A friend of mine loves to tell a story about being in Florida during Spring Break and seeing Modern English in concert on the beach. After they played “I’ll Melt with You,” they started playing their other music. When the audience kept yelling, “Play that other song again!” Modern English stopped playing.

When I heard that Natalie Merchant was going to perform at The Ryman, I, much like the fans of "I'll Melt with You," wanted to see her show to hear her 10,000 Maniacs songs as well as those from the “Tiger Lilly” album. At the beginning of the concert, she announced that she’s touring to promote her new CD “Leave Your Sleep” which is a series of children’s poems set to music. As you can appreciate, that was not what I wanted to hear. I thought about leaving but am glad I stayed because of the new songs I was “forced” to hear (and she played all my favorites near the end of the concert).

Merchant is one of the most “literary” artists of our generation. Her lyrics quote and reference many forms of literature—from “Hey Jack Kerouac” to other songs inspired by a pioneer woman’s letter to her family or other historical events. So it should have come to no one’s surprise that she would release her current CD that takes verse from notables such as Ogden Nash and E. E. Cummings as well as Jack Prelutsky, the first child poet laureate of the United States. Merchant matches theme between music and lyric, traveling from Mother Goose to Nathalia Crane, whose first book of poetry was published when she was nine and had seven reprints during the first year. During this journey, she applies differing types of music from Creole to Russian to bluegrass. For the CD, Merchant recorded several songs in Nashville, working with the Fairfield Four and other notable musicians.

The concert included a PowerPoint presentation about the poets, featuring rare photographs of them and their book covers. Merchant has certainly been busy over the last seven years researching for the work and raising a child.

Her voice remains as powerful, agile and, where necessary, edgy as ever. Her stage energy has not been beaten down by motherhood. She dances throughout the sets in a manner that indicates she is truly entranced by the music.

If you like music based upon poetry or if you like children’s poetry, you would have enjoyed the initial portion of the concert. If you came of age with Natalie and 10,000 Maniacs, you would have been even more than satisfied.