by: Ken Rademaker

Dennis Drew, keyboardist for the Jamestown, New York-based 10,000 Maniacs, doesn't think of his band's name as a liability on the long road to pop stardom. If anything, he thinks of it as an asset.

"The record company's always worried about it, going, 'You know it's hard to get this on the radio, with a name like 10,000 Maniacs," Drew said last week, calling from a stop on the road in Hoboken, New Jersey.

"That's when we go, ‘well, What do we need? A name like the Beastie Boys?' They went to number one, you know."

While it's hard to argue with logic like that, it's almost equally hard to realize - after listening to the group's Elektra albums, The Wishing Chair and the new In My Tribe - that 10,000 Maniacs is, well, perhaps somewhat of a misleading moniker.

On paper, it conjures up visions of hardcore, punk, or heavy metal - and certainly not the new wave-influenced electric folk the band is so adept at turning out.

But then, 10,000 Maniacs, as a group, has always had their misleading moments. Formed in Jamestown in 1981, they made their early living covering not exactly popular songs in several of the area's handful of music clubs.

Suffice it to say that, while they were able to draw an audience, most of their public didn't really know just what it was appreciating.

"We named ourselves 10,000 Maniacs so that, when we put our name in the paper, people would think right away that we weren't a cover band. We made that statement early and often enough that people just got used to coming out and dancing," Drew explains.

"But, we did plenty of covers in the beginning - it just happened that they were covers from groups like the English Beat and the Meditations. It was kind of funny. We'd get up there and we'd play some English Beat or a Bob Marley song and the next day, some guy would go, 'Hey, I heard this band that sounds just like you guys. They're called the Specials, and they're great!' We'd just say, 'cool. They are great, but they came first guy. We did some of their songs onstage last night."'

After a little over a year of playing the limited Jamestown circuit, the band -fronted by the tiny, then 20-year-old stage dynamo named Natalie Merchant - decided to start making plays for the big time. They crafted together several sets of original songs, and, on their own Christian Burial record label, released the EP Human Conflict Number Five and the LP Secrets Of The I Ching. After touring New York City and the rest of the East Coast for a couple of years, a single from I Ching, My Mother The War, ended up in the hands of British disc jockey John Peel. Air time on his BBC show helped establish the band as cult favorites in England, where they recorded The Wishing Chair for Elektra with noted folk-rock producer Joe Boyd (Fairport Convention, R.E.M.).

While the LP didn't exactly bullet to the top of the U.S. charts, its engaging blend of crystalline folk ballads and high energy fuzz-rock made it one of 1985's most critically acclaimed records.

Such success was both appreciated and nice, Drew says, but when the time came for the group to record The Wishing Chair’s follow-up, they thought it might be a good idea to move into a clearer, more accessible groove. Enter what most young bands today would probably consider their integrity's kiss of death: Los Angeles-based producer Peter Asher - the man responsible for every Linda Ronstadt record that ever became a hit. He had been fed some of the Maniacs' tapes, and decided to make them the first actual group (as opposed to singer and studio musicians) he'd work with.

Drew says that Asher immediately sat the band down and told them what he wanted was "an obvious hit." After several days of reviewing concert tapes, Asher finally found what he was looking for in a cover of Cat Stevens' Peace Train that Merchant had started inadvertently during a show in Ithaca, New York. The rest of the group had followed her in what, at the time, was typical Maniac stage fashion: loud, out of time and hopelessly rambunctious.

"We were looking for something that seemed to be a perfect marriage between our style and the familiarity that radio programmers like," Drew recalls. "Peter took the tape home, came back the next day, and said, 'This is it.' It's different enough, I think, because we just tried to give it a beat ... we tried to update it without stealing any of his (Cat Stevens') original intent."

"I think that was something we tried to do on the whole record," he continues. "We decided to make it less and less cluttered than anything we'd done in the past. You need a certain clarity, strength and focus in any piece of art. We thought that if we streamlined the melodies and structures and harmonies that we'd sound like just one instrument behind Natalie. By streamlining our approach and concentrating on the beat, I think we've created a better canvas for Natalie to paint her pictures."

Despite their newfound happiness with control and discipline, Drew predicts that the group's show with The Silence this Saturday (Aug. 15) night at the Phantasy Nite Club might still carry a slight touch of the spontaneity that characterized their American tour of 1986 - during which they played club dates on their own and opened some shows for R.E.M.

Still, he feels that 10,000 Maniacs are benefiting greatly from the buckle-down attitude he insists has to become a priority when a group is recording for a major label.