by: Holly Crenshaw, pages 28-31

Natalie Merchant describes the songs she wrote with 10,000 Maniacs as being tinged with nostalgia, a reflection of the life she knew growing up in Jamestown, New York. "In retrospect I can see that I was trying to write about what I knew: small-town rural America," says Merchant. "That's where I'd lived my whole life. I wrote stories and ballads about the people I knew and the circumstances they lived in. I understood what it felt like to be neglected in the fanfare of history."

Using her music to illuminate the lives of the forgotten or unfairly treated has long been an important mission for Merchant, who joined the folk/rock band when she was only 17 but soon evolved into its driving artistic force. From an early interest in a broad range of protest music - from Bob Dylan to the Gang of Four - Merchant grew into a socially conscious lyricist and mesmerizing singer who recorded six albums on Elektra with 10,000 Maniacs - from their major label debut, Wishing Chair, to their final collection of new material, Our Time In Eden.

After giving her bandmates two years' warning, she announced her departure from the group following the release of one of its biggest sellers, 10,000 Maniacs MTV Unplugged.

Before starting on her first solo album, Merchant took six months off and worked anonymously in a day-care center for homeless families. When she returned her attention to her career, she determined to make better-educated business decisions than she had when she signed her first recording contract at 21. Consequently, she not only studied books on the music industry, but also hired new managers, lawyers and accountants.

If Merchant harbored any worries over losing her audience base during that sabbatical, those thoughts should have been immediately dispelled when her debut solo release, Tigerlily (Elektra) gained double-platinum status and its single, Carnival, emerged as her first top 10 hit.

Merchant wrote and produced the entire album, inviting guitarist Jennifer Turner, drummer Peter Yanowitz and bassist Barrie Maguire to accompany her in the studio.

Now 32 and living in upstate New York, Merchant is a committed activist whose interests range from environmental concerns to women's issues.

During a lengthy phone interview, she leaned against a radiator to stay warm while speaking with both seriousness and humor about her growth as an artist.

"There was something very pure about the beginnings of 10,000 Maniacs," she recalls. "I think as we became more self-conscious about what we were doing - when we became more aware - something was diminished."

Do you see a distinct change in your songwriting style now that you're a solo artist?

Well, the actual songwriting part of this venture didn't take that long - six to eight months. And I wanted to put out a record as quickly as I could so there wouldn't be a big lapse of time between 10,000 Maniacs and this record. And even though there were a lot of things I wanted to experiment with, the first thing I wanted to do was make a pop record all by myself, where I had the opportunity to write all the songs myself.

I write on the piano, so it's not like I took up the guitar or other instrument - so the actual songwriting method didn't change. I did put together a small demo studio so I could rehearse at my house - actually a little apartment over the garage - and that was exciting.

But I wanted to be in a young, fun, hip band (laughs) and make a record and do a tour and then explore a lot of other music I've wanted to write.

It sounds like you had a creative burst when you Ieft the band. To what do you attribute that?

Just knowing that I didn't have to compete for songwriting credit anymore. I think that the drama was gone over who's going to write the songs. Everyone's ego wants to be credited. Everybody wants to have their name on a record as a songwriter, I find that's a universal thing - because people get involved in pop music because they don't want to play somebody else's music. They want to play their own music. But sometimes that's paralyzing because all those decisions have to be made about whose song is going on the record. I think what was exciting is that I had the freedom to just write anything I wanted and not have to have it decided by an approval committee.

And even more important than that is that I had never had, as an adult, true independence. I always felt my fate was interconnected with the fate of everyone else in the band. The dream I always had was that I would be happy to live as an artist again and to have that freedom. And I really felt that when I left the band. And I also left my management company. So I felt, "I'm free of everything." (laughs).

I read that you made a deliberate decision to not only work with a female guitarist, but also to hire a predominantly female staff. What have you gained from that?

A balance. I lived in a very male-dominated world for years and I just like having women around. I feel like communication is easier with women and it feels very natural to play music with women. And I think on the next record I'll find even more women musicians to work with. I don't think I'd ever be in an all-girl band (laughs). But we took the Innocence Mission on tour and I got to sing with Karen Peris and I didn't realize how much I missed singing with girls from singing with my sister all those years ago.

What do you think we some of the recurring themes in your work?

Fall from grace of some sort. I think trying to reconcile idealism and reality. I think nostalgia used to be more a part of it. And I think betrayal, the examination of power structure and the abuse of power. So those are some of the things.

I think a lot of emphasis has been put on the lyrics and I think that's because they are somewhat more complicated than the average. But I think also it's because I talk to a lot of writers. I think writing about the lyrics is easier in articles and reviews than writing about music. I would like to emphasize the lyrics less. Just because I feel that that's just half of it, just a component of it.

I spend a lot of time writing the lyrics and give them a lot of attention - and give a lot of attention to every detail of them. But I want the songs to have a full... (laughs). I'm just trying to think of a way of saying this. I don't want to degrade what I do, but at the same time I feel that there's more to it than that.

