In 1978, Pat Wells cut an album that didn't make it big. In 2025, songs from it landed on Netflix.

Boston Globe

a day ago

The new show that wanted to incorporate her music is '
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'It's a very, like, up-in-the-tower kind of recognition,' Wells, now 71, said recently in a phone interview from her home in Grantham, N.H. It feels like a major upheaval in her life, 'like if you read my tarot cards, they'd say TOWER!'
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On the day the series dropped in late May, Wells sat down and binge-watched all five episodes. When she was finished, she thought, there must be some mistake. The songs weren't there.
Oh, yes they were, responded Douglas Mcgowan. They were just buried deep in the mix.
Mcgowan is the owner of the small California reissue label that made 'Hometown Lady' available to download more than 15 years ago. He found a copy at a Boston-area record shop —
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And that, once again, was that, for more than a decade. About a year ago, he reconnected with Wells and told her he was sending her a check, rounding up to $100, the amount he felt he owed her.
'I'm pretty sure you could count the number of people who paid to download her record on your fingers and toes,' he said recently.
Pat Wells grew up in West Newbury, the fourth of five children born to a radiologist and his stay-at-home wife. At 10 or 11, she became interested in learning to play the guitar. She'd close her bedroom door to drown out the commotion in her crowded house, and try to write songs.
When she was 16, one of her older sisters encouraged her to sign up to sing at the open mic night at
'Nobody could drink at that table,' Wells recalled.
There was a robust circuit of barrooms and stages across the North Shore for songwriters at the time, Wells said. At the
Pat Wells plays her guitar at her home in Grantham, N.H.
Jim Davis/Jim Davis for the Globe
She remembers seeing Tom Rush perform in Salem and Bonnie Raitt in Ipswich, and there were lots of artists — Bill Madison, Kenny Girard, Charlie Bechler — who drew local followings. Younger than most of her peers, she felt supported by the audiences she encountered.
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'There was something about creating music, having people listen to you and enjoy what you had to say about your life, your friends, the area,' she said.
When she picked up some work assisting a piano tuner, she asked to pick his brain.
'You know, I've got all these songs,' she said. 'How do people make records?'
The piano tuner happened to know Josiah Spaulding Jr., the songwriter who would later become
Spaulding helped organize the band that backed Wells in the studio. They recorded at Century III, then a video editing and post-production company on Boylston Street that took in occasional musical acts on the side. Each day, Wells drove her beat-up Ford F-100 pickup truck across the I-93 bridge into the city.
Pat Wells grew up in West Newbury. She now lives in New Hampshire.
Jim Davis/Jim Davis for the Globe
'It was a wonderful opportunity to work with studio musicians who were so talented,' she said. 'Joe was able to do that thing that producers do — rise above and take the 50,000-foot view.'
'I thought she was a terrific songwriter,' said Spaulding, who has a home on Plum Island. 'We had a ball, but she basically stopped making music soon after we finished.'
Changing tides in the music world worked against any prospects the album may have had, Wells recalled.
'This was when disco was incredibly popular,' she said. 'The A&R guy from Sail would go around with me to the radio stations. The guy would drop the needle, listen for a short time, and say, 'Well, it's not disco.' I mean,
der
— it's not disco!'
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The songs on 'Hometown Lady' give off echoes of Joan Baez and Janis Ian. It's evocative of its time and place, said Mcgowan, who grew up in Newton.
'When I started my label, I was zeroing in on anything I could find that was local,' he said. 'I was scratching an itch I didn't know I had, a connection with my place of origin.' What he heard in Wells's album was 'a specificity and a vibe. So much music is generic — it could be anyone, anywhere. She manages to evoke a very beautiful, earlier time.'
Mcgowan specializes in what the record-collecting world now refers to as 'private press' recordings — the obscure, independently released albums from previous eras that have become ripe for reissue. His label reintroduced the music of a psychedelic folk-rocker from Detroit named Ted Lucas, and Mcgowan teamed with industry leader Light In the Attic on a landmark reappraisal of new age music called 'I Am the Center.'
Pat Wells in her yard in New Hampshire.
Jim Davis/Jim Davis for the Globe
'It turns out there was a massive number of incredibly talented people making albums in incredibly restricted circles,' Mcgowan said. 'There was no pipeline for a local artist to get into the mainstream.
'Virtually no one in Pat's position ever broke out of where they were. Only because of the internet have people started to be able to compare notes on their record finds.'
It was the internet presence of
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Jen Malone, a onetime Boston-based publicist, served as the music supervisor on 'Sirens.' The producers, she said, were initially hoping for Joni Mitchell songs to accompany scenes in episode three that feature Moore's character, Michaela, a powerful woman of means in the fictional, Nantucket-like town of Port Haven.
Julianne Moore as Michaela and Kevin Bacon as Peter Kell in "Sirens."
Macall Polay/Netflix/MACALL POLAY/NETFLIX
Mitchell's songs weren't in the budget, Malone said in a phone call, so she consulted with a company that sources music options for film and television.
When that company suggested Pat Wells, Malone took one listen, 'saw that she was from New England, and I was like, 'Done and done.'
'We love using undiscovered vintage catalog,' she explained. Wells's songs 'are in the background, but they're still very important to the palette of the show. To be a little part of that story and give her that platform, it's a great feeling.'
Since the release of 'Sirens,' there's been a new flurry of activity for Wells. Mcgowan just posted 'Hometown Lady' on Spotify for the first time, and in early June he received confirmation that a British label will license another of her songs, 'The Seeker,' for an upcoming compilation of 'music for a fictitious tropical resort.'
All of these unexpected developments have inspired Wells to think about picking up her guitar and writing some new music. Her voice may not be quite as angelic as it was in 1978, but 'the folks at church really like it,' she said. 'I tend to go right over the top.'
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After remarrying, she and her second husband adopted several children from Ethiopia. It's important for her, she said, to show her adult children and her grandchildren — she has 11 — that creativity can strike at any time.
'I don't want this to be a story of, 'Oh, my dreams were dashed in 1978,'' she said. 'No. This is something great. Isn't it lovely that somebody heard me and said, 'We'd like to put this on our platform'?'
For now, she's enjoying her retirement and the small pleasures of daily life.
'My tenant has a 2-year-old,' Wells said, 'and he was following me around as I was mowing the lawn with his bubbly lawn mower, with his ear protection on. That's wonderful.'
James Sullivan can be reached at
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James Sullivan can be reached at