by: Candace Murphy

The 10,000 Maniacs' tour bus is gone. So, too, are the night-after-night tour itineraries. Gushing appreciation from First Daughter Chelsea Clinton? That dried up not too long after the cleanup crew left the building where the Maniacs and MTV ushered in the Bill Clinton administration back in January 1993.

Why? It's the economy, stupid.

"Not as many people pay to see us," says 10,000 Maniacs keyboardist Dennis Drew, who's on the phone from his home in Jamestown, N.Y. "That changes the economics."

That's also what makes the Maniacs' performance tonight at the Usual in downtown San Jose -- the band's first visit to this city -- all the more special. Since Natalie Merchant left the band after the1992 album Our Time in Eden made its run on the charts, and Geffen later dropped the band, belts have tightened around the Maniacs' homestead.

That means rambling tours from the East to West coast, which weren't all that common even in those heady times back in 1992, are out. These days, the band's publicist even asks reporters if they would mind dialing the band members' homes directly for interviews to save on long distance charges.

The only reason the band was able to come West at all -- the Maniacs played Saturday in Santa Cruz and Sunday in San Francisco -- is because it was invited to play a benefit in Seattle earlier this month. The Maniacs tacked an extra two weeks in hopes of helping balance their budget.

"It'd be easy to give up. But that's not our modus operandi," says Drew. "We don't give up. It's a living and we view it as that. We're not kids in our 20s reaching for the brass ring and buying Maseratis. This is lunch bucket stuff. This is work. We're family people out on the road, loving our jobs and loving the music we play."

In terms of their craft, though, the Maniacs are doing well in lean times. The band is playing better perhaps than it has ever played. And the sextet's new album on indie label Bar/None, The Earth Pressed Flat, is an improvement over the 1997 Geffen release Love Among the Ruins, on which Merchant's successor, Mary Ramsey, debuted.

On Earth, the Maniacs prove that they have their hills-are-alive-and-we're-spinning-in-a-grassy-field brand of folk rock down pat. Earthy yet ethereal, it's a project that started back in 1994.

"It's a collection of songs that sort of fell through the cracks over the last six years, that we forgot about or didn't finish," says Drew. "A lot of them weren't even really songs yet. Just chord changes and ideas that we had to tighten up."

Taking note of the positive response Earth Pressed Flat has received so far, the Maniacs are planning to play 100 gigs this year. Last year the Maniacs did only about 50 shows, and in 1997, they did about 70.

The live show won't be limited only to new music, though. More of a career retrospective, the Maniacs draw from almost all the albums that span their 18-year history. The only songs they won't play are ones in which Merchant wrote the music.

It's not a case of sour grapes, says Drew, but of sensibility.

"It's kind of pointless to make Mary write all these songs and go memorize another 45 songs," he says. "Lyrically, that's just too many songs. Why do we need to go out with 125 songs? We're not going to play them all anyway."

The band might be playing so well because it's actually enjoying there turn to its roots. Like the did-it-themselves efforts of 1982 and 1983, Human Conflict Number Five and Secrets of the I-Ching, this latest album is all about art.

"Because there's no money around," says Drew, who likes being on an independent label, not to mention working with longtime friend Glenn Morrow, who owns Bar/None, "it seems like it's more about the art, because a record company's job is to sell records. To them it's like selling plastic. They're just units to them. If you're artistic, great. If you're talented, wonderful. If you're beautiful, that helps. They don't really care. That's disturbing."

Still, should a big label come knocking, or should Chelsea Clinton ask for the Maniacs to play at her dorm party, Drew and the rest of the Maniacs won't do anything crazy like turn the other cheek.