After three more mixing sessions together, working our way carefully through each track on the new EP, Rob and I have finally sent the four songs off for mastering. Our mastering engineer is Ben Beheshty. Ben has mastered a number of our releases in recent years and has always done a cracking job. We are currently looking at a probable release for The Roses and the Busy Bee in late October 2025.

In other news, we can also report progress on the podcast idea mentioned in our last blogpost. Rob and I have now identified half a dozen titles that we'd like to cover in our first series of podcasts.  These include five songs, covering the fullest range of the music and topics we are known for, plus a separate edition covering our approach to tune arrangements. As such, we are now scoping out the headings that we'd like to cover for each episode, and our hope is to trial a first recording before summer distractions like holidays begin to intrude.

Although Rob and I have resigned from our longstanding musical commitments at the Annual Commemoration of the bravery of the International Brigaders, held each year in Jubilee Gardens in London, the event remains very close to our hearts.

This year, the ceremony also coincided with our webmaster, Derek Wheeler, being in London. This afforded us the opportunity to talk with him about the progress we were making on the new EP and to hear about his thoughts on the development of a new website for Na Mara.

Over late morning coffee, our discussions led us onto the exciting idea of Na Mara potentially producing a series of podcasts about the origins and arrangements of its music and its near twenty years of gigging. This idea appealed greatly to us and we have agreed with Derek to begin working up ideas for potential future podcasts. Watch this space!

Having successfully managed to avoid the sounds of those pesky mowers of spring lawns and surgeons of trees, Rob and I have now successfully lain down the instrumental and vocal harmony tracks to accompany the guitar and vocals already captured for Na-Mara's new EP. 

In readiness for the future release, I have also been drafting up some artwork for the cover design and updating the relevant Electronic Press Kit for issue to reviewers and radio presenters.

The title of the new EP has been chosen and will be The Roses and the Busy Bee. This is a line taken from our translation of The Bonny Gardener Boy, our translated version of Malicorne's wonderful Le Garçon Jardinier. (I should say immediately that there is no line in the original French version of the song that could directly be translated as ‘the roses and the busy bee’. However, it absolutely fits the sentiment of the song and, I believe, is preferable to the direct translation in terms of musical phrasing. As such, I humbly confess it is one of those many liberties I have taken when translating songs.)

Now Rob and I can move on to complete the overall blending of the various tracks for eventual submission to the mastering engineer. Given other demands on our time, this is likely to take us through to at least early July.

Following the buzz of Na-Mara's final concert on 4th December 2024, Rob and I have begun to focus on our post-performance future, in particular working on new recordings of different types.  With that in mind, we are already busy recording tracks for a new EP to be released later in 2025.

For some years now we’ve preferred to record our music in a home studio. We have decent recording kit, a reasonable level of experience in recording and mixing, and plenty of time available to lavish on getting the kind of sound we desire. That said, once we get the mixes to a point where we are satisfied, we send them off for professional mastering before release onto streaming platforms. We have given up producing physical CDs.

Our usual approach to recording songs is for me to lay down and edit to finished quality, my guitar and vocal tracks. Rob can then come into the studio and lay down his accompaniments. Naturally, this requires us to agree the structure of the track in advance. 

With this in mind, I have now recorded my guitar and vocal tracks for the four songs for our planned new EP. The songs were chosen late in 2024 and comprise three traditional songs of which two have been translated from the French, plus one self-penned song. Three of the tracks being recorded featured in the setlist for our final live concert, but one will be completely new to anyone who follows our music. The songs for the new EP are as follows:

The Bonnie Gardener Boy, our translation of a traditional French song about a young girl tricked by a handsome young gardener. Metaphors abound and, I confess, many liberties have been taken in the translation;

Father Oh Father, one of our own compositions and addresses the practise of church authorities who shuffle abusive priests across countries and continents to protect the reputation of their institutions. While the song’s terminology implies criticism of one particular strand of church practise, it applies every bit as much to other strands and, indeed, to many secular organisations who hide and protect abusers rather than seek justice for victims;

The Poisoned Brew, our translation of an ancient and shocking tale. Here, a wife is browbeaten by a powerful figure into both a relationship and the attempted murder of her husband (mariticide). The husband is only saved by the miraculous intervention of an infant son. Tragedy of Shakespearean proportions then ensues.

and

P Stands for Paddy, a traditional ‘listening song’ where the narrator eavesdrops on a domestic drama. Our version is Irish in origin and taken from the music of Scottish folk supergroup, Five Hand Reel.

With my tracks for the new EP now completed and edited, Rob and I have begun putting dates in the diary for him to come into the studio and weave his magic. This should happen over the coming few weeks.

