Natalie Merchant returns playing ‘Mother Goose as an 18th Century feminist’

Natalie Merchant returns playing ‘Mother Goose as an 18th Century feminist’

Author: Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold August 26, 2026 Duration: 29:33

Natalie Merchant joined 10,000 Maniacs when she was 17, had a long and successful solo career and then began teaching children in New York State. Realising the value of rhymes and theatre, her adaptation of Mother Goose (played by herself) was expanded into a multi-media performance with 150 four-year-olds and recorded with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She even made most of the costumes. And she’s never had an audience reaction as enthusiastic and emotional. It’s a magnificent project to give children experiences that modern life rarely affords “right down to the thrill of seeing people play real instruments”. She talks to us here from her New York home about ‘Cabinet Of Wonder’, along with …

 

… her first stage appearances, aged seven

 

… scanning record collections and thinking “if they don’t have a copy of Nico’s ‘Chelsea Girl’, we can’t be friends!” 

 

… how improvising lyrics got her into 10,000 Maniacs (“who I wanted to call the Tunda Bunnies”)

 

… seeing Styx, the Cars and the Clash playing ‘Combat Rock’

 

… how she and her daughter grew up in homes without TV

 

… and the threat of future education run by avatars. 

 

The Cabinet of Wonder website: https://cabinetofwonder.org

 

And the multi-retailer link for the album: https://cabinetofwonder.lnk.to/album

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.


There’s a particular kind of conversation about music that happens between friends who’ve spent a lifetime immersed in it-not as distant critics, but as participants in the culture. That’s the atmosphere you’ll find in Word In Your Ear, a podcast from Mark Ellen, David Hepworth, and Alex Gold. With a collective eighty years of writing and broadcasting for titles like Smash Hits and Mojo, and shows from "The Old Grey Whistle Test" to VH-1, they don’t just recount history; they unpack the stories behind it with the ease of a shared laugh. This podcast grew naturally from their work on the late, great magazine The Word, where they began recording over thirteen years ago, building a dedicated following who found something genuinely special in the mix. Each episode weaves together music, commentary, history, and interviews, moving seamlessly from deep-dive analysis of a seminal album to a frank chat with a surprising guest, all delivered with the warmth and wit of a late-night chat. It feels less like a formal show and more like you’ve been invited to pull up a chair in a room where the anecdotes are plentiful and the expertise is worn lightly. The result is a consistently engaging listen that treats music not as a museum piece but as a living, breathing part of our lives.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

Word In Your Ear
Podcast Episodes
Georgie Fame, Ben Sidran and the golden age of ‘60s Soho [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:16
Ben Sidran was in a teenage band with Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs, a session pianist with the Stones in 1969 and carved a brilliant career as a jazz musician, producer, author and broadcaster. He’s just written ‘Cool Cat…
Steve Hackett remembers batwings, blues clubs and Genesis on £15 a week [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 38:00
Steve Hackett’s seven years in Genesis get re-explored when he tours in October, along with ‘solo gems’ from the records he’s made since, the latest ‘the Roaring Waves’, a collaboration with old pal Steve Rothery. He loo…
Mari Wilson, our favourite girl about town, takes Neasden to Chelsea [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:53
Mari Wilson has drunk deep of all that London nightlife has to offer, from a London Transport social club in Wembley to a posh venue in Chelsea via the Cooks Ferry Inn in Edmonton, and she remembers it well. Here she mar…
All music is dance music! – and the best stage name ever [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:52
Another over-heated week put through the conversational air-conditioner, which involves … … the man who got rich writing words that could never be sung … Anna Bullock? Stefani Germanotta? People who’d never have made it…
Kevin Rowland, the new Dexys and what he's learnt from life [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:42
We first saw Kevin in ‘77 wearing jodhpurs onstage with his art-punk band the Killjoys! He’s formed a new version of Dexys, made an album, starts a tour in October, and looks back here at central moments in his life, som…