By: Bo Emerson (page P1)

Don't imagine that 10,000 Maniacs, the little band from Jamestown, N.Y., has made it to Easy Street just because it appeared on Late Night with David Letterman, then got on The Tonight Show two weeks later.

"We are still modest-subsistence musicians," says lyricist and lead singer Natalie Merchant in an interview from a tour stop in Baltimore, Md.

A major change for the quintet, disregarding the success of its single Peace Train and its second album on Elektra, In My Tribe, is in lodging. No longer do the musicians sleep on the floors of friends' houses, as they did a few years ago, in the pre-Elektra days when they were playing small clubs around the country, such as Atlanta's now- defunct Hedgen's. "We stay in hotels instead," Ms. Merchant says. "We still drive around in a van," she adds. "We were very uncomfortable then. We're a bit more comfortable now."

The Maniacs, who called Atlanta home for a few months in 1983, will be driving that van here for shows tonight and Saturday night at the Cotton Club. [webmaster's note: the band lived briefly in Atlanta in 1982, not 1983].

"The Carson show was almost surreal," Ms. Merchant says, "because we performed between the interview couch and Doc Severinsen's band. To think of all the people, people like Steve and Eydie, who have performed on that very show. We felt like the Rolling Stones doing The Ed Sullivan Show. Not that we're bad boys, but we're not a mainstream band."

A mainstream band? No one would have tagged the Maniacs mainstream a few years back. The band's dark, elongated melodies and Ms. Merchant's artfully obscure lyrics were permeated with the aura of the underground. The Maniacs' repertoire leaned heavily on reggae, Ms. Merchant twirled dervish-style and Robert Buck's echoing guitar, with its gadgets and devices, kept the show unpredictable.

With In My Tribe, however, the group has leaned closer to a commercial sound, a change partly due to new producer Peter Asher. Departing from the denser sound of 1985's The Wishing Chair and the two discs that preceded it on the group's own independent Christian Burial label, the new album has a glossy, clean surface and places Ms. Merchant's voice in a dominant position.

One result of this tactic is that the singer's idiosyncratic approach to the English language is now more comprehensible. "I feel understood now," Ms. Merchant says. "People say it wasn't even necessary to put the lyric sheet in."

With her voice front and center, there is also the impression that this is Natalie Merchant's band - which is not completely off the mark.

"They [the other band members] know that my contributions are more extensive," she says. "I write the lyrics, I write the melodies, I sing the songs and stand in front of the group, and I'm the only female."

Ms. Merchant is also quick to share credit for the Maniacs' evolution with guitarist Buck, keyboardist Dennis Drew, drummer Jerome Augustyniak and bassist Steven Gustafson.

"No one's having an identity crisis because the Maniacs have a female lead singer," said Ms. Merchant. "We were all in the room when those songs are being m ixed. It was the male section of the group that was saying, 'Can Natalie be louder?' It wasn't just Peter Asher saying, 'The girl has to be turned up.' "

The Maniacs' profile was boosted this summer when the band opened some road shows for R.E.M. Ms. Merchant has some half-serious comments on the Athens group's rising fortunes.