide: The Songs Of Big Big Train, through exclusive interviews with past and present band members, rare archival material and illuminating musical analysis, Andrew Wild and R. Douglas Helvering uncover the origins and meaning behind each of BBT’s songs - from tales of steam locomotives, lost rivers and ancient landscapes to reflections on love, identity, mortality and belonging.

 

Time & Tide opens the door to the band’s creative process: songwriting, arrangements, production techniques and the collaborative spirit that shaped albums including The Underfall Yard, English Electric, Folklore and Woodcut. Alongside the music lies the moving story of the band’s evolution through triumph, loss and reinvention.

 

At almost 550 pages, and illustrated with around 200 images, including several commissioned artworks and many photographs which have been previously unpublished, Time & Tide has been written for devoted fans, musicians and newcomers alike. 

 

 

Gregory Spawton, co-founder of Big Big Train and co-owner of Kingmaker Publishing, comments:

 

“Andrew Wild and Doug Helvering have done an extraordinary job exploring every corner of the Big Big Train musical catalogue. Andrew undertook an enormous amount of research to write about well over 200 Big Big Train songs, while Doug’s musicological analyses of more than 40 of our songs are extremely insightful, including to the writers of those songs! We’re very grateful to Andrew and Doug for writing this book with such care and attention to detail. I’m also delighted that my BBT co-founder Andy Poole co-edited the book with Professor Geoff Parks.” 

 

---------

 

Andrew Wild is the author of over 25 books, the majority of which focus on rock and pop music. He has previously written the official biographies of progressive rock artists Twelfth Night, Galahad and Geoff Mann. Following two books about the 1980s progressive rock music revival (A Mirror Of Dreams and A Playground Of Broken Hearts), Time & Tide is Andrew’s third book published by Kingmaker. Alongside his writing, Andrew maintains the official archive of Big Big Train. 

 

Dr R. Douglas Helvering is an active composer, arranger, conductor and educator. In 2021, he created The Daily Doug, which has grown into a prominent web series that celebrates the art of music and its creators, leading discussions of rock, prog and jazz with the same vigour and respect as the classical masters of old. Dr Helvering has served as Adjunct Associate Professor at the prestigious Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.