John C. Lombardo was born on 30th September 1952, in Jamestown, N.Y. Founder member of the band 10,000 Maniacs , John played rhythm guitar and wrote the music of most of all songs from the period 1980 to 1985, when he left the band . His presence in the early years of the Maniacs was essencial to the band and he will come back a decade later, in 1995. But meanwhile , in 1989 he formed a folk duo with Mary Ramsey , John&Mary. Pre-Maniacs Years    John studied Political Science at Geneseo State College from 1970 to 1974. He lived in Buffalo from 1976 to 1978, studying painting at college.     He played in several bands before join the Maniacs, singing and playing bass like Succotash, Albatross, Rocky and the Colavitos and Jimmy and the Socialists.     Lombardo is a self-proclaimed Anglophile who spent the '70s listening to British music. By the time he met the Maniacs members, they were into different kind of music (reggae, pop, punk rock) and John introduced some remarkable UK bands which music made a big impact on Maniacs sound, specially Fairport Convention, a british folk group, who seems to be the biggest influence to John.     John went back to Jamestown in 1979 and rented a warehouse, where he would play with his band, "The Mills". "I had it as a meeting place"- John says. "We had a few painters with little studios and I formed a new wave cover band, fairly embarrassing stuff, but it was fun. We started having parties there and playing out in bars. For quite a few people in the area it was their first exposure to what was happening simultaneously in other places. Some of the people who came to the shows and saw our band figured, "If these people can do it, so can we." A bunch of these younger kids, younger than me, asked if they could rehearse in the warehouse.". They were Steve (Gustafson), (Robert) Buck and Dennis (Drew), who got a band called Still Life. This happened in 1980.     Still Life would also invite young Natalie Merchant to play at the warehouse, then she joined Still Life. John appreciated their sound and he would play with them on stage sometimes. He joined the band briefly and Still Life became the Burn Victims.     After one concert as Burn Victims, they changed their name to 10,000 Maniacs.

Maniacs Years 1981-1986        The Maniacs were soon playing as a band, but it was clearly they would have to pratice more. John was the only real musician in the band (note of John: "Rob was better"), and he wrote most of the music in the begining. Later, he would write the music only: "I gave up writing lyrics entirely when I saw how great hers were", refering to Natalie Merchant.     John helped them to learn more about music, introducing new sounds of his vast collection of records.     In 1982, 10,000 Maniacs (still without drummer Jerry Augustyniak) released their first EP, called Human Conflict Number Five (first pressing: 1,000 copies) on their own label, Christian Burial for a sound-engineering program. They toured the East Coast (including Georgia, where they first met R.E.M. and living in Athens for three months) and Ontario, Canada, working their way through 87 performances in six months and selling their record themselves.     "We pressed our first record, Human Conflict #5, ourselves, a kind of vanity-press-type thing," Lombardo says. "We recorded it at a college engineering room, with people banging on the doors telling us to get lost the entire time. We were pleased with it, but it's hardly a high quality artifact."     In 1983, now with Jerry at drums, they recorded their first full-length album, Secrets of the I-Ching, this time in a run of 2,000 copies.     Lombardo sent a tape of the album to BBC disk-jockey John Peel in Britain, who fast became a fan of the band, guaranteeing them critical success in Europe with cult radio hit "My Mother the War".     In 1985 they signed to Elektra and released Wishing Chair. They played in US and UK, but selling didn't reach their expectations (about 85,000 copies). They did not earn enough money to pay their bills (most of the Maniacs were still living in their parents house), and John kept working as a teacher in Jamestown. When John had to sold his car and spent more time lecturing than playing, he decided it was time to leave, which happened in 1986.     There was a lot of pressure and tension between the band. "There were a lot of arguments," Gustafson recalls, "and John's political ideas were far from ours. Dennis is a pretty hard-core right-winger, and I consider myself pretty capitalistic, while John was very socialist, but for a socialist he was always so paranoid about money. Artistic arguments would lead to financial arguments, and then John and Dennis actually got into a fistfight before a gig here in town. We all loved John, and we had a lot of laughs and great times. But he just saw the band going in a different direction. Push came to 'fuck you,' and he left." (Musician, 1989)

