by: Alan Jackson (Times Magazine)

On the journey from the airport, our driver - Italian-American, malcontent, prone to expletives - pushes the theory that the best thing to do when spending a weekend in this particular corner of urban New York State is to leave it. "Listen, guys," he urges, "we'll meet up early and do the drive to Niagara. I'll wait around 'til you've seen the sights, maybe get ourselves something to eat, and get ya back in plenty of time for the show - all for a special price. Whaddaya say?" Tired, and tired of him, we duck out: "It's a great idea, but not this time, thanks." In return, he shoots us a look to say: "Well, on your own heads be it, suckers", then falls back on tourist-speak. "Well, welcome to Rochester anyway," he manages, as he pulls up outside our downtown hotel.

As someone who fronted a touring rock band for more than ten years, Natalie Merchant has vast experience of the stop-over stay and, when we meet two days later, offers hard-won advice on how to get the best out of any unfamiliar location. "The first thing to do is get hold of a copy of the telephone directory," she says as we walk along the street. "Then, within the eating-out section, you look for wherever the vegetarian or wholefood cafes and restaurants are. Generally, they're in the same neighbourhood, and they're run by really cool people. There'll always be a noticeboard there, too, where you'll find details pinned up of concerts or movie screenings or talks that are taking place.

"It's a really good way of getting to know what's going on in the area. A shame you didn't know to try it. You might have had a much better time here in Rochester."

But Merchant's method is not entirely fail-safe. Her first choice, The Yellow Dog Cafe, is packed to overflowing for Sunday brunch, and those queuing to be seated stare unashamedly, wondering just what the famous face from MTV and from last night's concert is doing here. Unnerved, she heads across the street and we dive into Oscars, a Hollywood-themed diner.

Here there is a little fuss, too - whispers of recognition, a jostling of two waiters, each anxious to serve her table, the polite requests for autographs - but her modest demeanour quickly diffuses the situation. For although highly talented, acclaimed and rich - and recently deemed "The Poet Laureate of Alternative Rock" by one American interviewer - she is the least egocentric of stars. Sitting with her back to the wall beneath framed photographs of Katharine Hepburn, Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe, she visibly shrinks from scrutiny, tries to deflect attention elsewhere.

"Bottled in Wales," she observes, holding up her blue container of carbonated water. "Well, the glass is lovely, but that's just ridiculous. We have plenty of clean water here in the United States without importing it from across the ocean."

When Lucille Ball died, Natalie Merchant automatically became the most famous living American to have been born in Jamestown, New York. Hers is a very different pact with celebrity, however. Three years ago, on leaving 10,000 Maniacs, the group she had fronted since she was 17, her abiding fear was that a successful solo career might upset the delicate balance she had achieved between her public and private lives.

"I almost want to put a brake on its success," she tells me of her debut album Tigerlily, intelligent, warm and passionate, and now a multi-million-seller in America. "I'd been really happy with the level of recognition the Maniacs got and aspired to reaching a similar level on my own through making the best music I could possibly make. Now it's been taken out of my hands. I'm delighted that so many people like the album, but the implications of that are a concern to me, too."

She is not being disingenuous. Other artists as photogenic as she would have used their appeal to sell records, but, until she went solo, Merchant's image never once appeared on an LP or CD sleeve. And even now, despite having her career overseen by the industry heavyweight Jon Landau, who also manages Bruce Springsteen, she is at pains to project her art rather than herself.

For example, she declares herself pleased with the promotional videos she has made for two of the Tigerlily tracks precisely because "they're completely forgettable and so don't dictate the images you conjure up on hearing the songs". And there has been a deliberate avoidance of what she terms any "gratuitous" press, by which she means personality profiles in glossy magazines. Instead, there has been a concentration on talking to local papers and radio stations in the cities she visits.

Those around her know that Natalie means what Natalie says and respect her wishes, even if there is a commercial cost to be paid. Although her drawing power would have made it easy to fill a 12,000-seater arena in Rochester the previous evening, her booking agent accepted that she would prefer to appear before just 3,000 in a conventional theatre. And so on, throughout a lengthy American tour.

