Natalie Merchant with Erik Della Penna

Natalie Merchant’s musical career, which began 45 years ago when she joined the upstart and eclectic Western New York band 10,000 Maniacs, has never been ordinary, predictable, or disappointing. Merchant was a sheltered 18-year-old when she signed on with the band, forgoing college for the opportunity to hit the road; her second time on an airplane was en route to England, to make The Wishing Chair with the legendary Joe Boyd. The books she devoured and the sights she saw became her university and filled 10,000 Maniacs’ songs about opera and illiteracy, war and the American West. When Merchant left the band in 1994, she launched a solo career that is unparalleled as far as former lead singers go: Her first two solo albums, Tigerlily and Ophelia, produced a string of hits remarkable not just for their popularity but for their thoughtful writing and scene-building: “Kind & Generous,” “Wonder,” “Carnival.”

The surprises only increased in the new millennium. After her astounding 2001 album, Motherland, sold slowly, she started her own label to release The House Carpenter’s Daughter, a vivid reimagining of American folk-and-protest songs. Conceptualized and composed as she nursed her daughter, 2010’s Leave Your Sleep was a sprawling and diverse compendium of songs about motherhood and childhood, built from the words of poets she absorbed as a young mother. And 2026’s Cabinet of Wonder, a collaboration with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chicago Children’s Theatre, sets the poems of Mother Goose to gloriously imaginative music. At Big Ears 2027, Merchant will join Erik Della Penna, a session guitarist and composer who co-wrote the Broadway hit Dead Outlaw, for a night of songs from her smart and spellbinding albums, delivered in that instantly identifiable voice. “Anytime I hear anything recorded before Tigerlily, I just say, ‘Oh, little Natalie.’ They’re like embarrassing journals,” she once said. “My voice has gotten deeper and richer. I’m less hurried in my delivery.”