They have more than 3,000 appearances. Their songs – Unknown Streets, Long Way Home and Sunflowers have been included in several music school books in Bulgaria. They have dozens of hits, awards and nominations, but they readily admit that what they treasure most is their audience and their meetings with them. They are Mary Boys Band and they are celebrating 30 years on stage and, of course, they are doing it with a concert – at 8 PM on 7 February in the ballroom of the Military Club in Sofia.

For Mary Boys Band it all began in 1994 in Sofia, when they got together while still at university, though they consider a different date to be their birthday – 28 January, 1995, the day of their first live appearance in the then famous Country Club in Sofia. From then on it was smooth sailing - their original lyrical songs and mellow verses, always tinged with a taste of summer and sea, earned them a solid place in Bulgarian pop music.

• Mary Boys Band - "Wake Me Up When May Comes"

Mary Boys Band’s story is closely connected with the Bulgarian National Radio – they made one of their first recordings at the BNR’s Studio No. 1 in 1995, even though in the 1990s the band mostly played in clubs, only beginning their work as recording studio musicians in earnest at the turn of the new millennium. That was the time they released their albums: Unknown Streets, Only for You, The Long Way Home, Happy Days, as well as several compilations and live albums.

Here is what the band’s frontlady and songwriter Maria Mutafchieva has to say about these past 3 decades:

“30 years is a great age, and I have the feeling there is something good around the corner. It doesn’t feel like some kind of retrospection at all, I have my eyes on the future. We are actually working on a new song with the boys. And I hope that during the next 30 years – and I am hoping there will be more – we shall make more new music. Because that is how you can tell what a musician is like – by the new music they release, the new thoughts they share with the people they love. And I think we still have things we want to tell people.”

Asked how she imagines the new streets lying ahead – for her and for Mary Boys Band – in the next 30 years, Maria Mutafchieva says:

“I want the unknown streets to be colourful, the days to be happy, the way forward to be long. And not just the way home – the road ahead, the road that really does take us where we want to go. Actually, we are just people following their path and doing things the way they want to do them – the things they are capable of at that very moment. There, I am going to cry now… But I hope the road ahead will be a happy one, I really do.”

• Maria Mutafchieva presents her first solo album “Keep dreaming”

The band promises the concert “Happy birthday Mary Boys Band” to be a fabulous party – with lots of dancing and the songs of the past 30 years the audiences have come to love.

More:

• Mary Boys Band celebrates its 29th anniversary with a concert on January 27
• Maria Mutafchieva-Mary: The most precious gift are the happy days with our nearest and dearest

Translated and posted by Milena Daynova
Photos courtesy of the band, Facebook/ Maria Mutafchieva