Of course, I'm going to follow that right up with a question about your lyric writing...

(Laughs)

How do you determine whether to use rhyme or not?

I just feel that language - the English language, which is the one that I use (laughs) - I just find it very limiting to describe something that I feel, and then to have to find clever words that fit like a puzzle, to find rhyming words that are going to express that feeling perfectly.

I guess that's what I mean when I say I don't like to emphasize the lyrics too much. Sometimes they don't honestly express what I'm feeling. Sometimes grunting and moaning - that's why I love gospel music. I love to see someone like Mahalia Jackson. I think Mahalia Jackson moaning or Aretha Franklin moaning expresses more than seven pages of rock lyricism. Sometimes language just seems really inarticulate.

You mentioned earlier that you typically compose at the piano.

Yeah. I'll just find a key that I feel I can respond to on a particular day or night. I told that to my friend who's a composer and he was kind of startled - you know, "Well, that seems silly." Because every key for me expresses a particular mood. I wouldn't play an A flat major or a D minor unless I felt like it. I think he learned about it in a more...well, probably because he's writing for more than just a piano. He's writing for a symphonic orchestra and he had to be more restrictive about what key the music was in that he played. But he took a more analytical approach to it, other than, "Well, I just feel like playing in E minor right now."

But anyway, that's what I'll do - just find a key and then go from there. Find a note in that key and then a second note at an interval I respond to and then move on to the next and build like that. I have very primary knowledge of the keyboard. I think in one sense it limits me, but in another sense it keeps me free because I don't know where I'm supposed to go or what I'm supposed to do. I don't know proper theory. I don't know what would be the acceptable thing to do. I can't play a standard blues progression (laughs). If I come up with one, I think, "Look how clever I am!" (laughs)

Can you tell me how you came up with the idea for Wonder?

Well, the music - I just liked the descending chord progression and I thought it sounded very hopeful, like a gospel song. And I just kept playing it over and over and I came up the melody. But it was gibberish. There were no words yet. I think after two months I came up with the words. I had decided to write the song about - because it seemed like a triumphant melody in a way - that I wanted to make it a testimonial about strength, inner strength. I was made aware of a woman who was severely handicapped. And most of all, I was just amazed by her strength and how she had been able to achieve things that people with all their limbs intact would never be able to achieve.

But I'm suffering from first-person syndrome (laughs). That was my fatal mistake. Because so many people thought the song was about me. But her attitude was that she felt gifted rather than handicapped and that the challenges she'd had made her who she was.

What about Beloved Wife?

Beloved Wife actually came out of a jam session. I was like the leader of the jam session - because I tend to be not that good of a follower (laughs). So I came up with a chord progression and started singing the melody and wrote the lyrics the next day.

My grandfather and grandmother died several years ago. They died in the same week. And I had just moved into a new neighborhood and met my neighbor about a week before. And he was very old and his wife had died ten years previously. And it seemed like the devotion he had for her was very similar to the devotion my grandfather had for my grandmother and it brought them to my mind.

I May Know the Word?

That was the first song I wrote after leaving 10,000 Maniacs. I pretty much wrote it the day after. I sort of rushed into it because Jonathan Demme had called and wanted a new song for the "Philadelphia" soundtrack. I thought that would be a great transition. And I'd always wanted to do a soundtrack record, to make a contribution of some sort. So I finished the song and I was really happy with it. Elektra was my record company at the time, and Bob Krasnow advised against it. And I think I can understand why now. But he just thought that it might not be the best decision and wanted to save my big moment for the record, Tigerlily.

But at least it got me to write the song. It's a lot about indecisiveness and being prevented from doing what you feel is and know is right. But something else prevents you from doing it and you don't even know what it is.

And maybe just a couple of older ones - how about Trouble Me?

Trouble Me - I don't remember when I wrote that song. But I think it's a really sweet song about friendship, and wanting to help someone who is really independent and generally resistant to that.

Like the Weather?

Like the Weather is a silly song about - I remember I wrote that on a Farfisa organ so it had sort of a silly origin. It's just about not wanting to get up out of bed because it's raining. In Jamestown where I grew up, the climate was so similar to London that it really didn't bother me at all when I finally went to London and it rained almost every day (laughs) and it was cold and gray - because that was basically what I was already used to.

Verdi Cries?

Verdi Cries - when I was 20, I went to Europe on vacation and stayed at a hotel in Spain, sort of a small, family-run hotel on the Mediterranean. It was pretty amazing. I hadn't spent a lot of time traveling at that point, especially not in Europe. I was very impressionable. So I wrote that song about being there.

Do you think it's easier for listeners to accept songs that deal with serious subjects - like What's the Matter Here? - if they're set to an upbeat melody?

