Feisty Natalie Merchant coming to Santa Rosa

When Natalie Merchant, lead singer and songwriter for the band 10,000 Maniacs, felt stifled by the band in the early 1990s, she quit and went solo.

When she got fed up with record-company control while working on her solo debut, she told her record company: “Just trust me.”

“And they said, ‘We don't,'” Merchant recalled with a laugh.

Fiercely independent, she said, “I told them, ‘I'll pay for (making) the record. And if you don't like it, we won't put it out.' It was a big gamble.”

And it was a gamble that paid off hugely for both Merchant and Elektra.

The lush “Tigerlily,” with hits including “Jealousy,” has sold millions of copies, giving Merchant the ability to flex her creative muscles and take on projects most record companies wouldn't touch.

Her latest album, a two-CD set called “Leave Your Sleep,” is a wildly diverse collection of classic poetry for children set to music.

Once again, she self-funded her work, bringing the completed 26-song project to her new record company, Nonesuch, for distribution and promotion.

Though inspired by Merchant's only child, her 7-year-old daughter, Lucia, the album isn't just for kids.

“My vision was of an introduction to poetry and also an introduction to (world) music (for my daughter),” Merchant said during a phone interview from a recent tour stop in Milwaukee.

“But there's this whole other dimension to the project which is introducing (listeners) to obscure poets or giving them more information about poets they've already had exposure to,” she added. “It's reviving the work of people who have been dead for a century or more.”

Among the poets whose work Merchant has set to music: Robert Graves, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Edward Lear, Ogden Nash and Robert Louis Stevenson.

The musical arrangements she created for these works are all over the map. In some cases, Merchant matched the poem's time and place with the music; in others, she went more for the feel of the rhyme.

“Sometimes I made references to the time period, like with ‘The Janitor's Boy' (written by child prodigy Nathalia Crane, 1924). That's a jazz-era poet and so I had a jazz-era musical setting for it,” she said.

“But sometimes I contradicted the time period as in the case of ‘Topsyturvey-World,' which is Victorian. But to me the lyrics felt playful. They reminded me of '60s reggae music or ska or even Calypso lyrics that are kind of nonsensical and lighthearted, so I took the poet out of his historical context and threw him somewhere else.”

Another song, “Sleepy Giant,” was written by American stockbroker Charles E. Carryl in the late 1800s, Merchant said.

“The first line of the poem is: ‘My age is three hundred and seventy-two,' ... so that became a period piece with 17th-century music: there was harpsichord, lute, recorder.”

Merchant credits her daughter with helping her develop the album.

“She spent a lot of time just listening to me recite the poems. They became her bedtime stories many nights,” Merchant said. “She would tell me what songs she really liked. I wrote over 50 of them and winnowed it down.”

Setting poets to music from around the world is a far throw from pop music. It's a project that perhaps only the erudite Merchant, with her devoted fans and homey, lavish voice, could pull off.

“I wanted to create a classic work that is going to have as much validity now as it will have in 100 years,” she said.

“Leave Your Sleep” includes a poem about death, Hopkins' “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child,” with the line: “You will weep and know why.” It's certain to touch her audience.

Merchant, whose songs foster an intimate connection with many listeners, said that as she was singing “Wonder,” about the beauty of a disfigured child, she was approached by a woman who handed her a photo of her disabled daughter. Another fan told Merchant she sang her song “Kind and Generous” to her mother as she lay dying.

It's been a long musical road for Merchant since she joined 10,000 Maniacs while still a teenager.

She still bristles at the memory of the band having to pay for their own touring van and sleep three to a room in the early days while record company execs flew first class.

“I was still living at home when ‘In My Tribe' came out,” in 1987 after the band had already become successful, she said. “I couldn't afford my own apartment and didn't have health insurance.”

On the 1992 Maniacs hit “These Are Days,” Merchant sang as if she were having the time of her life.

Today, she's reveling in parenthood, immersing herself in work she loves and answering only to her muses, who range from her daughter to ancient bards. For Merchant, these certainly are days to remember.

Michael Shapiro writes about music and theater for The Press Democrat. Contact: michael.shapiro@ pressdemocrat.com.