by: Jon Bream (section: Variety page: 01E)
Natalie Merchant, the queen of college rock, doesn't have a band anymore, but that won't stop her from performing at an Earth Day concert Saturday at Target Center in Minneapolis.
Merchant, former lead singer of 10,000 Maniacs, doesn't play guitar, but that won't stop her from singing -- maybe a cappella -- and speaking at an Earth Day rally today in front of the State Capitol in St. Paul.
Merchant said she is surprised to find herself on the bill for Saturday's concert, staged by the Minneapolis-based Concerts for the Environment (CFE). But the concerns of Earth Day are a priority for her.
"As far as I'm concerned, environmental issues should be the primary political issues addressed in this country and globally," she said in a recent telephone interview. "From its inception when I was a kid in the '70s, Ithought it was a very powerful day, completely focused on thinking about one thing: that is, trying to remedy the destructive tendencies of human beings on the planet.
"Concerts for the Environment have always organized the best concert and the best events," said the 30-year-old singer, a member of its advisory board. "They seem to integrate the music with information that reminds people why they're there and things they can possibly do themselves. And the money all goes to a wide variety of nonprofit organizations."
This will be the third time in four years Merchant has performed at one of CFE's Earth Day concerts. Last year, she also appeared on a CFE panel about environmental issues at UCLA before an Earth Day concert in Hollywood. "I'm just there to draw people in -- a symbolic decoy," she said.
Merchant is a dedicated activist who invited Greenpeace representatives along on a 10,000 Maniacs tour to hand out information at every concert. In an interview the other day, the singer suddenly turned interrogator and grilled me for 10 minutes about the latest news regarding the proposed storage of nuclear waste at Prairie Island near Red Wing.
When Merchant is at home in upstate New York, she volunteers a few hours a day to run the kids' creative-arts program at a local community center. "I find myself drawn to these kids with problems at home," she said.
She is concerned about how young people are reacting to the recent suicide of rock hero Kurt Cobain. She spoke of her anger at her friend River Phoenix, the actor who died this year of a drug overdose. Then she resumed talking about her work with troubled kids.
Her program involves about 30 kids from 5 to 16 who are creating an original puppet show, for which they are doing some recording at Merchant's home studio.
Her activism began when she was a 16-year-old, self-described "granola girl" taking college courses and working at a hippie bakery 30 miles from a nuclear-waste dump in New York. It wasn't just reading such liberal journals as "Mother Jones", "The Progressive" and "The Nation" that shaped her world view; it was seeing her friends involved in organic farming and using solar generators.
"It was where I got an understanding of not just alternative living, but when you look at your society from the outside like that, it made me much more suspicious and critical of the way I'd lived my life up to that date. And I remain suspicious and critical."
Merchant has been looking at her professional life differently since she parted company with 10,000 Maniacs last fall. After 12 years together, the band apparently is continuing without her. At least, her father, who lives in Jamestown, N.Y., where the band is based, told her the band is doing a few gigs later this month. She hasn't heard who is handling the lead vocals she used to do.
Merchant has done a few solo performances, accompanying herself on piano, mostly in Europe. This winter, she wrote some new material that she'll hopes to record for a solo album this year. She'll do a few new tunes Saturday at Target Center, where she expects to perform only one or two numbers associated with 10,000 Maniacs -- even though she wrote or co-wrote all the band's material.
"I've actually been shocked by the fact that I have not a single regret," she said of the breakup. "I think it's because it was so well-planned. I was aware of what I was doing and why I was doing it and everyone in the band was made aware of it, although I'm sure they would've preferred that it go on, because it was the easier path to take. I think the main accomplishment toward the end of 10,000 Maniacs is that I learned how to communicate with the band."
Merchant has asked the Wallflowers, a Los Angeles band fronted by Jakob Dylan (Bob's son), to accompany her for the Target Center gig. The Wallflowers opened for 10,000 Maniacs on a couple of tours and she digs their music. After rehearsing this week at Merchant's home, she and the Wallflowers did "an open rehearsal" in front of about 100 people Thursday at a friend's restaurant.
Performing on MTV Unplugged with the Maniacs and 10 other musicians helped prepare Merchant for working with other players, she said. Ironically, the recording of that TV performance has led to 10,000 Maniacs' biggest hit, Because the Night.
The song, written by Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith, was a hit for Smith in 1978. Merchant happened to hear the single in a restaurant while she was trying to figure out what to perform for MTV Unplugged. She is shocked that the Maniacs' version has become a huge hit.
"After all those years, we still managed -- and I don't know how -- to be accepted by alternative radio people and at the same time we were accepted by the mainstream, which is kind of what that song did for Patti Smith," she said. "It's sort of embarrassing to have your biggest single be a song you didn't even write, on this album of this band you're not a member of anymore."