Rock 'n' roll is a mad, mad world, but 10,000 Maniacs singer/songwriter Natalie Merchant says she has settled in

by: Eric Snider

Natalie Merchant is no maniac.

The serious-minded 25-year-old writes songs about teen-age pregnancy, homelessness, poverty, racism, the rape of the environment, the tragedy of war. She fronts a band called 10,000 Maniacs, whose high-minded folk-rock is anything but maniacal.

Talking by phone recently, Merchant explained her role as artist: "I'm of the school that as artists we're witnesses and have to be honest about what we're seeing. And to me, in many ways the world is decaying, and human beings are contributing to the decay.

"And in other ways," she continues, intoning somberly, "it's still a very breathtakingly gorgeous world. But sometimes the evilness and ugliness is overwhelming the beauty. I'm just trying to give a fair picture of what's happening."

Not exactly sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

10,000 Maniacs is part of pop's new social consciousness. The band's ringing guitars, gentle rhythms and oblique melodies underscore its sober aesthetic. Forget the name: "10,000 Maniacs" was cooked up eight years ago as an attention-getter.

The band hung together, with a couple of personnel changes, through seven years of obscurity. They played biker bars around their hometown of Jamestown, N.Y., scuffled through low-budget regional tours, recorded independently, and endured the constant misconception that these Maniacs, all 10,000 of 'em, were a gang of ill-mannered punks.

Last year, the payoff came. The group's second Elektra album, In My Tribe, released in '87, hung around the charts month after month, going gold (500,000 copies sold) around December 1988.

The band - which also includes drummer Jerome Augustyniak, guitarist Robert Buck, keyboardist Dennis Drew and bassist Steve Gustafson - has maintained momentum with its current Blind Man's Zoo. The album reached No. 13 on the Billboard magazine chart and looks to surpass the sales of Tribe.

Zoo is more focused, and considerably darker, than past Maniacs efforts. Merchant's lyrics, which once tended to be vague, have become more direct. At their best, her songs are compelling tales that examine larger problems through vignettes. There's the woman whose children follow her through the store asking for toys that she cannot afford in Dust Bowl; the family whose tap water has been polluted in Poison in the Well; the young son of a dead Army vet making a sojourn to the Vietnam Wall in The Big Parade; the pregnant teen-ager of Eat For Two. ("Dream child in my head is a nightmare born in a borrowed bed.")

Merchant likes writing lyrics that tell stories. It's more effective than soap-boxing. "I think it's easier for people to grasp something that's more of a personal account than a broad issue," she says.

As a wordsmith, Merchant doesn't rely on inspiration alone. She brings a strong sense of craft to the process. Usually, one of the guys in the band presents her with a melody. "On this album, the music evoked images for the lyrics," she explains. "First emotions, then images.

"I always write more than is necessary and trim it down," she continues, explaining her method. "When you begin working up the poetic construction of the lyrics, it comes down to even what syllables of what word. I sometimes get right down to the sounds of letters within syllables, and that can completely change a line of a song - if there's a "p" in the wrong place it can really destroy the fluid motion of a certain line. Of all the process, the most difficult part is the puzzle of fitting words and syllables into the notation."

When Merchant met Dennis Drew and Steve Gustafson at a Jamestown college radio station in 1980, her only preparation for the pop life had been singing in church choirs and keeping a journal. "I was only 16. I hadn't really done anything yet. I'd gone to high school," she says with a chuckle. "I'd been on a trip to Toronto.

"I always thought (singing) would be fun to try someday. But it's not a very realistic goal. 'Grow up and be a pop singer' is not really what any mother wants to hear their daughter say."

Despite Merchant's lack of experience, Drew and Gustafson asked her whether she wanted to get together and jam. By the summer of '81, after a couple of refugees from other local bands had come aboard, the group did its first and last gig as the Burn Victims.

In '82, 10,000 Maniacs relocated to Atlanta, where they met most of the Athens, Ga., bands, including R.E.M. But three months later, they returned to Jamestown. The band's first album, Secrets of the I Ching, was recorded free, as a project for the sound-engineering program at State University of New York at Fredonia.

I Ching, released independently in 1983, struck the fancy of BBC radio's John Peel. With the famed radio announcer as an advocate, the single My Mother the War reached the British independent chart.

Major American labels came calling. The Maniacs signed with Elektra. The band lived in London's Muswell Hill section for several months while recording The Wishing Chair under the aegis of Joe Boyd, who had produced the English folk-rock group Fairport Convention. Boyd's laissez faire style behind the console did not suit the up-and-coming band.

"We basically produced Wishing Chair ourselves," drummer Jerome Augustyniak said in a separate phone interview. "We had a hell of a time. Boyd was used to working with people who were pretty much left to their own devices, but it didn't work with us."

The tenuous sessions resulted in sluggish sales for the band's major label debut. Nonetheless, 10,000 Maniacs landed a spot as opening act on an R.E.M. tour. The band's subtle sound did not translate well to 15,000-seat hockey arenas, but Merchant's dreamy performing style, full of wistful spins, came into its own. Although she seems in her own world on stage, Merchant still feels the intimate contact with her audience.

"There's community between people out there and myself on stage - when we're singing the same song," she says. "I can look out and see these young girls with really angelic faces singing along with me on a song like Dust Bowl, and that can't do anything but fill me with a great sense of pride."

Despite the gains made on the concert trail, 10,000 Maniacs needed to deliver a more salable album for their sophomore effort. Producer Peter Asher, who had put the California cast on albums by James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, was called in for In My Tribe. "He was a sort of paternal guy," Augustyniak says of Asher. "He decided he wanted the album to sound a certain way - he was making an album to be played on the radio - and we were more than happy to go along with it. Wishing Chair wasn't exactly doing well."

When called for, Asher cracked the whip. "He said, 'You guys gotta learn how to play your instruments, get your chops up,'" said Augustyniak, whose drums were replaced by a synthesizer part on a couple of Tribe songs. "Any musicians worth their salt should be willing to do that. When it came time to record again, it made (Blind Man's Zoo) easier to make. He emphasized that we had to play in time and in tune."

Asher was again at the helm for Zoo, but this time the group was not only tighter, it had a gold album under its belt. Recording was switched from Los Angeles to a former church near Woodstock, N.Y. The entire process went more smoothly. "We did basic tracks in like three days," Augustyniak says.

With success, 10,000 Maniacs no longer worries about making the rent, but, inevitably, a new set of concerns has arrived. Not surprisingly, Merchant has gotten most of the attention. "We're a band, and she gets recognized more than I do," Augustyniak says with resignation. "Sometimes you wanna just scream, 'Hey, I'm the drummer,' especially when they turn me away at the backstage receptions after the gig. But you bite your lip and go along."

Merchant adds, "I think the fact that I'm female, that I'm the singer and the lyric writer, it was inevitable that I get more attention than the drummer. Jerry writes very well and plays very well, but people are going to relate more to something they can do: speak, sing, dance, communicate through language. The other members of the band tell me that they're relieved that they don't have as much attention focused on them as I do. They pity me sometimes."

After nine years, the members of 10,000 Maniacs tend to go their separate ways when not making music. "Imagine traveling with someone for that long, working with them," Merchant says. "I'm trying to think of the last time we had a lot of fun together. It is like work in a way. It's not like putting things in alphabetical order all day, but you still have to ride in a bus."

She pauses, then adds, "I don't want you to get the impression that all we do is moan all the time. I just don't remember the last time we had a lap-slapping good time."