• Track Listing

2010 two CD release from the former 10,000 Maniacs vocalist. Leave Your Sleep is a collection of songs adapted from poems selected by Merchant including pieces by both well known and obscure writers. Featured are works by British Victorians, early and mid 20th century Americans and contemporary writers as well as anonymous nursery rhymes and lullabies. Among the authors included are Ogden Nash, E.E. Cummings, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christina Rossetti, Edward Lear, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Robert Graves. In addition to a new method of lyricism, Merchant stretches out musically on Leave Your Sleep by collaborating with a broad spectrum of artists including the Wynton Marsalis Quartet, Medeski Martin & Wood, members of the New York Philharmonic, the Klezmatics, Lunasa and Hazmat Modine.