As you can imagine, this keystone event in our musical journey was a long time in the planning, the idea being to host an event which combined both a gig and a celebration of 18 years of music making. With reagard to the latter aspect, Rob and I had opened up our equivalent of Tutankhamun’s tomb (namely, our “memorabilia box”) where souvenirs from concerts and festivals over many years in the UK and elsewhere had casually been stuffed, selecting a wide range of items to display on the night. 

Added to this we created a map, studded with twinkling red diamante dots to show all the venues that we had played, in the UK and overseas, over our 18 years together. As you might expect, this required us to compile a list of all our gigs, assembling information from past blog posts, band accounts, PRS claims and other sources. This also revealed our top ten most visited venues over those eighteen years, with Cambridge Folk Club coming top of the list, with us making a total of 17 visits over the years. The same exercise also revealed that, just with Na-Mara commitments alone, setting aside those with the ceilidh band we’ve spent time with, Rob and I had spent almost a year's worth of evenings away from home.

For another display, Rob brought along his collection of folk instruments, some of which (the bandurria and the banjolele) he has used for gigs in the past and others for audience interest only.

It was our clear wish to hold our last live performance in our ‘hometown’ base of St Albans, and organiser of St Albans Folk Music, Alison Macfarlane, was happy to accommodate us in her autumn programme. It was our desire to finish live performance in the calendar year 2024 and, Alison provided an ideal slot for us; Sunday, December 1st was suitably late in the year, but not so late as to get tangled up in the usual raft of Christmas themed concerts.

The plan was for doors at the venue to open at 7:00pm and the music to begin at 7:30pm. We decided against using any support acts for the evening but, instead, to play two 45 minutes sets with a brief break in between.  This would then allow sufficient time after the concert to catch up and mingle with our audience members and for them to catch up with each other.

 With all the planned displays and instruments, it took two cars to transport all our things down to the venue. With information sent previously from the venue operator, we knew the entrance lock code and gained entry into the hall shortly after 4.00pm as hoped to begin setting up. 

Our first task was to set up a stage area and seating for 100+ people. With a slight worry I had about paying acoustically, we first tested out whether having us play against a side of the rectangular hall rather than against an end wall would help bring the audience in aggregate closer to us. However, the only place to position a stage area under this arrangement was in front of a high window missing a curtain. Not wishing the front row to spend the entire evening looking past us at a reflection of itself, we reverted to a more conventional end wall stage position and rearranged the chairs accordingly.

The lighting in the Hall is currently a little austere. Knowing this, we had raided our respective home lounges for decent standard lamps.  We set these up around the stage area to give it a softer, more cabaret-style, feel. Once done, we switched off the Hall lights and tested the look and feel of the stage area. It was excellent and a great improvement on having the overhead hall light on. We also tested this end-wall “portrait” set up (as opposed to a side-wall “landscape” set up) to check if our avowed intention to play acoustically and without a PA system would work aurally. Mercifully, the acoustics in the Hall were fine and this test overcame any lasting concerns I, in particular, had.

With the chairs now set up, we could position a few tables in the remaining spaces at the back of the seated area to display our memorabilia, map and instruments. Our expectation was that people could congregate at the back of the room on arrival, in the break and at the end of the show, between the entrance and the bar area (yes there was one - proceeds to the church heating fund!) and peruse the various exhibits in comfort.

Around 4:30pm, our web and media manager, Derek Wheeler, arrived having travelled up from Kent by train and hauling his film recording equipment over to the venue from St Albans City station. We don't get to see Derek very often as he is usually living overseas. So, we were delighted that he could make it to our last live gig and bring the wherewithal with him to film it. So, after catching up briefly, Derek quietly and professionally started setting up his cameras and microphones to record the evening’s vents.

It was fully dark outside now. With the Advent carol service in the neighbouring church concluded, the church bar staff were liberated from their ‘mulled wine and mince pies duties’ and free to set up the bar for our folk evening in the hall.

Na-Mara were performing with its honorary third member tonight, Rob’s son Dan Garcia, and between setting up the room and audience members arriving, we had chance to rehearse a few tunes and songs with Dan, who was on bodhran for the evening. Among his many other talents, Dan is an experienced professional percussionist and the rehearsals went commensurately smoothly, as you would imagine.

So, we were ready, the room was set up and Derek’s mics and camera were ready to roll and, around 6:30pm, audience members began to arrive. Our friends from the International Brigades Memorial Trust were first into the Hall, having travelled up from London. As they reviewed our displays, we hope they could see just how important our IBMT work had been to our ‘journey’, with IBMT events forming a notable proportion of our “namarabilia” from the previous eighteen years.

At 7.00pm, when the doors officially opened, numbers really began to pick up and friends, family and fans (yes, fans) began to pour in. Indeed, they came from all corners of the kingdom and beyond to join us for our final live concert! 

