WildHearted

10,000 Maniacs

"Stockton Gala Days"

Performed live on the David Letterman Show, June 23, 1993

Natalie Merchant

Natalie Merchant is the guest on the latest episode of the Song Exploder podcast. She talks with host Hrishikesh Hirway about "Sister Tilly," breaking down the song from her new album, Keep Your Courage. The song was arranged by Gabriel Kahane. You can hear what Merchant had to say here.

Natalie Merchant

Natalie Merchant as "DemiGoddess", 1998.

Photo: Mark Seliger.

Fleetwood Mac, 1979.

Photographed by Sam Emerson.

“When Natalie Merchant was fifteen, a year before she began her music career in the band 10,000 Maniacs, she put a picture of a statue of Joan of Arc up on her wall,” BBC Radio 4 Front Row presenter Samira Ahmed says of her guest. “The image adorns the cover of her new album, Keep Your Courage, a celebration of women in myth and history, ancient and modern, and a celebration of love of all kinds—familial, platonic, and romantic.” You can hear their conversation about the album and more here.

Natalie Merchant: “So Uncool that You’re Really Cool”

- Former Maniac profiled on Lehigh Valley PBS program “Articulate”

Natalie Merchant was in CBGBs being shunned by the safety-pin-pierced cool kids when a woman who worked for a record company gave the nascent singer the boost she needed.

“She came up to me and she said, ‘You are so uncool, that you’re really cool,’” Merchant recalled. “Just remember that.”

And it seems she did.

The singer and activist is speaking to host Jim Cotter on “Articulate,” in an episode titled “The Many Lives of Natalie Merchant.”

Though she possesses one of the most distinctive voices of her generation, Merchant says that, technically speaking, “I don’t think I have a very good voice.

“Because to me, it’s more about (the) emotional, you know, immediacy,” she says.

Across 26 minutes, the Lehigh Valley PBS station follows Merchant from her youth in rural New York to her days with 10,000 Maniacs - “a horrible name,” she says - to her solo career and her life as activist and mother. The episode was filmed as Merchant’s daughter, Lucia, was preparing to go off to college.

“I’m not worried because I know that we’ll be close forever,” Merchant says.

Merchant left the Maniacs at 30 - she joined at 16 - because as lyricist, she was also the group’s “editor.” If she couldn’t find words to fit a bandmate’s music, the song didn’t make it.

“I didn’t like having that position in the band,” she said.

So it was on to a solo career - a huge hit with Tigerlily, whose “Wonder” got her involved with special-needs children - and other activism that resulted in a fracking ban in her home state of New York. Other people got the ball rolling, but music can be essential in closing the deal on such efforts, Merchant said.

“You can bombard people with information, but … there’s something about music that kind of opens up that channel to the heart.”

See the episode here.

12/27/22

Mirage tour 1982

June 30, 1983 Los Angeles, CA at a benefit for the City of Hope.

Wow!!

10-31-2022 Huntsville, AL. 

Rhiannon 

10-31-2022 Huntsville, Alabama

I know some of these photos were taken by K. White (YouTube user: ladyfromthemountain ).  If I missed giving anyone else credit, please let me know and I will be happy to update this post.