Marti Pellow - "We all deserve a good night out"

He will be offering a celebration of a remarkable solo career that’s seen Marti embark on a new project pretty much every other year since he left multi-platinum selling pop sensations Wet Wet Wet in 1999. He’s done more as a solo artist, for longer, than he did with the pop band who dominated the British charts in the 80s and 90s. His set will reflect the journey he has taken.

“We all deserve a good night out, it’s fair to say. I think these shows are about entertaining and filling the room with songs you love, so the only thing I ask of you is to bring your smiles! It was lovely to get some shows in at the tail end of last year. We did about 20 odd shows and we’ve got another 20 or so to go and for me it just felt like it had been such a long time. It is certainly something I would never take for granted again.

“And I think you do take things for granted a little bit but then as soon as the garden gate gets closed on you, as it did for the past two years, you start to think about it. My industry was the first to close and it was the last to open but once we were able to get out and make those connections again with the people and to celebrate that great power of the collective, it made me realise just how important it was and just how much a part of my DNA it is, just to be able to share your music with the audience.

“I always look at music as the power of the collective and as a wonderful shared experience. It’s what you do when you write a song and to be able to offer that experience again was just wonderful. But I do think that everything just resonates a little bit more now. We had two years where we could not really do our craft. It was something that was taken away from us and now I find I’m walking into the room with a spring in my step which is great. I’m not saying I didn’t have a spring in my step before but I’m just more aware of it, I suppose.”

How long that sense of rediscovery will persist, who knows: “I would just say don’t hurry. When we were coming out of this, we were just taking baby steps just to be able to see friends and family again and everything will be the richer for that. Just don’t hurry it. Just don’t be in a hurry to get back to wherever you were.

“I am lucky. I was quite cool with sitting by myself. I can climb inside my head because that is what musicians do and I quite like it there. As a songwriter you use that experience to do a lot of the writing and I might add that I did a lot more of that during the pandemic but not actually writing about the pandemic itself. I think that might percolate through at some point. You just don’t know.

“But I do still have that great sense of wonder when I set up and start to write. You think what is my prize going to be today. What stream of consciousness is going to unfold. Sometimes a song will offer itself up to you quite quickly but sometimes songs are shy and don’t want to dance with you and they will fight you, and that’s just part of the journey. And that’s the exciting thing when you are discovering their identities as a song, whatever soundscape it’s going to have. It is fascinating when you’re in that moment developing a song. It’s like developing a new relationship. It’s exciting. Its identity will reveal itself to you and it’s that sense of wonder that I love.”

As for the lockdowns, Marti enjoyed success with what he calls his “wee lockdown sessions” which emerged organically: “As the pandemic was unfolding I had been reached out to by a family that asked me to sing a song for their mum who had caught the Covid and was really in quite a bad way. I sang a song on my phone and sent it on its way through social media and lots of people commented on it. I’m happy to say that she beat the Covid and is well on the way to mending.”

But the response prompted Marti to keep going: “I did more and more songs and every song had a sense of purpose. I don’t know who got more out of it, me or the people listening. Every few days I would go up into the spare room and record a song and put it out on its way and it was lovely seeing the way it would branch out and touch people. I did a James Taylor song and he told me how much he liked it. You just don’t know who’s out there listening and that’s the lovely thing. It is that power of the collective that I like.”

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