by: Lane Beauchamp

For Natalie Merchant to find happiness she had to leave behind six best-selling albums and her musical home of 12 years.

But now that she's out on her own - singing her songs, headlining her tour - the former lead singer for the 10,000 Maniacs has reached that point where all is right with world. Or at least her piece of it.

"It's very liberating," Merchant said in a telephone interview from a tour stop in Berkeley, Calif. "I left the band when it was at the height of its success. If I was concerned with staying in a very secure and safe environment, I would have just stuck with 10,000 Maniacs."

Life, though, as a minority voice in an otherwise all-male band no longer suited Merchant.

"I feel that for me success is measured by whether I'm happy with the songs I'm writing and happy with the people I'm playing with," the 32-year-old said. "And the answer to that was 'No' when I was with 10,000 Maniacs toward the end.

"Now I'm doing songs I like to play, with people I'm happy to play with. I'm recording in a situation I'm comfortable with, and I'm touring in a way that I'm happy. Two weeks into the tour I knew I had done things exactly the way I had to (to) be happy."

Merchant broke from the Maniacs in 1993, just as their MTV Unplugged album started climbing the charts, on its way to selling nearly 2 million copies.

She retreated to her country home near Woodstock, N.Y., and tapped into a simpler life for her first solo effort, this year's platinum-selling album Tigerlily.

"I was trying to get at the essence of everything that I was doing at the time," Merchant said. "I was trying to get down to the most essential component, which is the song - the melody and the lyrics. I felt like sometimes that was lost in 10,000 Maniacs. The sound of 10,000 Maniacs was sometimes more important than the individual songs."

The solo result was a musically simple, lyrically compelling album that's established Merchant among the elite artists of the music industry. Tigerlily' remains among the Top 30 albums in the country after more than five months on the charts. Her first single Carnival peaked at No. 10 on the Hot 100 Singles chart and continues to be a radio favorite.

Her tour is taking her from coast to coast, stopping most often at cozy, historic theaters. Her local show, however, is in the less-than-regal Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kan.

Still, it gives Merchant a connection with the audience she's missed on tour with the Maniacs.

"The first tour I ever did with R.E.M., we played a small-theater tour," Merchant said. "I had a certain romantic notion that that was the supreme level of achievement ...

"I just never had the same feeling toward the 20,000-seat sheds (amphitheaters). I just can't seem to connect with that many people at once."

Despite the success she's enjoying as a solo artist, Merchant doesn't regret staying with the Maniacs as long as she did.

"I was still learning ... ," she said of her years with the band. "It was not all negative. But I'm really glad I decided to move at the time that I did. I don't think we could have made another record that I would have been satisfied with."

Merchant said it also may have been good for the rest of the band by forcing them to find someone else to collaborate with, a fresh voice in the mix. The band has since recruited Mary Ramsey, who played violin on the last two Maniacs albums, to be lead singer.

"It was very sweet the way everything ended," Merchant said. "By the time we did the final concert, everybody knew it was the final concert and we'd known it was the final concert for 6 months.