by: Bill Eichenberger (page: 10E)

For more than a decade, Natalie Merchant's life was inextricably tangled with those of her mates in 10,000 Maniacs.

They worked, ate and traveled together. They took breaks, slept and vacationed at the same time.

The singer didn't have a schedule; the band had a schedule.

Merchant, citing the suffocating nature of the arrangement, left 10,000 Maniacs last year for a solo career, which she launched in July with the release of Tigerlily.

She loves her new band - which features guitarist Jennifer Turner and drummer Peter Yanowitz - but she doesn't think that it will last much beyond the present tour.

"There's no sense that because we're playing together now we're stuck together for the rest of our lives," Merchant said. "That's very stifling, both creatively and on a social level. You wouldn't want to think that the people you're working with now you'd be working with for the next 25 years."

Oddly, for someone who fled a long-term commitment to the Maniacs, Merchant bought a house in the country and asked her new band mates to live with her.

The new group - which includes bassist Barrie Maguire - shared hearth, home and the writing, arranging and recording of Tigerlily for six months.

"Most artists who go solo work with people they hire on an album-to-album or song-to-song basis, with limited rehearsal," Merchant explained. "Then there's a performance or a tour, and there's a soullessness to it - because I don't feel there's an investment of soul from the other people who are playing the gig. They even refer to themselves as hired guns."

The Tigerlily sessions, she said, fostered a shared sense of pride in the finished work that has carried over to the tour.

"Everyone became a part of the music. I rarely told people exactly what I wanted them to play. There was a looseness about it. And I think the songs grew organically."

The songs continue to grow even as the tour enters its third month.

"Between rehearsals and recording and pre-production for the tour and the tour itself, I've played these songs a couple hundred times. So it's amazing that I'm still discovering new things in the songs."

Tunes played at languid, sensuous tempos on the album, for instance, are performed at a much brisker pace in concert.

"In a lot of songs, we've had to quicken the tempos in order to make them easier to move to - for me to move to, not necessarily the audience. . . .When I'm performing, I really love to dance."

Reluctant to assume the role of "10,000 Maniacs cover band", Merchant and her backing musicians nevertheless perform four cuts from that group's repertoire each night.

"I think people appreciate the fact we do any Maniacs songs - because a lot of people who start solo careers just leave everything they ever did behind, though they usually end up coming back to them," Merchant said with a chuckle. "So we wanted to do a few Maniacs songs but not reproduce them as the Maniacs had played them. We do an Afro-pop arrangement of These Are Days because that song is so energetic. I think the Maniacs' Unplugged show proved that these songs can have a totally new life breathed into them by just changing a rhythm here or a melody there."

10,000 Maniacs recorded a succession of top-40 albums, including In My Tribe, Blind Man's Zoo and Our Time in Eden.

Merchant's first solo album peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard 200 and afforded her the top-10 single Carnival.

Still, the singer insists that a little less success might just aid her songwriting.

"I avoid celebrity as much as I can, so that I don't lose contact with what I like to write about - people," she said. "I think a lot of pop singers lead really insular lives, and sometimes I think they feel forced into that. I think that would be the kiss of death, not to be able to circulate freely, because I really do feel a good artist is just a really perceptive witness. A songwriter should be a good observer, a good listener, an eavesdropper, a voyeur."