by: Scott McLennan
After 17 years of touring and making records, 10,000 Maniacs bass player Steven Gustafson dreams of playing in a rock 'n' roll setup similar to Branson, Mo. - a row of theaters in one place where the artists stay put and fans travel to see them.
Instead of a glitzy country music theater, the Maniacs could set up a music venue in upstate New York, much like the artists collaborative in Jamestown that fostered the band in the early 1980s.
Gustafson quickly snapped into reality now when talk turned to the 10,000 Maniacs upcoming performance as headliners of Mohegan Sun MusicFest '98. The event is scheduled for Saturday at Alumni Field on Great Road, behind Maynard High School.
"Boston to Washington, D.C., has always been the Maniac Belt, though it seems like we've toured all of Massachusetts recently," Gustafson said over the telephone from his home near Rochester, N.Y.
The band joins Magic Dick and Jay Geils' Bluestime, Entrain, Fat City Band, Neurotic Gumbo and Memphis Train for the festival, which runs from noon to 9 p.m., rain or shine. Tickets are $10 in advance and $13 at the gate. Advance tickets are available at Strawberries record stores, Victory Supermarkets and the Sit 'N Bull Pub, 163 Main St., Maynard. Children under 10 are admitted free.
Although 10,000 Maniacs came of age in the day when Husker Du, the Replacements and R.E.M. were stirring a whole new youth movement in rock 'n' roll, the band has aged well into a respectable adult group. The Maniacs cerebral, jangly, folk underpinnings remain despite the departure of original singer Natalie Merchant three years ago. [webmaster's note: Natalie left the band 5 years earlier in 1993]
New singer Mary Ramsey brings a throaty tone similar to Merchants' into the mix. And longtime Maniacs fans were happy to see guitarist John Lombardo return to the band last year.
Apart from Ramsey, the lineup of Gustafson, Lombardo, guitarist Robert Buck, keyboard player Dennis Drew and drummer Jerome Augustyniak hails back to the earliest days of the group. All but the drummer were present for the first 10,000 Maniacs gig.
Ramsey was promoted from backup singer and string player to front the band for the making of last year's Love Among the Ruins. [webmaster's note: this makes it sound like Mary joined the band as a back-up singer which is wrong. Although she toured with 10kM in 1992 as a back-up singer and string player, when she joined the band in 1994 she joined as the lead singer]
While that record was pleasing, it went back to the band's chief problem: 10,000 Maniacs' energetic stage presence tends to get beaten out of it in the recording studio.
Gustafson acknowledged with no prodding that Love Among the Ruins is flat. The band has since parted ways with Geffen Records, the label that released Love Among the Ruins; the group will produce the next record on its own.
"One of the struggles this band has always had is to find the live, emotional feel once we get in the studio. Once the red light goes on in the studio, we've had a tendency to become really safe. Then you have producers who want perfection, and a lot of personality gets lost in the music," Gustafson said.
Love Among the Ruins, he said, turned into "vanilla" after each song was overworked in hopes of producing radio-friendly singles. "On the next record, expect us to be more ourselves," he said.
Being "themselves" translates into art by committee, Gustafson said. The band has a history of each member working hard to bring an individual vision of the music into the collaborative to make one cohesive picture. Gustafson said that is the main reason Merchant left the band.
"Natalie didn't like art by committee. We've all got strong egos and personalities to contend with," he said.
But the committee model has worked well for the Maniacs. The albums In My Tribe, Blind Man's Zoo, Our Time in Eden, and an MTV Unplugged session, all released between 1987 and 1994, yielded many hits and memorable songs and posted strong sales. The Maniacs remain one of the few bands to make a graceful transition from '80s college radio to '90s adult-contemporary radio. [webmaster's note: those albums were released between 1987 and 1993]
"Festivals love having us because they know we're a band a family can see," Gustafson said.
They also know this band is committed to the road until the day comes when Gustafson's dream of Maniacs Land opens near his home.