The band assembled in a cabin near Jamestown to start writing for the next record, and Merchant was dissatisfied. “I didn’t want to consult with other people,” she said. “I was tired of art by committee.” Not to mention that, in the cabin, the only person doing the dishes and rinsing out everyone’s beer cans for the recycling was the ostensibly famous lead singer—the only woman, natch. Before they started recording, she told the band she was going to leave. Never one to do anything impulsively, she gave them two years’ notice.
And so from 1991 to 1992, throughout the difficult recording of Our Time in Eden, the band knew the clock was ticking. Just after the release of Eden, Augustyniak was struck by a car while riding his bike and Max Weinberg—free because Bruce Springsteen had walked away from the E Street Band—filled in for a few weeks on drums. Drew recalled the Maniacs telling Weinberg how anxious they were, because without Merchant, who were they? “You guys all co-wrote the songs,” Weinberg told them. “You’ll be fine. I never wrote a song in my life, so I’m fucked.”
Drew speculates now that Elektra leapt at the chance for a 10,000 Maniacs Unplugged because it was, in essence, a free album, supplied just before the band—as far as the label was concerned—would cease to exist. “But it was also just sort of the train we were on,” he said. “The album was a hit, we had a hit song, this is what you did.” Augustyniak’s collarbone had healed and so they spent a week in Bearsville, New York, rehearsing for the showcase. Merchant picked the setlist—“she’s the one who’s gotta sing ‘em,” Drew said—and the guys, working with Paul Fox, the producer on Our Time in Eden, re-arranged their songs.
In an all-acoustic environment, the band hoped to approximate the bigger sound of the album by building out the ensemble. They had seen the Congolese soukous performer Kanda Bongo Man live, and recalled the way the band managed its many instrumentalists. “They’d have four guitar players, but each one of them is only playing two notes,” Drew said. “If you kept it simple, everyone could fit in.” They supplemented Buck, Drew, and Augustyniak with guitarist Bill Dillon, pianist Amanda Kramer, and percussionist Jerry Marotta. They also added a banjo, bassoons, and strings, including longtime friend of the band Mary Ramsey on viola. This telecast and album would appear, they knew, after the summer tour, after Merchant announced her departure, after the band as they’d known it for 12 years was no more.
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Like Jeopardy! games, MTV Unplugged episodes were taped in batches. “Financially, you never did one at a time,” recalled Alex Coletti, the show’s longtime producer. “You set it up, you build the stage, and then you try to knock out two, three, four over the course of a couple of days.” Scheduling could be tricky. “Some people’s voices aren’t good early,” Coletti recalled, but he felt comfortable scheduling the Maniacs for the daytime session on April 20; they would be followed that night by Soul Asylum and then, the next day, by Midnight Oil and a spoken-word episode featuring Henry Rollins and Reg E. Gaines.
