Marti Pellow - The Lost Chapter

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The Lost Chapter - By Marti Pellow

Question: Why did a generation of people choose my songs as the backdrop to their life? 

The answer is: I don’t know. But I’d like to find out. 

I’ve always been fascinated by family. I see the way a lovely relationship blossoms over the years and that thrills me. I wonder why two people grow together and their bonds become stronger. And when I look at my career as a singer/songwriter, I see the same thing. The relationship between me and you is just as special, it’s just as beautiful. Just as I see family staying together over the decades, I see us staying together for 30 or 40 years. So I ask myself this: what compels people to stay with an artist over such a long period of time? What is it about my work that keeps tapping people on their shoulders? 

Music is important. It’s the thing that lives in the space as life is unfolding. And some of the music from the early part of my career, in Wet Wet Wet, has lived on for two generations. People love those songs and that’s why we still play them. My next tour will be the songs from Popped In, Souled Out and the tour will be a beast – it will be 75 people on stage and five trucks, and enough caterers to feed a small army. The Lost Chapter, in comparison, is a whisper. It’ll give people the chance to see the other side of me, as a songwriter, and to find out a different part of my make-up. 

When we toured Pellow Talk, people went away knowing a lot more about me. And now that we’re touring The Lost Chapter, people will walk away knowing more about my music – my tastes, my loves, and who I am as a singer/songwriter. 

Here’s the thing: I think the best experiences come when we are willing to give a little piece of ourselves. They happen by chance when we’re willing to invest. So I’m asking you to invest a couple of hours of your time in this show, to go somewhere you might not be expecting, and to enjoy that time with me. 

The one thing you can always rely on with me is a great sense of melody and an entertaining evening. So The Lost Chapter won’t be about shoegazing or looking at the floor. You’re not going to come expecting an ice cream and then be served a beef bhuna. But the quality of a musician’s work isn’t dictated by the chart position. If that was the case, I’d have stopped many years ago. Sometimes, the best work is the stuff that gets left on the cutting room floor, it’s the stuff that people are too afraid to share, or too insecure to release. Until now… 

The Lost Chapter is about music but even more than that, it’s about feelings. The evening will have a happy song, a deep song, a song that will transport you. When I was a kid – and, I’m sure, when you were kids – we’d go round to each other’s houses and we’d listen to each other’s records. We’d find out what each other was into over the course of a few hours. And The Lost Chapter will be a bit like that – the only difference being that, as I’m a singer/songwriter, some of those songs will be mine. By the end of the evening, we’ll have shared our music, shared our stories, and shared our emotions. We’ll go home richer for the experience, knowing one another more. 

The wee record that lives in the book was recorded at the start of summer 2023, over 48 hours, with three other musicians. Some of those tunes will be recognisable to some fans – though the versions they’ll hear now are different to the ones they’ve heard before. And I’ll explain why that is – because sometimes, less is more. The bravest thing is to walk away. You don’t need to put cinnamon in the stew. You can leave it be. 

I’ll leave you with one final image. When people talk about women who are naturally beautiful, they say things like this: ‘She doesn’t need that make-up,’ or ‘She doesn’t need to dress up like that,’ or ‘She should just let herself be her.’ And that’s what The Lost Chapter is. It’s about the beauty of the music – it’s about stripping it down rather than dressing it up. It's about me holding your hand and walking you through an evening of song. I hope you enjoy it.