Life after Maniacs 1986-1994 / John&Mary "I moved back to Buffalo after I quit. I was dead broke."     But he soon formed another band, "Ramona the Pest", that later became "The Billups", with this friend Reese Campbell (b:1962), later joined by James Reilley (b: 1962), friend of Campbell since childhood. John soon left The Billups, while the remaining members changed the band's name to New Dylans, the former band of Campbell and Reilley.     New Dylans achived some critical aclaim when they released "Warren Piece" (Warren is the city where Campbell and Reilley lived, before moving to Buffalo), with the help of John Lombardo (bass) and Jerry (drums), in 1987. But success didn't last longer: they broke up again, soon after "Warren Piece", because they didn't have a bass player nor a drummer for touring. John has never considered himself as a member of New Dylans, though he produced an album and played bass in other. (Note: New Dylans rejoined themselves, and keep playing...)     John Lombardo, still living in Buffalo, was leading a rock band called Hopheads. One day, he was in a bar that had a poetry and music series, when he heard the Lexinton String Trio. John knew two people of the trio, but there was a viola player who he couldn't recognize. The player was Mary Ramsey. John describes this magic moment: "Here I was, standing six feet away and with no amplification I was hearing the wood on the instruments. The cello, it really floored me. Here I was, unhappy with the group I was playing in, unhappy because we had to move gear and then to sound not particularly well. Here these folks just sat down, pulled out their instruments, and it was music. It was magical."(for Dirty Linen, January 92 issue)     "We didn't start out right then, we cultivated a friendship. Mary played a couple of times with my band but we were so loud she couldn't be heard, and also the other members didn't want her to play with us. If we ever got any press, it was always, "What about 10,000 Maniacs? Why did you leave? Are you going to rejoin them?" So they had a resentment, and the idea of having a woman fronting the group... no way. They never gave her a chance." (Dirty Linen)     In 1989, after six months after they met each other, Mary Ramsey played "Un Canadien Errant" with her guitar. John was quite impressed by her skills of singing and playing. They soon joined themselves in a folk duet, called John&Mary. They first played in Buffalo, doing some covers and later they would write their own songs and make a couple of concerts.     By the same time, 10,000 Maniacs were having a bad year with "Blind Man's Zoo" and rumors were they would break-up. In fact, the band members were just giving themselves some time, taking care of family and running parallel projects. In this interim, they could contact Lombardo again and invite him to celebrate 10 years of 10,000 Maniacs by releasing a compilation of their early works.     John accepted the invitation and they released "Hope Chest", a compilation of Human Conflict Number Five and Secrets of I Ching, in 1990. Hope Chest would have a brief tour and John would play guitar in some gigs.     In the same year, they released "Time Capsule", a compilation of videos they made. The Maniacs began the Time Capsule Tour, with John&Mary as opening acts.     In 1991, as Maniacs tour finished, John&Mary releases their debut album, Victory Gardens (Rykodisc). Two years later, another great album comes , Weedkiller's Daughter.

Back to Maniacs 1994-1998 Though 10,000 Maniacs were sucessful with their last two albums, Our Time in Eden (1992) and MTV Unplugged (1993), Natalie Merchant left the band to pursue solo career.     The Maniacs didn't give up and invited John Lombardo and Mary Ramsey to join them in 1994. Mary says: "We went down to Jamestown. The band had asked us to come down and just check it out. So we got together and started to write songs, and we all felt like, "Okay. This seems to be going all right." We ended up doing a tour a month after we got together, and we called it John, Mary, Rob, Steve, Dennis & Jerry. [laughs] Much more than a mouthful."     The new lineup of the Maniacs did their debut in 1997, with album "Love Among the Ruins" released by Geffen Records.     Though the album got a hit single, "More than This", the band wasn't 100% happy about Geffen. In 1998, 10,000 Maniacs left Geffen and released " The Earth Pressed Flat" in 1999 through Bar None Records. To be continued... Discography 10,000 Maniacs 1981 Human Conflict Number 5 Bass, Guitar, 12 String guitar 10,000 Maniacs 1982 Secrets of The I-Ching Bass, Guitar, 12 String guitar 10,000 Maniacs 1985 Wishing Chair Bass, Guitar, 12 String guitar New Dylans 1986 New Dylans (later "Warren Piece") Bass 10,000 Maniacs 1990 Hope Chest: The Fredonia Recordings Guitar (Bass), Rhythm Guitar John & Mary 1991 Victory Gardens Bass, Guitar, Vocals, 12String Guitar , Producer John & Mary 1993 The Weedkiller's Daughter Guitar (Acoustic), Bass, Guitar, Arranger, Composer, Vocals, Vocals (bckgr), Guitar (12 String), Producer 10,000 Maniacs 1997 Love Among the Ruins guitar (acoustic, rhythm) 10,000 Maniacs 1999 The Earth Pressed Flat guitar (acoustic, rhythm)   John's bio written by Andreia Hamada (Deca)