With the birth of her daughter in 2003, Natalie began Leave Your Sleep, a seven-year-long project that led to the recording of a double album in 2010 of musical adaptations of classic children’s poetry. Among the poets’ work she selected were British Victorians such as Edward Lear, Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson and Gerard Manley Hopkins and 20th century American writers, e.e. cummings and Ogden Nash, etc. She drew from a wide range of stylistic musical settings to illustrate the poems and collaborated with 135 musicians including: The Wynton Marsalis Quintet, Medeski, Martin & Wood, Lúnasa, The Klezmatics, The Ditty Bops, The Memphis Boys, The Fairfield Four, Hazmat Modine, and members of the New York Philharmonic, etc.

‘Merchant’s seven-year sleep has blossomed into this double album of poems set to music that traverses the whole range of American vernacular, from Bluegrass to Cajun to miniature chamber music, and beyond.’ —Financial Times  

‘Merchant has triumphed.  A catholic cornucopia of treats.  Leave Your Sleep is one of those albums that sounds like it just belongs; timeless and classic.’ — Folk Roots

‘Remarkable, beautifully designed, lavish … will lower the blood pressure of many a hassled parent.’ — The Times 

Leave Your Sleep includes a handsome 80-page hardcover book (by award winning British book designer David Pearson) with biographical essays on the poets by Natalie and archival portraits obtained from libraries, museums and private collections in both the U.S. and the U.K. In 2012 Leave Your Sleep was the inspiration for a beautiful children’s book, of the same name, illustrated by Barbara McClintock through MacMillan Publishing.

The album was produced by Natalie and Andres Levin and, with a few exceptions, all the sessions were engineered by Nick Wollage, assisted by Eli Walker at the Clubhouse in Rhinebeck, NY.