by: Stuart Coupe
"When we first started out we did some shows not just as 10,000 Maniacs but just using all our first names," explains Mary Ramsey of the undoubtedly harrowing time when she first started fronting 10,000 Maniacs following the departure of Natalie Merchant who'd decided to pursue a solo career.
"We'd been writing music for a few months and I was still getting all the lyrics worked out but it was just so much fun and people responded so well to what we were doing. I just enjoy playing and doing this so much and there's such a unity between all of us working together so I feel very integrated."
Ramsey is talking from her home in Buffalo in upstate New York whilst the Maniacs are taking a break from being on the road promoting their magnificent Love Among The Ruins album. To be honest the new album floored me. Maybe I just don't keep up with these things but I'd figured that after Merchant left the blokes had just decided to continue on their own.
Cut to the day when Love Among The Ruins arrived. The folks at Universal Music had told me it was a new album. I shoved it in the CD player without looking at the cover and listened for a few minutes. In that time I'd decided that the record company were complete idiots and this wasn't a 'new' album - just a bunch of great, great songs completed before Merchant put her career in the hands of Bruce Springsteen's manager Jon Landau and decided to go for it as a soloist. Finally I checked the cover and saw that Ramsey, not Merchant, was the singer.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not for a moment suggesting that Ramsey is just a carbon copy of Merchant and in fact the more I listened I realised how different her vocal chords are - it was more that it sounded like another classic 10,000 Maniacs album and you're reading the words of a big (like real big) fan here.
Then, talking to Ramsey the penny dropped that she was the 'Mary' in John and Mary who made two fabulous folk-tinged albums a few years earlier for Rykodisc. Then I realised that the 'John' was a certain Mr. Lombardo who'd been one of the first Maniacs.
"Well, John and I met in Buffalo and he had left the Maniacs about three years before and those two albums were the result of us collaborating together," Ramsey explains. "It started out with me improvising on my instruments and him playing guitar and then I started to sing. He was singing at first and then he asked me to sing so I got in there and did it and then we got this record deal which is pretty much the long and short of it."
One can only guess that the two John and Mary albums sold about 500 copies at the time of their release, a figure that's likely to considerably increase when they're re-released with one of those stickers that says 'featuring members of 10,000 Maniacs.'
"Well, you won't see any double Platinum albums or anything or anything like that on the wall at home," Ramsey laughs.
Right, time for the real dirt - why exactly did Lombardo leave the Maniacs who were, let's face it, not only critics darlings but a significant live attraction in the States and Europe and one that would have, and would still, do extremely well if they decided to hop a plane and tour Australia?
"Well it's hard for me to speak for him but from what I gather he had different ideas going on and he's a bit older than some of the guys in the band so I think he had a little bit of a different vision at that point," says Ramsey. "I know there's a lot more to it but I don't really want to get into that, but it wasn't like there was any sort of bad feeling."
Ramsey had actually been performing with 10,000 Maniacs on an irregular basis for some time before she became the official front person. She'd sung backup and played viola with them at an MTV Unplugged show and lent her vocals to the last couple of Merchant-driven studio albums.
[webmaster's note: The only Merchant-era studio album Mary appeared on was Our Time in Eden and she did not sing, she played violin]
"When I met them was right after John and I had made Victory Gardens," she explains. "We had made the album even before we got the deal with Rykodisc. A friend of ours had given us some cash to make the album and we had a week to make it.
"Then John was asked by the band and Natalie to go to New York and help mix this album called Hope Chest because as you know it was an album of music and this guy had been bootlegging it so they wanted to put it out as an album. After he got together with them they wanted to tour and they wanted him to come along and play on the tour and then they suggested that he and I open for the tour.
"That was 1990 and that was how I initially met everyone. I became friends with Natalie and the guys in the band and once John was onstage playing they suggested I get up and play strings with them so I did that and then eventually I started singing back up vocals and that's kind of how it all evolved. They preceded to ask me to go out on tours with them and play on their records."
And what about the ultimate decision to take over from Merchant? Surely it must have been a worrying time getting onstage and seeing an audience wondering whether she could cut it up front?
"It was a pretty big decision," she says. "It was a situation where John and I felt it was very much a joint thing for us to join the guys. It wasn't like me coming in by myself. We're a collaborative team as far as everything including songwriting goes so the initial invitation was that they just wanted us to come down and get together with them and see what would happen and what sort of chemistry we would have writing music together.
"It was a natural thing because we were like this extension of them anyway so it just happened very easily and naturally. What I based my decision on was firstly seeing how we would evolve and then I heard the music and what we were creating together and I was really enjoying and thought it sounded good so that really helped hone my decision to join.
"I thought of the different bands I've loved like Fairport Convention, Fleetwood Mac and different groups like that who have had people come and go and I tried to view it that way."
10,000 Maniacs' new album, Love Among The Ruins, is out now on Geffen Records through Universal Music.