by: Marc Allan
Natalie Merchant, how does it feel to be on your own?
A breathy laugh comes through the phone in recognition of the Like a Rolling Stone lyric. Then the former 10,000 Maniacs singer answers.
"In many respects I'm on my own and in many respects I'm just in a different band," Merchant says. "I could never do this by myself totally. But it feels great to be able to make the decisions that I can now on my own and it feels great to work with a new group of people. So I'm basically the happiest I've ever been in my life."
And why not? Tigerlily, Merchant's first solo album since ending her relationship with the Maniacs two years ago, has sold more than 500,000 copies and hit the Top 20. The first single, Carnival, is all over radio, in formats as diverse as modern rock and adult contemporary, and the music-video channels.
But beyond commercial considerations, Merchant is happy because she's been able to scale back. The tour that brings her to Purdue University's Elliott Hall of Music on Wednesday visits theaters of 2,500 to 6,000 seats - not the large amphitheaters the Maniacs played.
"It was out of a desire to see the people I was playing for and feel like there was some intimacy with the audience," she says.
That intimacy is reflected in the sound of Tigerlily, a lustrous, warm disc that features her best songwriting yet. Her voice is gorgeous, as usual - warmed honey on hot cereal - as she puts her gentle spin on the universal themes of lifetime love, death, devotion and betrayal.
"I feel like I've evolved as a writer," she says. "A lot of the decisions I've made about writing in the last couple of years have been to move toward something intimate and more subtle and more sensual.
"If I'm referring to things that are intimate, it's usually things that are universally intimate, not necessarily exclusively intimate to me and to my experiences. I think that's why this record is appealing to many people - they can see themselves in these songs."
In Wonder, she glorifies a young woman who overcomes severe handicaps, much to the surprise of doctors and the media. "They say I must be one of the wonders of God's own creation/and as far as they can see, they can offer no explanation," she sings.
"On tour, I get to meet a lot of people with handicaps," Merchant says. "There'll be special arrangements made for them so they can get backstage to watch the concert because it might be impossible for them to see if they're in the audience. I've had so many of them say that the song feels like it's about them and it's given them such courage. That's such a great feeling."
The touching Beloved Wife pays tribute to the love her grandfather felt for her grandmother, who died after they had been together for 50 years. River remembers her friend River Phoenix, the actor who died of a drug overdose. Seven Years, though it could easily be documenting the fallout from a love affair, actually tackles the devotion a student felt for a teacher who ultimately did her wrong.
Merchant put these songs together with a band she recruited from the Woodstock, N.Y., area, where she lives. She began with drummer Peter Yanowitz, who brought in bassist Barrie Maguire.
They put out the word that they were looking for a female lead guitar player, which led them to Jennifer Turner. (Merchant, an equal-opportunity employer, also has a female lawyer, doctor, record company president, sound engineer, lighting designer, road manager and light rigger to achieve balance in the male-dominated world.)
"That was my most intimidating moment and my greatest fear when I left the Maniacs is that I'm not well-connected," Merchant says. "My circle of friends didn't really include a lot of people I could work with. It's hard enough to find a person you can have a conversation with, let alone someone you can live in the studio with for months at a time, and on a tour bus."
She also wanted younger, less-experienced musicians "because I think I was nostalgic for something I never had with the Maniacs, which was an intentional beginning. With the Maniacs, we just kind of stumbled into it and learned things as we went along."
Merchant started singing at age 6 - in school, girls' clubs and scouts, church, with the radio. Over the years, she says, her voice has deepened somewhat, much to her pleasure.
"I listen to the early Maniacs records and I sound so young and chirpish," she says with some dismay.
In nearly a dozen years with the band, she evolved from singer to spokesperson. In a 1993 interview with The Indianapolis Star, 10,000 Maniacs keyboardist Dennis Drew called Merchant "a terrific role model and a hero to young women all across the country."
She thinks that's a reasonable assessment.
"As far as a media personality and artist, yeah," she says. "I've been honest to myself and I've tried to approach what I do with as much craft and thoroughness as I can. I think that's as much as you can expect from anyone in their career, to do their best."
Merchant also gets labeled as a '90s flower child, an image she rejects.
"The '60s aesthetic has never really appealed to me, the tie-dyed Deadhead running barefoot through the forest on LSD. I don't think that's really me. But I've been a vegetarian for 17 years and I consider myself an environmentalist inasmuch as I can be, considering the job that I have. I prefer living in the countryside rather than the city; I find it more sane and sustaining for myself.
"A lot of the things I believe in and a lot of the guidelines that I use to live my life, Walt Whitman would have agreed with me. Henry David Thoreau would have agreed with me. It's not necessarily ideas that arose in the 1960s and are exclusive to that decade."