Not necessarily. I think it's probably easier for people to accept it if it's not an upbeat melody. I think that in many ways, I wrote lyrics for 10,000 Maniacs without really regarding what the music was saying. I just had a particular bone I was chewing and I would want to write about it. And I didn't want to write personal, confessional type material as the front person of a band.

And also just feeling at that time in my life that music should be about protest of some sort. Sometimes Rob would write a melody or a chord progression that was pretty upbeat and I probably should have written something that was very different, but that wasn't where my mind was at that time. I always felt safer writing about injustice in other people's lives than myself.

Is it harder to write about personal issues versus political or social issues?

Yeah, I think for me it is.

Is it something you're becoming more comfortable with?

No. No I've always used first-person pronouns but that doesn't necessarily mean every song is about myself. I know it's something people respond to in a song - if they think it's confessional about the songwriter. And I respond to that too, but I just have this reluctance to put my own life on an altar and sacrifice it to people - when I just really write things that are about me and write about other people and mix it all together.

But you know, it's not always that way. Like I've written a couple of different songs about my brothers - I wrote a song called Cotton Alley about Chris, and the song Gun Shy is about my little brother Jude after he came back from boot camp. So I have some songs I've written about people in my life.

Iris DeMent said the same thing - that she often uses the first-person perspective as a literary device, and people mistakenly assume the songs are all about her.

I mean, I just can't imagine that Bob Dylan met a woman, married her, broke up on the roadside (laughs), went and chopped trees in the great Northwest, and went down and worked on a boat in Delacroix off the coast of Louisiana and then one day walked into a bar and there was his ex-wife as the topless waitress. I mean, he just didn't have time to do all that (laughs). He was touring around the country in a van, you know?

But at the same time, a songwriter can develop a persona. It's like a monologue, like Spalding Gray or something. You have your audience and you're a storyteller. So sometimes you say, "This happened to me," and it's more effective than saying "This happened to somebody I don't even know, somebody I read about." Or "This happened to my brother or my sister or my mother" or "This happened to a good friend of mine." Or "This happened to somebody I don't like at all."

Why do you think some rock critics find it difficult to deal with an artist like yourself who often writes about complex, mature subjects?

I don't think of myself as a rock musician. And maybe the themes that have been addressed in rock songs through the years haven't been that mature. You know, a lot of what rock music seems to have been about was rebelling against seriousness and rebelling against a lifestyle that was constricting. I suppose that caring about the future - or even the present - caring about people who are less fortunate and caring about our natural environment that is threatened or caring about all the things that thinking and aware people care about (laughs) - caring about that and expressing it through your music in some way, a mature way - I think certain quarters find that offensive because it doesn't fall in line with their definition of what rock music is or what rock music means.

You could see it at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in all the - just the pondering (laughs) that went on about what rock music is. And rock music is very important because I think arts are very reflective of a culture. Rock music has been America's cultural contribution over the past 50 years. The development and changes in rock music over the years have paralleled radical changes in our culture: women's liberation, the migration of people from rural areas to urban areas, the melding of black and white culture.

So that's probably why rock music is pondered so heavily and written about. An entire industry has developed to support it. It is a powerful force. But as far as the possibilities and different aspects, I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony and saw David Bowie and Pete Seeger being inducted on the same night. They couldn't be more distant from the other, but both part of the same tradition.

Some articles have condescendingly described you as sort of an overly serious, vegetarian-hippie type - what do you think is the basis for those kinds of dismissive comments?

Well, I just feel like there's a narrow definition of musicians these days. Music served so many more purposes in earlier times - celebrating harvest, celebrating birth and mourning death. And musicians had almost a shamanistic power. There were those kinds of uses of music and then there was music that simply accompanied daily life and it was equally important that everyone participated in it. We've made it into this specialized occupation that it doesn't need to be.

Then on top of that, we've added these bizarre celebrity aspects to it, and rock music has sort of redefined the lifestyle that as a musician you're supposed to live and the sort of mores that you're supposed to subscribe to. And I think that's just a pile of bullshit. I can be a creative person and I can be a musician, but I don't have to take heroin and I don't have to live a degenerated, morally debilitating lifestyle in order to make music. So the idea that I'm not much of a rock-and-roll type personality, some people find that kind of offensive.

But I feel that to force everyone to live according to this narrow definition of what a musician is really unfair. Especially considering how recent that persona is - it's only 30 years old. The idea of people having to be self-destructive on some level or disrespectful toward other people... I don't feel like all institutions are that worthy of my respect, but I don't think "respect" is a nasty word. To be self-respecting or respecting especially of others is something that - if you watch MTV for any length of time, they're not qualities that are really sought after or get a lot of attention.

So I don't know. People feel I'm some sort of anomaly with the lifestyle that I live and I happen to also be a musician. And then, you know, they'll come to my concert and they'll see me dance and they'll see my hips moving and they'll think, "Oh well, all the activism and all the parading about social concerns - oh, that's all some kind of a sham." The idea that I have to be prudish or - it's strange, very strange.