by: Steve Dollar (page: P/5)

Turn Natalie Merchant loose at the festive opening for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and look what happens. The woman widely regarded as a torchbearer for politically correct pop succumbs to Southern boogie.

"I was totally into the Allman Brothers," Merchant announces, with guileless glee, during a recent conversation from her New Orleans hotel room. "The Allman Brothers kick ass! I had never even listened to them."

This suggests a direction from rock's own Monopoly board: Go to Cleveland, begin a voyage of discovery. But for Merchant, who brings her first-ever solo tour to Chastain Park Amphitheatre on Saturday, the trip is one her listeners can join as well. The singer's transit - from the shy, eccentric teenager who began performing 16 years ago with a Jamestown, N.Y., garage band called 10,000 Maniacs, to the assuredly lyrical vocalist who now commands a thriving solo career - has been one of pop's most gradual, yet inevitable, success stories. If, as Merchant rues, the trend for new artists is "one video on MTV, one song on the radio and then no career, and they're only 22 years old," she's avoided the major pitfalls.

"I'm thankful," says Merchant, 31, who is apparently mindful enough of her profile to check into her room under the name of poet Emily Dickinson ("I was using Sara Bellum, but the pun was getting old.") "We (10,000 Maniacs) weren't a personality band. We didn't put our photographs on the records. I don't seek celebrity visibility. I go to the MTV Music Awards once a year. That's my big celebrity outing. I go home and lick my wounds for months afterwards. Emily Dickinson goes to the orgy!"

She laughs easily and volunteers her vocal impressions of tour opening act Jimmie Dale Gilmore crooning "Buddhist country" style, and a bump-and-grind arrangement of the Dinah Washington hit I Know How To Do It - her selection for the Hall of Fame concert, where she was joined by Booker T. & the MGs and Dr. John.

Merchant's wealth of humor, not to mention the relaxed, impressionistic airs she sought for her debut album, Tigerlily, (Elektra), signal a somewhat different persona than the one that emerged on the Maniacs' major-label studio efforts, In My Tribe, Blind Man's Zoo and Our Time in Eden. Soft, folk-tinged rock and social consciousness haven't been abandoned. But Merchant says she's trying to paint with a lighter palette.

"I wanted to make a subtle record," explains Merchant, who cites classic albums by Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake as models of what she hopes to achieve. "I wanted it to be simple-sounding and very natural. I wanted to move away from the direction of writing songs that might be considered political. The big turning point was Dust Bowl on Blind Man's Zoo. I found it reached people the way songs I'd written before hadn't."

Working with a new band was a liberating experience for Merchant, who often appeared isolated from her other (all-male) Maniacs, who have continued as a band with original member John Lombardo and vocalist Mary Ramsey.

"Being the only female and being considerably younger than the band, there was always a barrier there," says the singer, who often responded to the situation by lighting candles and incense, swirling like a dervish and making cryptic asides to puzzled audiences in college bars. Once, she recalls, she donned a pair of roller skates and did the hokeypokey. She's mellowed since those days. "I'm less the frontperson with this band. It's a more vivid band. I can sneak off to the side of the stage and dance in private."

Yet, the new Natalie remains outspoken, even when she tries to hold her tongue. Prodded to talk about her experiences at the MTV Video Awards, she offers no comment. "I commented on it all week," she says, glad to close her critique of pop consumer culture run amuck. But, aw, what the heck. "I fear for our culture," she says. "I fear for the children of this nation. I just come from a polite society. We don't say the words (expletive) and (expletive) and (expletive) in a conversational manner where I come from. We certainly don't say it if we were given the opportunity to say it to the world. And I'm not a Puritan!