Style(s): Rock

10,000 Maniacs (named after the low-budget horror movie 2,000 Maniacs) was formed in Jamestown, NY, in 1981 by singer Natalie Merchant and guitarist John Lombardo. Other members of the sextet were Robert Buck (guitar), Steven Gustafson (bass), Dennis Drew (keyboards), and Jerome Augustyniak (drums).
The group gigged extensively and recorded independently before signing with Elektra and making The Wishing Chair in 1985. Cofounder Lombardo left the band in 1986, and they continued as a quintet, releasing the second album, In My Tribe, in 1987. This album broke into the charts, where it stayed 77 weeks, peaking at #37 and selling over a million copies. In My Tribe featuredthe hit singles "Don't Talk," "Hey Jack Kerouac," "Like The Weather" and "What's The Matter Here?"

Blind Man's Zoo, the 1989 follow-up, hit #13 and went gold. It featured the hit singles, "Trouble Me" and "Eat For Two."

Our Time in Eden was released in 1992, and featured the hit singles, "Candy Everybody Wants" and "These Are Days," which served as Bill Clinton's Presidential campaign theme song. The Maniacs played at inaugural balls for President Clinton in 1993 and 1997.

As Our Time in Eden had finished its run on the charts, Natalie Merchant announced that she was leaving for a solo career. MTV Unplugged was released a few months after her departure, featuring a remake of the Bruce Springsteen/Patti Smith classic, "Because the Night." The record sold 4 million copies.

10,000 Maniacs continued without Merchant, adding the folk-rock duo John & Mary in 1994 (original member Lombardo and violinist/vocalist Mary Ramsey). Ramsey was well-known to Maniac fans, having appeared as violinist, violist and back-up singer on Our Time in Eden and MTV Unplugged. The band released Love Among the Ruins in 1997, featuring a cover of Roxy Music's
"More Than This," which went to #24 on the Billboard charts, the highest-charting single in the band's history. In 1999, the band released The Earth Pressed Flat on Bar/None.

The band met Oskar Saville in the summer of 1999 when she was fronting the Chicago band Rubygrass. Later that year, on December 31, 1999, the band ran into Oskar again when her band played first on a New Year's Eve concert at Chicago’s House of Blues with 10,000 Maniacs and Collective Soul. Saville danced, pranced and screamed her way across the stage that night in a cow-print miniskirt and then showed up back on stage mid-way through Collective Soul's set and dueted with them on a U2 cover song. She was, as the Chicago Tribune said of her a few years ago, "Natalie Merchant meets Janis Joplin." The boys thought it would be great fun to play with someone who so obviously enjoyed being a rock and roll singer and invited Saville to rehearsals.

Saville, who is based in New York City and maintains a fledgling solo career as a singersongwriter, accepted the invitation when they called her in October 2002. The band drafted Jeff Erickson to play lead guitar. Erickson, a guitar student of Buck’s throughout
the 1990s, was literally the only person around who knew how the intricate guitar tunings of hits such as “These Are Days” and “Hey Jack Kerouac.”

The band currently consists of Oskar Saville on lead vocals; Jerome Augustyniak on drums, percussion and background vocals; Dennis Drew on
keyboards; Steven Gustafson on bass guitar; and Jeff Erickson on lead guitar.

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