by: Tim O'Brien
On a cold winter's night in a now-defunct teen bar called Giuseppe's in Jamestown, Chautauqua County, a young band that had just released its first major album was working up a sweat.
The band's five male players looked like fairly typical young men in their 20s, low-key in jeans and non-descript shirts. It was the female lead singer who stood out. Though she had her back to the audience most of the time, when she turned around she kept turning, spinning and spinning along with the music, seemingly lost in a world of her own.
Afterward, some of the young people present walked up to talk to the band members but they kept their distance from the shy lead singer, whom they both admired and were a little bit afraid of, even then.
The group had a name that never quite matched its sound. A pop-folk band with a reclusive poet as the lead singer didn't seem to fit the tag of 10,000 Maniacs. The name itself was a mistake -- the trashy slasher movie that had inspired it was actually called 2,000 Maniacs -- but it got them attention. So did the music. So did the lead singer.
Eight years later, much has changed and much remains the same.
10,000 Maniacs, who will perform Sunday at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, has lost one member -- rhythm guitarist John Lombardo -- who quit over creative differences after that first album and now is part of the twosome John & Mary.
But the other four guys are still in the band -- though older, with wider guts, home mortgages and all but one happily married. And Natalie Merchant still gets most of the attention -- a Rolling Stone cover and big splash in US magazine most recently -- with much of it these days focused on how she's traded dime-store clothing for designer duds and swapped a holier-than-thou attitude for a sense of humor.
Steve Gustafson, the band's affable bassist, said the Four Stooges have long been accustomed to the attention diverted away from the band -- though he says he argued hard to at least get their name on the Rolling Stone cover.
"I'm an all-for-one kind of guy," he said. "In the business sense, it is good to have her pretty face on the cover."
He adds that the rap on Merchant -- that her sense of humor is newly acquired -- is off-base. "I think she's always had the same sense of humor," he said.
During one Jamestown rehearsal back in 1987, for example, Gustafson began thumping out the bass line to Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love. Drummer Jerry Augustyniak started doing a Ricky Ricardo imitation, Merchant added her Lucille Ball-like cries of "Ricky!" and keyboardist Dennis Drew dubbed the song A Whole Lotta Lucy.
Although not in keeping with the band's ultra-serious image, Gustafson said that scene is more typical of the way they all relate most of the time.
Despite the coverage that describes Merchant as a happier Maniac, their latest album, Our Time in Eden, is a mixture of self-doubt ("How I learned to please, to doubt myself in need, you'll never know") as well as inspiration ("These are days you might fill with laughter until you break.")
The album is clearly lighter and more musically varied than their last outing, Blind Man's Zoo, which got mixed reviews from critics and fans. Though it contained a modest hit, Trouble Me, much of the album was a bit heavy both musically and lyrically, and industry rumors had the band on the verge of collapse.
"We'd been touring a lot. We were really exhausted," Gustafson said. Band members barely spoke for a year, and they themselves did not know if there would ever be another album.
After a year apart, he said, band members settled down, married, bought houses and cut back on backstage drinking that had bothered Merchant. While they never went on stage falling-down drunk, he said, their playing was not always at its sharpest.
"I was really glad when Natalie said she wanted to come back," Gustafson said. "We are playing so much better. We've got a real light show. I think it'll be much different."
One difference on Our Time in Eden was the appearance of the James Brown Horns on two songs.
While the Godfather of Soul's horn section will not be on the tour -- "They wanted 15 grand a week," he said -- three New York City session musicians will be joining the Maniacs on stage at SPAC.
"These are the Jamestown horns," he joked.
The band also will include Amanda Kramer, formerly of Information Society, on piano and organ, and Morgan Fichter, once with Camper von Beethoven, on viola and violin.
The Maniacs will do a few covers, including a version of Elvis Presley's Suspicious Minds.
Gustafson said the Maniacs are more relaxed on this tour, especially since there are five new people on the tour bus who have never heard their jokes before.
"My motto for this tour is to laugh a lot, and we are certainly doing a lot of laughing," he said.
That easiness off-stage is apparent on stage as well. "We are all playing really, really well. Jerry is beating the hell out of those drums, he's playing better grooves than he ever has."
The tour ends in two weeks and, as always, the band has not talked about what they will do next. There will be an album this fall from their Unplugged set on MTV, he said, and a live recording of their stage show also is possible.
At the moment, Gustafson is most interested in getting back to his private life and his home in Frewsburg, just outside Jamestown. His wife, Pam, is due to have their first child Aug. 15, and they just bought 70 acres of land where he plans to build a home himself.
And he and Dennis Drew have a new pet project that will return them to their roots. Drew and Gustafson first met Natalie Merchant when she was 16, attending Jamestown Community College, and they worked at the college radio station.
Now the pair have applied for a permit to operate a station of their own, WXKM-106.9 FM, in Jamestown.
"Being the owners, we'll be the janitors, the salesmen," he said. "There's a lot of opportunities for us and I think we're going to jump on those opportunities for a while."
Despite the road weariness that comes at the end of a tour, Gustafson says he is still sometimes struck by the notion that he's come all the way from the small clubs like Giuseppe's in Jamestown and 288 Lark in Albany to large concert venues throughout the world.
He attributes the Maniacs' success mostly to hard work -- and to the woman who gets the magazine covers.
"Certainly Natalie threw down her coattails and we all jumped on," he said. "It's been fun. We're doing some serious reminiscing just because everything's going so well. We're not worrying about the future. We're just going out and playing better than we ever have before."