by: Michael Zabrodsky (Hot Trax column); page - Tempo section

It's here.

For weeks - well, actually since I began this column in December people have been asking me if I intended to do a story on the 10,000 Maniacs.

Here it is.

The 10,000 Maniacs' new album, Blind Man's Zoo will be released May 12. The first single, Trouble Me, was released April 24.

It has not been easy getting information for this story because it's been so hard to talk to the band members. I finally caught up with keyboardist Dennis Drew and bassist Steve Gustafson over the last month. I tried to get comments from Natalie Merchant, but the Maniacs' management informed me that she wasn't giving interviews. Guitarist Rob Buck is in Albany and drummer Jerry Augustyniak is in Buffalo, so they were a bit out of reach. I feel lucky that I was able to talk to both Drew and Gustafson because it was hard tracking them down as well.

According to Drew, the band will start touring England on May 16. "We would rather play the first gigs in England," he said. "The crowd is pretty much the same in England. People who like rock music are pretty much the same everywhere. We are not as big over there. We draw a smaller crowd. A while back that was different, but not anymore."

Blind Man's Zoo has 11 new songs on it: Eat For Two, Please Forgive Us, The Big Parade, Trouble Me, You Happy Puppet, Head Strong, Poison In The Well, Dust Bowl, Lion's Share, Hateful Hate and Jubilee.

"I think it's the best work we've done so far," the bassist added. "We've improved. Every step we have taken has been an improvement for us and musically Jerry was outstanding. It took us less time to record and it was easier to record. We recorded the basic tracks of eight songs in two weeks in November, then we did four or five more songs in a week in February. It took half the amount of time it took to record In My Tribe.

"Some of that was also due to the fact that In My Tribe we did in Los Angeles. It was a new experience for Peter Asher because he was used to working with studio musicians who would come in and do one take and it was done. With Blind Man's Zoo we found out what worked and went with it. We seem to have more confidence and we all feel strongly about the songs."

Gustafson said that some songs are written in advance and may never end up on an album or could end up on a future album. "The song Lion's Share was written three years ago and Poison In The Well was written a couple of years ago," he added. "The two songs didn't make it onto In My Tribe because they didn't develop into full songs, so we put them on the back burner and brought them out to work on them some more and they turned out to be real strong songs."

Every member of the 10,000 Maniacs contributes to every song.

"The music is always first," Drew said. "We come up with a group of musical ideas until they form themselves that she (Natalie) can write the lyrics for. She wrote all the lyrics on this album. Even her songs take a long time to work out because she has to teach them to us."

"She will usually have specific ideas and harmonies she'll hear in her songs," Gustafson added. "I think Natalie has really focused her ideas. Trouble Me is a love song she wrote for her father when he was in the hospital."

Drew commented on how the musical portion of the song came about.

Trouble Me started out as me trying to copy this Van Morrison song in 6/8 time. When I played it for the band, I only played three chords that were part of the chorus. It was 4/4 and that was the song. All the other stuff that I'd came up with had nothing to do with it. It just worked so we left it alone. It's an odd thing.

"It's tough when you have a song all worked out and it doesn't come together. The songs that we don't end up doing are as important as the songs that we do end up doing in a sense that they all funnel into songs. It's absurd to think that every song you come up with will work. Once you get over the ego thing, then you can really meld and be in a band that writes together. That's what we do. As long as your egos are involved in writing then you'll have to be a solo artist with a back-up band. The toughest thing is writing the song. Everything after that is easy."

Drew said the name of the album, Blind Man's Zoo, was that of a game that kids used to play. Kids would put blindfolds on and pretend to be an animal and the other kids try to guess what animal it was. He said Merchant named the album.

Hot Trax asked Drew about the origin of the band's name.

"The name 10,000 Maniacs came from Dave Tedquist, a friend of the band," he said. "We wrote down a list of stupid names. We didn't want to make a grand statement with our name. We didn't want to call ourselves the Serious Blue Flowers. At first we were Still Life, then John Lombardo joined the band briefly and Still Life became the Burn Victims. We picked 10,000 Maniacs because it was so funny. People love it. They just laugh, even hotel clerks. Finally we couldn't book any rooms under 10,000 Maniacs because they (hotel clerks) didn't want scary names," he said.

"In retrospect our name has been a great advantage. I think we were on David Letterman partly because our name was so funny. He made jokes about 10,000 Maniacs appearing on his show," Drew explained.