In addition to our pals from the IBMT, we had friends from university days who’d travelled from Edinburgh, Carlisle and Redditch.  We had some who had timed their trip to the UK from Rhode Island, USA, just to be at our final concert. We had close personal friends who’d travelled from Bristol, Dorset and Staffordshire. We had former work colleagues and friends from holidays past. We had local folk organisers from the Redbourn, Watford and Chesham folk clubs. We had Les Ray who runs the folk programme on Cambridge 105 Radio. We had friend and regular review of our gigs and CDs, David Pratt, and his wife, Sara, who’d travelled up from Kent, and we also had leading light from the current folk scene, Daria Kulesh who'd taken time out of her busy schedule to come and see us perform one last time. Fellow local singer-songwriter, Dave Artus was kind enough to come along and we had friends from the De Capo music foundation and fellow performers from the various music ensembles Rob plays with.

We also had dedicated followers of our music coming along for one last performance. In addition to a sizeable number of supporters from the local area and folk clubs, we had Duane and Jennifer who had travelled nearly 100 miles from Portsmouth and were stopping over in a hotel in St Albans that night all to catch us one last time. We also had Nicky and her friend who’d travelled over from Cambridge to do likewise. This is a humbling level of dedication to our music. 

Then it was 7.30pm and time for the music to begin. By now, the Hall was completely full.  Indeed, as more ‘walk ins’ arrived, chairs were having to be ferried into the Hall from the neighbouring church.

St. Albans Folk Music organiser, Alison Macfarlane, give a brief introduction to the evening  and, with that, we were off! The first set flew by with audience members seemingly very content to join in the choruses.  Indeed, one or two audience members probably knew the words to the songs better than we did!.

My greatest fear, namely, of my tenor guitar not being able to project and fill a packed Hall when lightly picked on Nancy from London, mercifully proved unfounded.  Once that was proven, I knew all would be fine sound wise for the evening. 

The break between the two sets was spent chatting to many of those audience members that we hadn't had chance to speak with before the start of the show. This made for a very busy interval indeed.

Our abovementioned friend and very active folk music reviewer, David Pratt, then very kindly introduced our second set.  In doing so, over the course of four to five minutes, he provided the audience with an excellent potted history of Na-Mara, the various strands of our music, and the contribution he felt we’d made as folk musicians.

The second set also went very well and, just before our final song, we halted to say our (compendious) thanks and these were, indeed, manifold covering both the evening itself and its organisation, and all those who had supported Na-Mara over so many years. If we forgot anyone, I hope they will forgive us our oversight. 

Given the interlude in the performance, it was also time for the traditional raffle to be drawn. Touchingly, it was Nicky from Cambridge’s friend who won the raffle.  The poor soul was caught in a dilemma with respect to taking a Na-Mara CD or a bottle of wine, confessing that, since he already had all of Na-Mara’s CDs, he would reluctantly have to pick the bottle of wine. At which point, Nicky intervened to remind him that he didn’t drink wine, persuading him to take the Na-Mara CD so they could give it to a friend.  Very touching. 

We then resumed the second set, finishing with our song Sisters and Brothers.  The song has a rousing finale and, somewhat emotionally for Rob and me, it triggered…a standing ovation.  What an honour!

Could we be persuaded to play an encore? Of course, we could, and we played our traditional encore piece, the gorgeous Irish song we have played over the 18 years of performing together, The Maid of Culmore, which nicely and peacefully drew the performance part of the evening to a close.

The idea had all along been to finish the evening quite early to allow those attending to have another drink and mingle and, with the chairs in the Hall swiftly returned to the church or their stacks  in the Hall, many people did exactly that.  I’m told the bar sold out of draught beer and had to revert to bottles of lager.  So, we sincerely hope the church heating fund has seen a decent boost to its coffers. 

However, inevitably, the audience slowly drifted away until, around 10.30pm, it was time for us to do the final clearing up.  With remaining family and friends, this was done swiftly and efficiently, with the original two cars being filled up with instruments and memorabilia, and other cars taking remaining family and friends home. 

What a night it had been! Many thanks to Dan Garcia for joining us on stage and to our friend, Dave Berry, for being a stalwart (as always) both on the door and with the ‘merch’ table.  Thank you to all those who travelled, often very long distances, to see us at our last live performance.  Your dedication was greatly appreciated.  Thank you also to David Pratt for travelling up from Kent to support us with his presentation at the start of the second half.  He did a great job on our behalf and we couldn’t be more grateful for his continuing interest in and support for our music. 

Finally, we must send our thanks to Alison Macfarlane who has been the very soul of folk music in St Albans for decades.  I told her at the end of the evening that she was truly Na-Mara’s ‘Alpha and Omega’.  She was there when we stood up nervously for our first public performance in The Rose and Crown pub in St Albans, and she was there for our final public performance.  Thank you Alison for all your support over the nearly 18 years Rob and I have been playing together.

Rob and I will now focus on writing, recording and releasing new music but without the long, late and exhausting car journeys of recent years.