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When Natalie Merchant set out to create an album of lullabies for her newborn daughter, she didn’t expect it to turn into a six-year project that resulted in a two-disc set and an 80-page book. “I just wanted to write,” Merchant said during a recent phone interview. “That’s the way any project starts. I don’t usually know what it will be in the end.

I just start writing.” Her new CD, “Leave Your Sleep,” is a collection of poems set to songs that Merchant wrote. It’s a big collection (a 16-song single CD version is also available) that includes contributions from some 130 musicians from around the world, including the Wynton Marsalis Quartet, the Fairfield Four and the Klezmatics. The first steps toward “Leave Your Sleep” came after Merchant, now 46, had reached something of a crossroads in her career. After a dozen years fronting the folk-pop band 10,000 Maniacs, Merchant went solo in 1993 and gained even greater popularity. Her 1995 debut CD, “Tigerlily,” sold more than 5 million copies and included a top 10 single, “Carnival.” she stretched out artistically on her next two CDs: the lushly adorned 1998 release, “Ophelia,” and the more experimental 2001 CD, “Motherland.” Those two CDs went platinum and gold respectively, but by the time she finished touring behind “Motherland,” Merchant was alarmed by a record industry that was falling into crisis as downloading ate into album sales, and she was tired of the demands that came with promoting her albums. Looking to “detox from the major label environment,” Merchant started her own label and released a collection of folk songs in 2003 called “The House Carpenter’s Daughter.” then she checked out of the music business completely. Newly married to Spanish documentary filmmaker Daniel de la Calle, Merchant was ready to start a family and get away from the touring grind. Although she went seven years between albums, Merchant wasn’t away from the creative process of music for long. she started writing for what eventually became “Leave Your Sleep” soon after having a daughter, Lucia, in 2003. As she began to latch onto the idea of adapting a collection of children’s poems to music, Merchant dove in deep.

she spent months upon months — with the help of four assistants — researching poets and finding selections she would turn into songs. Merchant also learned about the poets themselves to help create an 80-page book included in the deluxe edition of “Leave Your Sleep” that elaborates on the songs and the poets behind the music. “I’ve always had a latent archivist/librarian living inside of me, so that was a really fun part of the project, discovering these extremely obscure people and then tracking down information about them,” Merchant said. Her musical ambitions grew as the project took shape. Merchant abandoned her accustomed format of drums/guitar/bass/keyboards for a far more wide-ranging — and drummer-less — sound that encompassed folk, pop, Celtic, Chinese, Cajun and klezmer music, as well as symphonic elements. The result is a CD that is sophisticated enough for adults but also playful enough to appeal to children. “I love pop music, but I’m bored with the standard five-piece pop band instrumentation, when there are so many other instruments available,” Merchant said. “And I saw myself as an illustrator for these poems, and they just called for more varied and complex and interesting textures. I wanted instruments that would pull people into different worlds, have different connotations.” Having created such an instrumentally and musically diverse album, Merchant was then faced with the challenge of how to re-create her new music in concert. The answer was assembling an eight-person band that includes horns, strings and a variety of other instruments. “I don’t want to tell people too much about what to expect,” Merchant said of her live show. “It’s kind of nice to be surprised. but there’s a slide presentation and a few excerpts of songs and complete songs, and we’ll obviously be doing some radical reworkings of some old songs because it’s not an electric band. There’s no drum kit.” — provided by last Word Features Concert preview Natalie Merchant. 8 p.m. Aug. 27. $40-$56. Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, 2800 Cobb Galleria Parkway, Atlanta. 404-249-6400, www.ticketmaster.com Merchant’s Cobb concert to have poetic touch