"I guess there has always been the question of how corrupted I might become because of the attention I get and the wealth I amass," she says. "But ultimately, I think I have a different mindset to most other artists, particularly those in the rock world. I want to be able to move around freely, not have an isolationist lifestyle. And the idea of celebrating my achievements by buying a big country house and sitting in it doing heroin for two years would never cross my mind. Finding a good school and doing some studying: now that idea holds a lot of appeal."

This attitude is shaped both by an active liberal agenda - her advisers fret that she plays far too many benefit concerts, for causes ranging from Pro-Choice to the abolition of logging in state parks - and her own personal history. "Because I come from a fairly poor family, raised by a single mother who made minimum wage, money represents security to me rather than the means to indulge in an extravagant lifestyle. My family and friends haven't had the same kind of success that I've had bestowed on me - almost mistakenly, I feel - and that gives me a perspective. So it pleases me that I can give a car to my brother, who works in a factory, and his wife, who is a waitress in a diner. The same with my mother. She has no pension plan; I'm her pension plan. And I accept this wouldn't be the case if I didn't have a surplus."

If these deliberations make her seem dry or humourless, it would be a misrepresentation. For although she keeps up a guard against intrusive questioning - she makes a point of not talking about her personal life, refuses absolutely to do so - she is still excellent company, quick to laugh or self-deprecate. She is also very beautiful, with a sensual quality which is begining to attract the attention of film-makers.

"It's kind of embarrassing, getting this insight into how other people see you," she says. "I was offered the part of a gang member in Tank Girl, for instance, then of a novice nun in Sister Act. And in The Road to Wellville they wanted me to play the part of this pale woman who has an affair. I was considering doing it until I discovered the character ended up having sex with Bill Murray. I couldn't do it then. I'm not that good an actress."

What she is - in addition to being a fine singer - is an especially perceptive and humane songwriter. Clearly, it is her qualities as an individual that help to inform this talent. At the height of her fame with 10,000 Maniacs, for example, she dropped out for six months to work in a Harlem hostel for abused women and their children, and still takes up volunteer work in her spare time. Furthermore, she has a fine ability to mix musical understatement with, in her lyrics, a very precise emotional acuity.

On Tigerlily, the best example of this is the song River, a tribute to her friend the late actor River Phoenix. It is, by turns, tender in its evocation of him and furious in its condemnation of the tabloid postulations that have smeared his memory and taunted his family, and Natalie sings it in a voice that first aches with love, then surges and breaks with anger: "Let the youth of America mourn, include him in their prayers. Let his image linger on, repeated everywhere..." Six months after first hearing the song, I still find it impossible to listen to without tears coming to my eyes.

"It still makes me cry, too," she says quietly, playing with her teaspoon. "His mother came to three of my shows, and every night that she was there it was like... Oh! I don't even want to be talking about it in case it exploits the fact of her presence. But the media still haven't given the family any peace, and so it's wonderful to know that the song has helped."

Her face closes up now, making clear her discomfort. But then our waiter arrives with a bowl of fruit salad, decorated specially with whipped cream and a jauntily placed cherry in honour of the celebrity. "Isn't that just magnificent?" she asks, embarrassed, and then begins to laugh.

Outside on the pavement, the biting wind causes Merchant to be nostalgic for warmth and to reminisce about a holiday she and a friend took recently on a remote Hawaiian island - the story itself becoming an illustration of what she admits is her driven, even obsessive personality. "I'm not very good at relaxing," she says, "and will always find work for myself to do if I have none, so Hawaii seemed a good place to go. But Gary's completely workaholic, too, to the extent that the idea of us going on vacation together became a joke among all our friends.

"So there we were, up at 5:00 am each day trying to find the supreme place to watch the sunrise, then going off on the ultimate hike through the rain forest, then looking for the longest beach to walk along... and every day we'd try and do more laps of the pool than we'd done the previous day. As for reading, between us we got through 25 books on Hawaiian history. Then there'd be the evening search for the best vegetarian food and the best place to see the sun set. It was really sick. I've no idea where this compulsive nature came from, but what I do know is that it felt really good to be with someone else who had it too."