THE MERCHANT OF VERSES

10,000 Maniacs singer returns with ode to poetry

Natalie Merchant isn't one for small talk.

That's obvious at the beginning of the interview when idle chat about her tour elicits just single word—even monosyllabic—responses.

That changes as the conversation shifts to loftier topics, like politics, the economy, the purpose of the artist in society and her own resurgent career.

Merchant, 47, became a reluctant pop star shortly after joining 10,000 Maniacs as its vocalist at the age of 17. Now she's touring in support of Leave Your Sleep, a collection of poems, obscure nursery rhymes and meditations on childhood and innocence set to her own music.

"I had noticed that poetry was being neglected," says the soft-spoken Merchant, a self-described "Rust Belt poet," whose early songs chronicled the social malaise of the 1970s recession. "I know that I was neglecting it, and most of the people I've talked to since I recorded this album have said the same thing, that poetry is a marginal part of their lives."

Evidently, there is an audience for poetry in pop music: The CD, Merchant's first studio recording in seven years, is riding the Top 20 on the Billboard album chart.

It's the culmination of a career that has seen Merchant mature with each successive project. "When I started writing songs, when I was 16 years old, I didn't know anything about music," she says. "I didn't know anything about performing or songwriting or recording. Nothing. And certainly nothing about the music business.

"Thirty years later, I've gained a lot of knowledge, maybe not wisdom," she adds with a laugh, "but knowledge."

Leave Your Sleep is ambitious by any standard. It features more than 100 musicians, including a string section, jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, gospel greats the Fairfield Four and the jazz trio Medeski, Martin and Wood.

The original music runs the gamut from Cajun to Celtic to klezmer to jazz to pop.

Each lyric is crafted from a poem. Merchant spent two years combing through stacks of poetry, including works by e.e. cummings and Robert Louis Stevenson. She recorded 50 songs, 26 of which are on the double CD.

"These poets, each and every one of them, was a master in his or her own right," she says. "I feel like I was able to draw on hundreds of years of experience and skill just by flipping through the pages of books and selecting at random works by people who had created hundreds of poems and, in some cases, dozens of novels.

"Especially with the more obscure poets—like Arthur Macy or William Brighty Rands or Nathalia Crane—I enjoyed taking them out of the shadows and casting a light on them."

To put the many musicians in the proper mindset, Merchant recorded the album in a residential studio in upstate New York, away from cell coverage and the distractions of modern life. Oftentimes, the players were treated to "long leisurely meals at a big table, family-style," she says.

"I wrote all the music and I live in that environment. I wanted to continue with that same feeling.

"I mean, when I wrote 'Autumn Lullaby,' it was a really still night, probably 2 o'clock in the morning, and I was nursing my infant and the window was open and the rain was falling. I feel that I captured that moment, which is gone now—poof! It's gone forever.

"But we captured it in the sessions and I'll always be transported to that place. My hope is that I can transport other people to that place as well, to the stillness and peacefulness and intimacy of that moment."

How does she maintain that unhurried pace, that sense of intimacy, on a busy cross-country concert tour?

"It's difficult," she says. "I think that feeling lives in the music now. I depend on the music to bring it to me."

—Greg Cahill

COMING SOON

Natalie Merchant performs Tuesday, Aug. 10, at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa. $25-$65. 707/546-3600.

Whistle a tune to Greg at gcahill51@gmail.com