Natalie Merchant Puts Poems to Music on 'Leave Your Sleep'

Natalie Merchant is feeling rather poetic these days -- literally. The former 10,000 Maniacs frontwoman is set to release 'Leave Your Sleep' on April 13, a two-disc set that takes lyrical content from poets both famous and obscure. Six years in the making, the project features such recognizable names as E.E. Cummings, Ogden Nash, Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Graves, but that wasn't the only massive undertaking Merchant embarked on.

For this project, Merchant spent time with a total of 130 different musicians, including funk-improv kings Medeski, Martin and Wood, the Wynton Marsalis Quartet, ragtime revivalists the Ditty Bops, the Klezmatics and the New York Philharmonic. Not bad choices for a backing band.

This isn't the first time Merchant has used words other than her own to drive her studio work. Her last release, 2003's 'The House Carpenter's Daughter,' also featured mostly traditional songs with a few contemporary folk covers thrown in from the likes of Richard Thompson and Florence Reese.

"The poems inspired vastly different musical settings with themes that ranged from humorous and absurd to tragic, romantic and deeply spiritual," Merchant said in a statement. "They were some of the most magical experiences I've ever had making music."

Merchant's expected to take 'Leave Your Sleep' on the road this summer for a more extensive tour, but starting April 12, she'll play a few select dates starting in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boulder, Colo., Cambridge, Mass. and Washington, D.C.