Natalie's gentle rhythms belie the sadness and suffering of the forgotten and neglected lives of which she sings. Born on October 26, 1963 to youthfully exuberant parents, the Jamestown, New York native was in her earliest years surrounded by family and friends. Her parents were married right out of high schoool and when they struggled, they moved to the warmth and security of Grandpa and Grandma Merchant's Allen Street home in a neighborhood taken almost straight out of the small villages of northwestern Sicily with its Catholic traditions. Natalie, Sicilian on her father's side and Irish, German, and French on her mother's, peacefully spent these early years with her three siblings.

Natalie, a timid child, would nurse the bird fallen from its nest and she would mourn its ultimate demise. Proud to be a teacher's pet, Natalie was fond of Leonardo da Vinci, who like her, was left-handed and wrote backwards and upside down. Natalie sang incessantly as a youth and she particularly enjoyed church music with its group choirs. When Natalie was eight-years-old, her mother bought a piano for the living room and Natalie was instantly drawn to the piano. Her mother instinctively knew which child to encourage artisticly. This led to piano lessons and general exposure to the arts for Natalie who often tagged along with her mother to the symphony. The piano lessons were the most horrifying experience of the fourth grade Natalie. She pretended to read music while playing by ear to learn the new chords. Lured by a promotion to draftsman, her father moved their family to Detroit for a year. Life took a drastic and irrevocable turn when Natalie was ten and her parents divorced. Divorce was then uncommon and marked a family. Natalie's mother, who at times was a waitress,bank teller, and painter, landed a job as a secretary in an art department of a local community college where her new interests and friends reflected back on the youthful and artistic Natalie. In1975, her mother remarried an atheist who was a jazz pianist, sculptor, photographer, and poet. He and her mother had strong influence on the artisticly developing young Natalie. They lived in the solitude of woodlands and grape vineyards of Westfield, New York where Natalie and her siblings were often left to their own devices and imaginations.

Westfield was a scary place for the preteen, short-haired Natalie who was often mistaken for a boy. She took music lessons after school and her teacher, Marcella, was struck by the beautiful, rich, natural voice of the gifted young girl. "She justed opened her mouth and this beautiful sound came out of it." Westfield was also home to a traveling troupe of European style puppeteers. This was a place where the people accepted and encouraged Natalie when she resisted the strictures of teen conformity. Natalie and her family once again returned to Jamestown and the gifted Natalie took advanced courses at a local community college. She graduated from high school at 16 and enrolled at the community college where she befriended student D.J.s and the guys in a band who would someday form 10,000 Maniacs. Evenings, Natalie would hang out with the band and dance when they performed at parties in local warehouses. During one of these parties, Natalie was asked to sing. She had carried her textbooks to this party including a Social Studies textbook and when they asked her to sing, she improvised out the Social Studies textbook. Thus, she came to be dubbed the "idiot savant" for her jibberish lyrics. Missmerchant regularly joined the band at parties and small clubs and they built a small following in western New York. But, early on, the other band members were never sure whether she would even show up because her mother didn't want her to come. The new college band wanted to call themselves "Burn Victims" but Natalie protested and instead offered "Tundra Bunnies". They settled on 10,000 Maniacs, a misnomer which would later haunt them. People unacquainted with the band often expected something more hard core and certainly not folk singers. By the time the band realized their naming mistake, they had already built up a substantial following and could not change. But, the band would never be renamed Natalie Merchant and the 10,000 Maniacs in part because she did not want her name associated with maniac. Early on in the band, you could see the talent and almost mystical appeal of Natalie. After shows she was all people would talk about. Who is this enchanting, whirling young girl with the incredible voice and what country did she come from? She has a hard to place, almost international appearance. They could not understand her lyrics, even if they thought that they could, because she had no lyrics. She would sing jibberrish and dance out of nervousness. The "whirling dervish" Natalie would move freely and sing nonsense lyrics for the pure joy of the sounds alone. And the people would hang breathless on her every jibberish lyric entranced by the budding young star. Few knew what to make of her as she sang and twirled wildly. Fellow bandmate and writer Lombardo would say that "she looked like she escaped from a rest home...one minute and scream into the microphone the next minute." He described her appeal as Ghandi-like. People would shower her with gifts of flowers and favorite poetry books. This was a heady experience for the still teen Natalie.

When Natalie began to write actual lyrics, the mellifluous tones of her gentle voice belied the discords of her dark lyrics. People would dance gayly to unheard lyrics which spoke of abuse or oppression. And as Natalie was developing her then contradictory musical voice, the 10,000 Maniacs, in the early '80s, were traveling the Northwest, playing small clubs, and living happily out of their van with their new found freedom. The band received no airplay save for some college radio stations. Gigs in Cleveland were exciting and Richmond was the happening place to be. In 1983, their first album, "Secrets of the I Ching," filled with songs written by Natalie, sold less than a thousand copies. Yet their legend grew as did the talents and voices of their lead vocalist. The band, although still esoteric, grew in stature. Their new manager, Peter Leak, landed them a tour in Great Britain and by 1985, they were playing hip clubs in Manhattan. Elektra spotted them at one of these clubs and signed the unique band with its extraordinary singer. Elektra sent the 10,000 Maniacs to London to record the "Wishing Chair" album. The critics loved the album but few people bought it. Undeterred, Elektra was convinced that the 10,000 Maniacs could have broad appeal and Elektra signed the established Peter Asher to produce their next album. He instantly knew that their greatest asset was Natalie's unique and extraordinary voice. Asher helped the band to make their music more accessible and less disorganized. While making this album in L.A., Natalie was walking barefoot down Sunset Boulevard with only a paper bag to her name and no ID. The L.A. police stopped her and detained her. They were convinced she escaped from a mental institution and they were more convinced of this fact when she told them she was a member of the 10,000 Maniacs in town to make an album. All this culminated in their breakthrough album "In My Tribe". "In My Tribe" was an immediate and multi-platinum succcess but it had its costs. 10,000 Maniacs was put up in the lofty heights of bands like R.E.M.. They toured almost non-stop for two years and the grind of tour life took its toll on the band, particularly Natalie. The muse of music no longer sang to her and she lost her will to make music. And if this was not enough, she contracted spinal meningitis in 1989. Her body and soul beaten, music no longer came out of her and she thought it would never return. The twentysix-year-old Natalie returned home only to discover "everybody elses' lives go on and you really don't fit in." At this nadir of her life, Natalie volunteered as a teacher's aid at a homeless shelter. She was really just a glorified babysitter for preschoolers but these young lives taught her a valuable lesson about her music which she had forgotten --- the power of music to communicate and reach people. It was through her music that Natalie connected with the children and they had a profound influence on her. She started to write again and no longer the politically motivated lyrics which marked her earlier work but more personal lyrics which revelled in the beauty of life.