by: Jeff Spevak (Rochester Democrat & Chronicle); page P13
The songs performed by Mary Ramsey and the rest of 10,000 Maniacs on their brand-new album, The Earth Pressed Flat, may not yet be familiar, but the music is. It is the same kind of chiming, Rob Buck guitar from the days when the Maniacs had that other lead singer, Natalie Merchant.
Natalie, if you're reading this, call home. The Maniacs haven't heard from you in a while.
"She's a superstar, c'mon," says Ramsey. "They don't have time for us plebeians."
Ramsey is jesting, but only halfway. The Maniac men -- Buck, bassist Steven Gustafson, drummer Jerome Augustyniak and keyboardist Dennis Drew -- kept their distance for quite some time when the subject was Merchant, even before she left the band to pursue a solo career.
And Ramsey, the winner in the slow-moving Merchant Replacement Derby, wasn't saying much at first.
She saw Merchant at last year's Lilith Fair at Finger Lakes Performing Arts Center. "She allowed me to talk to her," says Ramsey, seeming a bit put off by Merchant's cool reception.
The two first worked together when Ramsey was backing the Maniacs on violin and viola, picking up spending money outside her regular job with the acoustic duo John and Mary.
"She has always been supportive in some ways," says Ramsey, who will lead 10,000 Maniacs into Borders Books & Music on Wednesday evening for a free performance in support of their new album. "When I first met her, we did more things together. I think it was nice for her to have another woman around."
John and Mary joined the Maniacs as a package when Merchant left, which worked out well for everyone; John Lombardo was one of the original 10,000 Maniacs but left after the band's 1985 album, The Wishing Chair.
Ramsey made her debut with the Maniacs in 1997's Love Among the Ruins. The first single was a remake of the Roxy Music hit More Than This. It became more than the Merchant-era Candy Everybody Wants, Like the Weather and Here Comes the Night, by becoming the biggest-selling single ever for the band. [webmaster note: presumably the author means Because the Night.]
Then Geffen Records began circling the drain, disappearing in a vast merger this spring. The Maniacs went back to Jamestown, Chautauqua County, where mostof the band members still live, to try again.
"I could have been living in a nice place, sighs Ramsey, "instead of this little hollow here."
The little hollow is a house is downtown Buffalo. She rents from three sisters, all widows who share the various floors. "It's like an Italian opera," says Ramsey. "They fight and yell, because they're all deaf. Every day is a tragedy."
Saddled with the label of "The New Natalie," Ramsey began fighting for her own identity on The Earth Pressed Flat, shedding group credits in favor of her own song credits. Like Lombardo, Ramsey doesn't have quite as strong a hand for haughty social concern as Merchant. Finger wagging went out with the Maniacs' housecleaning.
"I believe in bohemianism and arts," says Ramsey, "as a priceless way of altering your reality."
This doesn't mean poking through landfills, looking for hot dogs. It's a contemplative, plebeian perspective that weaves its way throughout The Earth Pressed Flat. It's like looking out from an airplane over a city, the Earth pressed flat like a map. "People look small and insignificant, and I like that," says Ramsey. "I like being up in the clouds."