She grew up in Jamestown, New York and attended Jamestown Community College (she enrolled when she was 16), where she formed 10,000 Maniacs in 1981. She was with the group until 1993; after taking six months off she started work on her first solo album, Tigerlily, which sold about as many copies as the five studio albums she recorded with 10,000 Maniacs combined.
She first visited New York City when she was 16, and moved there around 1990. Between work on the Blind Man's Zoo (1989) and Our Time in Eden (1992) albums, she started doing volunteer work at a homeless shelter. She often returned to the shelter to help out even after going solo, saying it helped her "stay connected."
With 10,000 Maniacs, she was clearly the visual focus of the group, and her bandmates were fine with that. Knowing that she was more interesting to look at than they were, they made sure she was up front in photos and got most of the screen time in their videos.
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