This year we are holding an hour with Life and Times in Whittlesey Library with Life and Times on Saturday from 2:00pm to 3:00pm, this will be a free event.
Life and Times are:
Graeme Meek and Barry Goodman
Life & Times celebrated their Silver Jubilee in 2008.
Many of Life & Times’ songs and tunes chronicle the history, legends, customs and folklore of the area in which Graeme & Barry live, and particularly the county of Bedfordshire. More details on the stories behind Life & Times’ songs can be found at Graeme Meek’s Bedfordshire Songs website.
Radio and Life & Times
Life & Times’ music has been featured on national radio and local radio stations around Britain and beyond. Their radio documentary of Shropshire Iron was broadcast – appropriately – in Shropshire as well as in many other regions and one of their songs Brickmaking from their LP Strawplait & Bonelace (Fellside Recordings) was used by BBC Schools programme Singing Together in the 1990s and by BBC Radio 4’s You & Yours in 2008. Live radio performances have included several with Simon Groom of BBC Radio Bedfordshire (now 3 Counties Radio) and with Great Western Radio. Their traditional idiom music clearly has wide appeal beyond the immediate folk world with plays on Radio 2’s Album Time and Round Midnight (remember those?) as well as on a programme hosted by Adrian Love whom Life & Times met whilst performing as entertainers in the Victorian streets of The Ironbridge Gorge Museum in the 1980s. In April 2006, Graeme & Barry became contacts for BBC Radio 2’s Sold on Song songwriting scheme.
Who Writes The Music?
Although Graeme has been the main songwriter for the duo, Barry has also contributed songs and tunes. Graeme has occasionally taken on commissions to write songs. In 1986 he wrote a few songs to assist in a bid to open a museum in a Bedfordshire town. One of those songs A Working Boatie Man appears on their CD Charivari (recorded in April 2001). In 2003 he wrote a song for the opening of a restored bridge in a Bedfordshire village and The Bridge Down The Meadow together with Barry’s tune Over The Bridge have proved to be very popular well beyond the village for which they were written. Graeme celebrated his 25th year of writing Bedfordshire songs in 2006.
Shows for Schools
In 2006 Life & Times branched out in a new direction, taking our traditional idiom music into schools to teach youngsters about our history, traditions and heritage. We currently have several shows:
 | Hats Off To History, More Hats Off To History and Yet More Hats Off To History are available tri-annually, each throughout the school year |
| Winter Days, Year’s End and Frost & Rhyme are also available tri-annually but from Nov 1st to the end of December. |
| The Cold Days of Winter is available annually between Jan 1st and the end of February. |
| History Under Your Hat is an adaptation of ‘Hats Off…’ intended entirely for KS1 and is available throughout the school year. |
For full information about this duo see http://www.lifeandtimes.info/
To hear some of Life & Times’ music go to these websites:
| www.myspace.com/broadsidesrevisited |
| www.virb.com/lifeandtimes |
