For years, John Lombardo was a good case study for Pete Best Syndrome.

The guitarist-songwriter had the misfortune of quitting 10,000 Maniacs back when people still thought they were a hardcore punk band.

Lombardo left in '86 and went on to form the endearing duo John and Mary, with Mary Ramsey, a few years later. While the Maniacs were going platinum with In My Tribe and Our Time in Eden, did he ever think maybe he made a big mistake?

"Yeah,'' says Lombardo, "there were certainly times. Yeah, I'd have to say that. But what can you do?"

Well, in rare cases, you can find your way back home. Ten years later, Lombardo is riding the Maniac bus on the current tour.

However, it did take one big Maniac, Natalie Merchant, to leave before one could come back in. Though Merchant left two years ago claiming that being in a band was like having five husbands, Lombardo indicates that it's never been an messy divorce.

"When I left the band, I just left it. And when Natalie left the band, she just left it," he says. "There was no one getting fired. There was no litigation, no fighting."

Of course, Lombardo didn't come back alone. He brought Mary, who sounds a little like Merchant, looks a lot like Merchant, and even plays the viola. Whether or not she has the pop sense and stage charisma is an issue critics are divided on. As for the fans, Lombardo says they've been receptive so far.

"People who like the band appreciate Mary for what she can do. She's a brilliant musician," he says. "And they still love Natalie. It's not one or the other."

When it came to making their new debut, Love Among the Ruins for Geffen Records, it was two camps coming together. On the one hand was the folky, Celtic-inflected duo; on the other, the seamlessly adept pop band of guitarist Robert Buck, keyboardist Dennis Drew, bassist Steven Gustafson and drummer Jerome Augustyniak, who makes his home in Pittsburgh.

Listening to the outcome, things clearly leaned to the pop side.

"There was a certain way that we had to meet our record company half-way," Lombardo says uneasily. "Folk music really gets pushed into a little corner of the record shop. Even people who say they're folky like Mary Chapin Carpenter or Shawn Colvin, they're really not folky if you listen to their production. If you don't have that radio-friendly production, you're really relegated to Dirty Linen magazine - which I love, but it's a little esoteric world."

Strangely enough, Love Among the Ruins has produced the second biggest selling single in Maniac history, a sweet, faithful cover of Roxy Music's More Than This (the biggest, by the way, was also a cover, Springsteen's Because the Night from MTV Unplugged).

"The record company has a lot to do with those types of decisions," Lombardo says. "They felt really confident that they could get it on the radio right away. And they did. It got into the Top 40, and we reached a lot of people that we might not have reached."

In a month, they'll release their second single, Rainy Day, which Lombardo thinks may have more resonance with alternative radio. In the meantime, they are taking liberties in concert with Merchant standards like These Are the Days and Hey, Jack Kerouac.